SUMMARY OF INTELLIGENCE.

Wellington Independent, Volume VI, Issue 563, 5 March 1851, Page 4

SUMMARY OF INTELLIGENCE.

[From the Atlas for India, October 24.) As the year advances our intelligence increases but little in interest. We have not much of public importance to record. The most noticeable event of the fortnight is the Cabinet Council which was held yesterday, relative to the expediency of interfering for the settlement of the unhappy Schleswig-Holstein affair. The result is set forth, wo have no doubt upon the best authority, in the Times of this morning:—- f "The Cabiuot, which would not other-i

wise have assembled till the o'th of next month met yesterday, at a very short notice, on v question of considerable urgen. ey. The disgraceful conduct of Prussia in helping to protract the Schleswig-Hol-stein war, not only in spite of a treaty of peace with Denmark-, but actually under cover of the treaty, and by means of it, has led to a very natural-—we might almost say legitimate—consequence The Governments of Russia and France have jointly proposed to the Government of this country, that the three Powers shall peremptorily require Prussia to fulfil her recent engagement with Denmark, and withdraw the support she still continues to give to the Schleswig-llolstein army. In the event of Prussia hesitating to comply with this reasonable demand, Russia and France are prepared to back it, not by nn unprofitable march to the territory under dispute, but in a way more congenial to their tastes —by an invasion of the Silesiau provinces of Prussia on the one side, and the Rhenish on the other. In the first instance, however, they require the co-operation of England in the remonstrance with Prussia, without which they are not prepared to move at present. The answer of,the British Government may perhaps be anticipated. It declines to join with Russia and France in such a note as we have described, but proposes that all three powers shall separately remonstrate with Prussia on her present breach of faith with the Danish Government. Whether their triple remonstrances will be of more avail than all the rest of the diplomacy that has been lavished on this affair, is a question on which we will not venture to give an opinion."

Of what is more properly domestic intelligence we have no great amount to chronicle. There have been some of those political movements which ordinarily mark the later period of the recess— as Financial Reform meetings and Protectionist gatherings. Lord Stanley's speech at Bury has been considerably discussed, it having been supposed to prefigure an abandonment of the principles of Protection. But this his lordship Ims denied. Lord Stanley is not a renegade. Pie was at Bury as fully convinced as ever that free-trade will be the ruin of agriculture. He only recommended the Bury farmers to spend money upon their land because theirs was an exceptional case, because their land was in grass or under green crops, and because it presented peculiar facilities for draining. This at least is his lordship's explanation to Mr. G. F. Young. So hereafter, when the rest of the country is a desert, Bury will be a fertile and cultivated oasis in the midst of it. Happy Bury ! In truth, Lord Stanley caimot throw himself out of the march of the world because foreign wheat enters England duty free. It would be too great a sacrafice to assertion and fanfaronade. No man is bound by what he says when he is drank, or when ho is humbugging farmers. Lord Stanley will accept free trade as his present friends the Tories accepted his own Reform Bill. The ruin of the country under that Bill was foretold in more gloomy and determined sentences than even tlie Protectionists have been able to muster. The Protectionists could not boast of time-honoured institutions and the glorious constitution of Great Britain. But the Tories were not fools enough to sulk in their country houses, till the rotten boroughs were re-established. In due time they took office under the principles of this very Reform Bill, and though they never recanted their prognostications, they were content to carry out the system it created, and under it to raise the country to that height of power and prosperity from which it is now precipitated by the repeal of the corn lav*3. The abolition of the sliding scale is but a repetition of the abolition of old Sarum, and will, ere long, be accepted by all parties much after the same fashion. The only sliding scale left will be that by which the Protectionists will quietly and silently glide down to Free-trade. The amount of crime in the country is painfully affecting the public mind. The same day reports intelligence respecting the Frimley murder— respecting aw 01° ganised system of robberies, said bo be under the superintendence of one of the most respectable tradesman in London— in Essex a man of country education and position murdors his mistress—at Swindon another burglary occurs—besides smaller matters. Perhaps it is as well that these filings should happen together for people are alarmed at last, and the wretched state of rural discipline has v chance of amelioration." It is a great comfort that in each instance the crime will meet with its punishment, [t would be unjust to anticipate the future result of the trials in these cases: but there is much probability that the real offenders in all these cases are in custody. At a meeting of the county magistrates in Surrey, on Tuesday, Lord Lovaine said that the Frimley murder would have been prevented if one constable had been stationed in the neighbourhood. We again repeat what we said last week, that while greater measures are in preparation, the appointment of a singte effective policeman in each parish in the place of the .constable will be an easy and an immense improvement. It will not only do a world of good of itself, but the information obtained by a sensible and organised body of men will enable Government to judge of (ho nature of their future measures in this .direction; if, indeed,.any further measures arc necessary at all, of-which we are in no way sure. At present every one is in terror; for tho present, ami in doubt as to the future. Ju the moan tjine .one'of

the parlies concerned in Ifte murder of Mr. Holiest has confessed; and there is little doubt-of the conviction of the right purties.

While the crime of the country is thus unsatisfactory, the trade of the country is singularly prosperous. The (lazclteot Tuesday contained the name of but n single bankrupt.