Untitled

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3316, 11 October 1871, Page 2

It has been the fashion with telegraph agents and correspondents during the recently closed period of war and trouble in Europe, to gratify the colonial appetite for news by prefacing their summaries *of intelligence with the items of most interest and importance. It has happened on this occasion, more by accident than by intention, that that which, according to this custom, should have been communicated first came last, and that there came first that which need not have been communicated at all. In another column we publish that which came last, and was most worthy of communication ; and we do not doubt that, by those by whom it is read, it will be found that, with what has gone before, the contents of the month's mail are by no means uninteresting, deficient though they may be in those exciting features to which the reader of European news has recently been accustomed. The very latest items of news are to the 4th September, and at that date we have a repetition of the intelligence received through America with respect to the Queen's health. Her Majesty had again become indisposed, and the state of her health was causing renewed anxiety — anxiety with regard to the recovery of the Queen herself, and, according to the estimate of some whose wish for evil is parent to the thought that it will come, with anxiety as to the political results of any untoward ending to her personal illness. Anxiety is the word to use also as regards the public feeling on the subject of the approach of the eastern plague, cholera, to the western seaboard of Europe. While the accounts of the progress of the plague in Russia were unsatisfactory, as many as ihree thousand cases having occurred in the city of Moscow alone, the uneasiness in England was increased by the occurrence of cases in Berlin, and of the reports of cases in those sea-port towns of the continent with which such ports as London, Hull, and Leith — each of them favorable fields for the spread of epidemics — are in most direct communication. Though the experience of the last visitation of cholera to England does not favor the belief that the epidemic is much restricted by the seasons, the hope was entertained that, as the autumn advanced, the malady might die out before it reached the shores of the mother country. So far, the season was not one favorable to its extension, while it is satisfactory to notice that it was especially favorable to the harvest, though the crop of wheat to be gathered was comparatively deficient. An easy money market, with colonial securities in demand, and a still improving market for the staple colonial product, wool, are the other satisfactory features of the condition of thiugs at Home ; and on the Continent, which during the previous autumn was so convulsed by the outbreak of war, there are atlea^t no superficial indications of the disturbance of the existing civil and international

peace. The younger branches of royal and imperial families were abroad on their travels, England having a plethora of such visitors, and the reported meeting of the Emperors of Germany and Austria, though somewhat enigmatical as to its purpose, is understood to have resulted in some improved understanding between the great imperial powers of Europe ; while in France the election of M. Thiers to the Presidency of the Republic, the continued liquidation of the ■war indemnity to Germany, and the measures taken for the repression of any movement for the liberation of Alsace and Lorraine are accepted as so many steps in the direction of the people maintaining order aoriong themselves, and good faith with the Power to whom they have still to pay the penalties of war. Colonial questions of very various kind seemed to occupy some share of public attention, and in the newspapers which are printed chiefly for colonial circulation are coutained some hundreds of items of political,, trade, or peisonal gossip, which will be read by colonists with interest, and, in some instances, with sorrow. Especially in Victoria, and in those parts of other colonies which he has visited, will be read with sorrow one personal item — the reported death by suicide of Mr Walter Montgomery ; and another death, under melancholy circumstances, of a recent visitor to the colonies is that of Mr Shafto Robertson, who met with an accidental death on his way to India. The disaster to the troopship Megrera, of which we gife some particulars in another column, was an event heard of in England before the intelligence bad reached the colonies, and in the interval between the news of its occurrence and the departure of the mail, there was a renewal of those lively discussions which had been raised by the loss of the ship Captain and by the accident to the Agincourt, and which had been made the occasion of so many severe animadversions upon our naval administrators. Into the wreck of the steamer Queen of the Thames, it seems that any further official inquiry was again objected to, as it was at the Cape, but the question is not closed, it being the inten'ion of the consignees to contest what probably would never have been questioned had the disaster been more serious than it was — the legality of the sale of the wreck and cargo — a step which, it is assumed, will lead, to a close investigation of the conduct of Captain M'Donald or of others implicated. While the Agents-General of other colonies have, at the meetings of colonial societies and other gatherings, been making more or less prominent public appearance, our own AgentGeneral, Dr Featherston, has arrived safely in London, to take his part with them in representing and promoting colonial interests ; and if the people of Wellington maintain, as they no doubt do, a personal and peculiar interest in the welfare of their former Superintendent, they will certainly be gratified by the assurance given by the "Anglo-Australian in London" who gossips through the columns of the " European Mail." that Dr Featherston is " looking stouter" than when he was in England last, that he "seems in excellent health," and that " everybody is delighted at his advent."