The Press. — London, England, 1857-04-18 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS. It is impossible to acknowle Igo the mass of letters we receive Their insertion is often delayed owing to a press of matter, and when omitted, it is frequently from reasons quite lode• pendent of the merits of the communication. We cannot undertake to return communications of which we do not avail ourselves. Communications should always be legibly written, and on one side of the paper only. If long it increases the difficulty of finding apace for them. Whatever is intended for insertion mustbe authenticated by the name and address of the writer, not necessarily for publics- tiou, but as a guarantee of his good faith. Advertisements sent from the country must be accompanied by a remittance or a reference for payment in town. v r g+ LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1857. POSTSCRIPT. (By Electric Telegraph). PArets, April 17, Monsieur Mocgnard, Secretary to the Emperor, has addressed from the Tuileries a letter to the journals characterising the assertion in the Times of the refusal of Prince Napoleon to proceed to 'Coulon to receive his Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Constantine, as "purely inventive." DEFEAT OF TWO RUSSIAN COLUMNS BY THE CIRCASSIANS. A despatch from Constantinople, dated April 10, states : Towards the end of March the Circassians attacked and repulsed two strong Russian columns. The loss of the Circassians amounted to three hundred; the Russians seven hundred. Mehemet Bey is giving to Circassia a military organi• sation. _ . . The tribes of Daghestan have captured Fort Saliah and massacred the garrisou.;The garrisons of the neighbouring villages surrendered. A kind of Zollvereir. is pr. jected by the Government as a means of conciliating public opinion in the Principalities. A telegraphic despatch from Copenhagen, April 15, states :---, The Council of Ministers have this day unanimously adopted the treaty on the Sound dues. The Ministerial crisis is not yet at an end. Intelligence from Berlin to the 15th says that several journals propose to open a national sub• scription to pay the indemnity claimed by Prussia. They declare it to be certain that the required sum would be raised without delay. The Bund pro nounces against this idea, affirming that any pecu niary indemnity would be humiliating for Switzer land. Marshal Vaillant gave a grand banquet in Paris yesterday evening in honour of General Todtleben ; all the high military authorities present in the capital were invited to meet that eminent general. The Paris correspondent of the Times, second edition, writes:— Marshal Serrano had an interview on Wednesday with Count Walewski on the subject of the quarrel t etween Mexico and Spain. M. Walewskt is extremely desirous that this unfortunate affair should be amicably arranged, and is leaving nothing undone for that purpose. The Atrato steamer has arrived, with the West India mail, and 689,800 dollars on merchants' account. Jamaica was healthy. Mining intelligence favourable. Cholera at Demerara had disappeared. Trade was depressed. The advices from New Grenada state that the Government had refused to negotiate with the Minister sent by the United State to arrange the differences between the two republics. Letters from Nicaragua report that the ex- President Rivas had been assassinated. The Arago steamer has arrived, with two days' later intelligence from New York. No political news. The news from Mexico is to the effect that the difficulties between that :republic and Spain had been arranged, most of the demands made by the latter Government having been complied with. " A letter from London," says the Pays, " gives us details relative to the instructions given to Lord Elgin for his mission to China" ! He is to have the superior direction of all affairs in that part of the world, and for that purpose he is to receive full powers from the English Government, with whom alone he is to be in correspondence. He is to decide on the opportuneness of all warlike operations, and to Sx the time for commencing them. In case the authorities of the country should think fit to send propositions of arrange he endeavour to obtain the following conces old treaties are to be renewed and ports of China in place of five ; and, in THE PRESS. addition, English trading vessels are to have the right of putting in, from stress of weather or for repairs, to every point on the coast ; 2nd. England is to have, like Russia, a college at Pekin. The head of that establishment, which is to be composed of five members at least, is to be charged with all official relations with the Chinese Gavernment ; and 3rd. the English are to have military posts in all the towns in which they have consuls or agents. A piece of ground shall be conceded to them at Shanghai and another at Canton, on which to raise forts and form military establishments, the strength of which shall be fixed by common accord. Independently of these principal con• ditions, other secondary points are left t 3 the judgment of the English commissioner. The following bulletin of the health of the Queen was issued on Friday morning : "Buckingham Palace, April 17, 9 a.m. The Queen has had another Rood night. Her Majesty and the infant Princess continue well. CHARLES LOCOCK, ROBERT FERGUSON, M.D. JAMES CLARK, M.D. Dr. Locock, in honour of the safe. birth of the Royal Princess, has been raised by her Majesty to the rank of baronet. THE IRISH ELECTIONS. ( From our own Ccrrespondent.) DuBLINT, Thursday, April 10, 1857. OF all the victories achieved in Ireland, the trium phant return of Mr. Hamilton and Col. Taylor for the county of Dublin is the most signal and decisive. From first to last the Conservatives took the lead, kept it, and in racing parlance " won in a canter." The villa voters, whose support Sir C. Domville, with puerile folly, abjured and despised, have, in common with their brother electors, taught the flippant young baronet a lesson which we may hope will be a warn ing to him for life. The numbers polled on this occasion are very re. markable. At the last contest., there voted for Mr. Hamilton 1,948 ; for Colonel Taylor, 1,939 ; for Mr. Craven, 1,385 ; and for Mr. Letayne, 1,370. This was during the career of Lord Derby's Cabinet. With Castle influence and patronage arrayed against them, the Conservatives have come forward with a zeal and an alacrity which produced the following notable result :—Hamilton, 2,450 ; Taylor, 2,340 ; Domville, 1,645. Wicklow too has nobly and manfully done its duty. Mr. Hume has been elected by a majority of 540 over Mr. Monck, put forward by Lord Monek to avenge his signal expulsion from Portsmouth, and conciliate the Ministers into retaining his services as a Lord of the Treasury. . . In Antrim the defeat of the Palmerstonian is so complete as to reduce his candidature to a farce. There polled for Macartney and Pakenbam, the two Conservatives, 4,223 and 4,538, respectively ; and for Mr. O'Hara, 1,227 ! You will have observed that the recreant member for Down, Mr. Ker, a convert to Palmerstonism, was defeated by Colonel Forde, by more than 2,000 votes ! So much for political honesty and public virtue! Clare has selected Lord F. Conyngham and Mr. Calcutt, two nominally independent Oppositionists; and Tipperary has taken a similar course in the choice of The O'Donoghue and Mr. Waldron. A grand dinner was given to the " Dublin SiA," as they are called, last night. All the members were present, and were welcomed with exuberant enthusiasm. meat, he is to ens •ions —ht. The extended to eight 16161i1 THE ARMY IN INDIA. Our Indian expenditure is already some two millions above its revenue. The modern system of annexe tion is declared to pay ; bnt we find by the following extract from an Indian paper that our Indian army is unequal to the additional duties thus imposed upon its services, and that with an increasiug yearly deficit we must materially augment that army, or the safety of our Indian empire, it is declared, will be seriously compromised:— Our forces in this country are on a peace establishment, and we are not able to detach 20,000 men for service in foreign part•, with any degree of safety or propriety. The extent to which this presidency is denuded of troops is hardly credible. We may mention that in Bombay itself so small is the garrison that the accustomed guards at the pad•-office and the residences of the members of Council have had to be withdrawn. At Ahmedabad the police are doing garrison duty—while in Poonan, the head-quarters of the Mahratta country, we have less than 1,04)0 meu of all arms in place of 5,04)0, the usual and safe complement. We have never been contributors to alarm in this country, but we confess that there is danger—pressing danger—in this sudden withdrawal of the troops, absolutely necessary for our safety even in times of peace. Again, our army is altogether under-officered for the exigencies of war. At the present moment we can point to regiment after regiment with but three or four European officers doing duty with them. The 15th Regiment of Native Infantry, now in garrison, has bat three European officers with it; the 29th, in Belgaum, a like number ; and there are a few regiments with half a dozen Europeans present. There is temerity as well u timidity to be avoided, and if this war, to which SATURDAY, we are committed, is to last, the army must be augmented, and the proportion of European officers increased. Neither the one measure nor the other can be safely delayed any longer. THE NEW ARCTIC EXPEDITION. LADY FRANKLIN has resolved to despatch a final expedition to the Arctic Seas. The apathy of the British Government with regard to the attempt, and the unceremonious manner in which the Resolute upon her return home was stripped and laid up in ordinary, has given rise to much comment in the United States. When the Resolute was despatched to England, it was believed that. ready fitted as she was for active service, she would have been employed with any expedition about to sail. A gentleman holding a high position in New York, and the main promoter of the restoration of the Resolute to her Majesty the Queen, in a recent letter refers to the unexpected conduct of the Board of Admiralty. Ho writes : Whatever may have been our anxieties as to the search before the restoration of the Resolute to your country, we had then no reason to doubt but that your Government would meet half way the expectations and wishes of our people, by continuing her on a service to which she had already been consecrated. It is melancholy to think that men placed in the highest positions of authority and responsibi ity, beyond the influence, as one would believe, of personal motives, should so far belie themselves as to plead the " risk of life " as an excuse for discontinuing a search when the labours of their countrymen had just brought them to the very threshold of success. Surely, the Lords of the Admiralty must know that, excepting the supposed fate of the crews of the Erebus and Terror, there has not been a loss of life or limb consequent upon the climate or navigation of the Arctic Seas during the last thirty years. Why, then, bring forward that which is so glaringly untrue, as an excuse for the cruel abandonment of a sacred duty? This act of your Admiralty is as much a national disgrace as the recent inhuman decision of our Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. The poor unfor• tunate to whom God has given a coloured skin—no matter how slight the tinge —can never become a citizen of this free Republic ! If your Admiralty viewed humanity in the same light as the honourable judges of the Supreme Colin, there might be, under those conditions, some excuse for the abandonment of any of the survivors, and the records of the achievements and fate of the men whom they them selves sent out on a noble duty. NEWMARKET RACES. THE race for the Port Stakes, which has excited S 3 much attention and such heavy betting in the sporting world with respect to the relative merits of the two horses—Fazzoletto, owned by the Earl of Derby, and Brother to Bird on-the-Wing, owned by yesterday. The following is the return : PORT STASES. Fazzoletto Vandermeuliu Brother to Bird•on•the•Wiug A CORRESPONDENCE upon the subject of appointing only Welsh bishops in Wales, between the Rev. R. W. Morgan of Middleton, the Earl of Derby, and Lord John Russell, has been published. The noble earl and the noble lord, in reply to Mr. Morgan, both admit the desirability of the bishops in Wales beinr , acquainted with the Welsh language. The Earl of Derby observes : I do not think that the present state of affairs is such as to render it necessary or desirable that I should give any pledge as to the advice, which, if differently situated, I might tender to the Sovereign on the subject to which you refer. But I can have no hesitation in expressing my opinion that a knowledge of the Welsh language is a very important, if not an absolutely essential, qualification for the due discharge of the episcopal functions in those dioceses in which it is extensively spoken. AN EMIGRANT'S FIRST TASTE (:)}' SALT WATER IS Dot always agreeable. Four hundred and ninety eightemi grants left Liverpool on the 9th in the good ship Mar tin Luther, 1,241 tons for Quebec. Last Sunday, whilst in the chops of the Channel, the ship was caught in that heavy "nor•wester." At eight p.m., says the account, when under double reefed topsails and reefed foresail, the maintop-gallantmast was carried away. At five a.m. on Monday, when under close reefed maintopsail only, the fore and maintop masts were carried away close to the caps, taking with them the boatswain, John Westwood, of Dunfermline, Peter Branagan, and three other seamen, who were on the weather foretopsail yardarm endeavouring to secure the foretopsail which had broken adrift. They were all unfortunately drowned. In order to clear the wreck the officers and crew cut away the mainmast, which dragged the mizeurnast with it, and the ship thus became completely unmanageable. On Tuesday morning she was fast drifting to leeward before a heavy sea and north-west wind, and was only eighteen miles from Ushant, when she was providentially sighted by the Peninsular packet Tagus, which, after considerable danger to herself and damage to the lifeboat, succeeded about noon in rescuing her. The hull of the Martin Luther is in good condition, but in consequence of the heavy weather most of the berths were broken and knocked down, and the pas sengers have suffered severely. The ship is at present in Plymouth, waiting repairs.