The Press. — London, England, 1855-05-26 00:00:00

494 Foreign an 4 Colonial 4ntelligtnte. FRANCE. Lord Cowley on Tuesday presented to the Emperor addresses of congratulation on his recent escape from the corporations of Edinburgh, York, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, and Bradford. The Emperor has also received from Prince Stirbey, Hospodar of Wallachia, a private letter congratulating him upon his escape. The record of such a fact in the official part of the Moniteur is remarkable as a recognition ordinarily reserved for sovereign princes. The Duke de Cambaceres, grand master of cere monies, and the Marquis de Chaumont, the Emperor's chamberlain, have gone to Bordeaux to meet the young King of Portugal and the Duke of Oporto. General Canrohert is appointed a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. The Independance states that he has finally decided not to accept the corps d'armee lately commanded by General Pelissier, but will simply resume the command of the division he commanded at the Alma. HANOVER. The King issued an ordonnance on the nth annulling the Constitution as settled the sth Sep tember, 1848, and also the Provincial Electoral Law of the Ist August, 1850. The popular rights are diminished to the measure of the Constitution framed by the late King Ernest Augustus (Duke of Cumberland). The ordonnance states that the measure has been taken in obedience to the decree of the Federal Diet of the 12th April,lBss, requiring the Governments of Germany to bring the State Constitutions more into harmony with the monar chical principle. The King reserves the right of effecting further changes in the State Constitution. DENMARK. The ex-Ministers of Denmark who have been im peached, and who are to appear before the High Court of Justice of the Kingdom on the 4th of June, are six in number :—M. Ersted, President of the Council ; M. de Tillish, Minister of the Interior ; Gen. de Hansen, War; M. Bluhme, Foreign Affairs ; Admiral Steen Bill, Marine ; and M. de Scheel, Justice. They are accused, first, of having ordered, without having demanded the authorisation of the Diet, though it was sitting, various measures causing expenses not accorded by the laws of finance ; and, secondly, of having illegally solicited and obtained the royal sanction for the same mea sures, and having ordered the payment of other sums without legal authorisation. M. de Hansen is besides specially accused of having disposed of sums not allowed in the budgets of 1853 and 1854. The High Court of Justice has already been constituted, in accordance with Art. 72 of the Constitution. It consists of sixteen judges—namely, eight members of the Folksthing, and eight members of the Supreme Tribunal—all elected by the bodies to which they respectively belong. PIEDMONT. The Convents Suppression Bill was finally voted in the Sardinian Senate on the 22nd. The votes were -53 for, 42 against. The young Duke of Genoa, born on the 9th of January last, is dead. This is another affliction for the King, who has already experienced so many domestic losses of late. SPAIN. The Cortes on the 17th voted the seventh basis of the Constitution. The English Government approves of the conduct of Lord Howden in the affair of Seville, and his renal, it is announced, will not be insisted un by the Spanish Ministers. It is believed that the Mexican Government will consent to receive M. Antonio y Zayas as the repre sentative of Spain. A Madrid journal asserts that the Government is unable to pay the large prize of 50,000 duros (the duro is somewhat less than 51.) won in the last drawing of the lottery. TURKEY. Accounts from Constantinople state that the Pied montese troops continued to arrive in the Bosphorus, and to sail immediately for the Crimea. The recep tion given by the Sultan to Count Castelcicala was most gracious. Counts Cavour, Tecco, and Labor mida had been decorated with the Order of Medjidie. The Sultan hadl•eceived Mehemet Ali since his return from exile. The difficulties respecting the piercing the Isthmus of Suez have been overcome, and a finnan on the subject is expected. RUSSIA. Intelligence from St. Petersburg, of the 18th, states that Cronstadt has been declared in a state of siege. No person will be allowed to enter the place without the special permission of the governor. The instructions for the new levy of 12 men in 1,000 have been already expedited to all the go vernors of the western half of the empire. Neither of the four levies made by the late Emperor was so lillionnolimiNIEINNI••• THE PRESS. considerable as the present, even though the Jews are excepted, on the ground that they contributed 13 instead of 10 men in 1,000 last year. The Treasury is making enormous efforts to provide for the equip• ment of the new levies. Subscription-lists have been opened in various places ; and at Kursk, a M. Tschumischeff, a contractor, headed the list with a donation of 25,000 silver roubles. l'ors's Gazette of Berlin states, on the authority of travellers who have arrived from Russia, that the frequent levies of recruits for the army have much exasperated the people of Poland, whose feelings are more than ever hostile to the Russian Government. A convoy of recruits from the government of Wilna, who were proceeding to Warsaw, under a strong es cort of Cossacks, disarmed their guard, and then dispersed about the country. The Grenadier corps stationed at Warsaw received orders on the 11th to leave Poland immediately and in haste. Their known destination was Kieff, but it was not doubted that, arrived there, they would march further south. The two finest regiments of the Guards are ordered to Poland. _ _ Russia has profited by the troubles of the Chinese empire to effect an easy extension of her frontiers in Southern Siberia. Means have been found to induce four Mongol Khans, long subject to China, to ask that their lands may be annexed to the Russian empire. The Mongolians in question are miserable tribes, without agriculture, arts, or even towns, and well understand that they cannot hope to maintain a position of independence. Of course this request could not be refused, and the Khanates, late the possessions of China, are now annexed to the Czar's dominions. UNITED STATES. The royal mail steam-ship Africa arrived in the Mersey on Sunday. She sailed from Boston on the 9th inst., and Halifax on the 11th; and brought, besides the mails, 196 passengers, nearly 900,000 doll. and 6,0001. in specie, on freight. _ . The news is not important. _On the 7th 4,000 European emigrants arrived at New York. The prosecution instituted against Colonel Kenney has been abandoned. The 11th inst. was observed as a day of humilia tion in Nova Scotia on account of the war. The American cotton market was steady, with an upward tendency. AUSTRALIA. Some late intelligence from Australia has arrived since our last impress►on. The Ballarat correspon• dent of the Melbourne Argus states :—" New diggings have been commenced about two miles to the west ward of Wardy Yallock, which are said to have proved highly remunerative to the few engaged as yet on them. The sinking is to the depth of thirty or thirty-five feet, and the yield, in proportion to the population, averages as yet some twenty-five ounces pe► man. Some fresh impetus was much wanting to stimulate the poor and unsuccessful diggers, who cannot continue the expensive and deep sinking now in vogue at Ballarat." The writer of a letter dated " Castlemaine, Feb. 6," says :—" I have just had authentic and reliable infor►nation from Fryer's Creek of a most magnifi cent nugget, found on Chokem Flat, near Murderer's Flat ; it weighs 272 ounces of pure solid gold, and the gentleman describes it to be such as he never saw before ; it appears as if bea:en by the goldsmith. The holes adjoining that it was taken from are pay ing wonderfully well—four or five ounces to the tub, and more at times; there was a rush commenced there, and some fifty drays were flocking in to-day from Forest Creek and other neighbourhoods. IT is expected that before the 20th of next month every available man in the United Kingdom belong. ing to infantry regiments of the line will have em barked for the seat of war. AN EXTENSIVE BULLION ROBBERY was effected in a very mysterious manner, the property being in transitu from London to Paris. The crime was evi dently perpetrated by persons who were acquainted with the extent and the mode of the consignments. The gold, in bars and American coins, amounted to between 13,000/. and 14,0001. The bullion had been deposited in three boxes, which were separately con signed to Paris from the bullion brokers, Thomas, Bult, and Speilman, and were taken in the mail train of the South-Eastern Railway, which set off from London at half past eight o'clock on the evening of Tuesday, the 15th inst., to Folkestone, whence they were to be taken, via Boulogne and t he Northern Railway of France, to Paris. It was found that the three boxes—which were, when delivered in London, hooped and sealed—had been reopened and plun dered, and then re-hooped and re-sealed. The de predators left in one of the boxes between 6,0001. and 7,0001. worth of gold, as it is conjectured, because they had not materials at command to supply the deficiency, the place of the gold which they took being supplied by lead shot of equivalent weight. The fraud was not discovered until the arrival of the boxes in Paris. The French, as well as the English police, are engaged in the investigation of this robbery. SATURDAY, 6iltresponlitutt. METROPOLIS LOCAL MANAGEMENT BILL. TO THE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS." Sir,—ln a letter officially addressed to Lord Palmerston in 1853, and laid before Parliament, being as stated " in accordance with your own instruc tions," and from the engineer to her Majesty's Board of Works, after urging the dangerous state of the Thames, it is added that— A practice which poisoned the water supply and injured the channels of the river by the accession of so great a quantity of solid material might have been arrested in !inane by an energetic Minister of the Crown. Lord Palmerston, accepting the invitation, told the Lord Mayor, the Conservator of the Thames, at a civic banquet, that the translucid wave of the Thames " shone not like a broad mirror," and he hoped that the metropolitan members would aid him in transforming its present state of liquid mud and re storing its sparkling water (1) ; and when the question of enabling the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers to raise 200,0001. for the construction of new works was before the house, Lord Palmerston was recom mended to take up the question— As no man was more able to do so, and by applying his masculine mind to it complete the conception of some plan by which the metropolis might be relieved from the stigma attached to it. His lordship replied that— He perfectly agreed with those who said that nothing would be satisfactory until some general system of drain ing the metropolis should be decided upon, which should relieve the Thames from the ignominious duty of being the common sewer, instead of the ornament of London. He should consider it his duty to see that no works were undertaken which 'were not in the first place approved by those two eminent men whose names he had men tioned. (2) Sir Benjamin Hall suggested at the same time that— The Commissioners of Sewers should at once be directed to have a plan prepared, on which they should delineate their propositions, and that it should be put forth in such manner as to be accessible to the ratepayers. He was convinced that this would prove a great facility to the operations of the noble lord. Sir John Y. Shelley stated that he would, in so far as engineers were concerned, "prefer leaving the case in the hands of Mr. Stephenson." (2) The Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers there upon matured their scheme for the main drainage of the metropolis, and strongly urged its very prompt execution, at a cost of 1,050,0001., it being publicly stated that the five reports describing the proposed work "had been adopted, and a number ordered to be printed, and a copy sent to every parish '• " and that " they had been most carefully considered and unanimously approved and adopted by the Com • mittee." (2) At the commencement of the following session Lord Palmerston therefore informed the House of Commons that the Commissioners of Sewers had matured a plan. (3) This plan, which was also approved by the vestry of Marylebone on the 14th of February, 1854, is be fore Parliament by four distinct sessional papers of 1854, being returns made by the Metropolitan Com missioners of Sewers, from which the following are extracts : The Hackney Brook, or Northern High-Level Intercepting Sewer, is one of those urgent works for the immediate execu tion of which you have recently applied to Parliament for power to borrow money; nor can the importance of this sewer, in considering the drainage of the metropolis, be over estimated. (4 ) I beg to say that I entirely concur in that report. (5 ) I have to express my entire concurrence in the views conveyed in both these documents. (6) And of the southern scheme it is said : Now, looking to the fact that no real benefit can be de rived till the plan be fully carried out to the extent only as herein contemplated, and that the sooner it can be done the better, the question is can 750,0001. be raised forthwith to complete the arterial drainage.(7) And the Chairman subsequently wrote to Lord Palmerston as follows : The works in question are two. They comprehend, on the north side of the Thames, the Hackney Brook, to cost about 300,0001.; on the south the works now proposed con sist of two sewers uniting at Deptford Creek. The cost is estimated at about 750,0001. (8) And again, eight months afterwards, he states these "to be the works proposed by the Commis sioners to be accomplished within the next twelve months, if they be allowed to raise a further loan of 300,0001." The Commissioners, baying obtained these powers, and having succeeded in borrowing the money, first intended to proceed with the construction of the works, bat some of their body being about to retire (1) Mansion•house, July 23, 1853—(2) Hansard, Aug. 9, 1853 (3) Hansard, March 2, 1854—(4) Sessional Paper, 1854, No. 84, pp. 14.19—(5) Ib., p. 21—(6) Ib., p. 22—(7) Ib., p. 28—(8) Ib. No. 180, p. 162.