The Sun.
London, England, 1869-12-14 00:00:00

niE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 14, 1869

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS.

GOVERNMENT MOVEMENTS.

Three more Cabinet councils are announced fol

this week—to-day, Thursday, and Friday. The
last gathering of Ministers was held without the
assistance of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who wa:
absent, together with two other members of the
Cabinet. Mr. Chichester Fortescue will, however,
be present at the discussion to-day. A
change of personnel is announced. Mr. Ralph
R. W. Lingen, Secretary of the Educa-
tion Office, -has been appointed Permanent
Under Secretary of the Treasury, in the place of
the Right Hon. George Alexander Hamilton,
who was last session created one of the three commis-
sioners under the Irish Church Act. Mr. Hamilton
made a remarkably good Treasury official. His suc-
cessor in due course should have been Mr. William
Henry Stephenson, Chairman of the Commissioners
of Inland Revenue ; but Mr. Stephenson's experience
and services in his present position, says the Telegraph.,
are so valuable, that he retains it, "to the decided
advantage of the public administration." It is to be

loped that the ddyantage will be equally great to
limself.

PRINCE LEOPOLD.

His Royal Highness Prince Leopold is still seri-
ously ill—so ill that the Queen has had to postpone
an arranged journey to the Isle of Wight. Ho has
the doctors continually in attendance upon him at
Windsor; and they Five such little hope of his imme-
diate recovery that it seems probable that the Queen
will spend her Christmas in the Castle instead of at
Osborne.

urging? tne necessity of making a better commercial
bargain with France—a rather naive suggestion, con-
sidering that a strong party in that country is agitating
furiously for annulling the bargain which already
exists. At the last meeting of the Chamber it was
complained that several wools were excluded from
France by a duty which was virtually, pro-
hibitive. On one yarn the duty was three-fourths
of the cost of spinning. Another—in which
Bradford could do an enormous business with
France—is shut out by an impost amounting to four-
fifths of the spinning cost. The chairman is full of hope
that there will shortly be an amendment. He had,
he said, been speaking to several Frenchmen on this
question, and he believed from his conversation with
them that the trade of the two countries was distinctly
separate ; that the French would, in the long run,
go entirely into the short wool or fine wool adapted
to their mules, and that the throstle spinning would
most probably rest in England. For the present the
chairman may rest assured that the manufacturing
interests in France will give the Government trouble
enough to keep up the concessions it has already
made.

fray, and made several arrests. Another disturbance was
threatened, but averted by a display of military force.
The Internal Revenue collector, escorted by several hun-
dred troops, made a sudden descent upon the fifth ward
in Brooklyn, for the purpose of seizing illicit distilleries.
The locality was known to be a riotous one, so sufficient
force was employed to overawe the disaffected. Several
thousand dollars' worth of property was seized, and
although threats were freely used, no violence was at-
tempted.