The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-13 00:00:00

SCOTTISII REFORMATION SOCIETY.

A large meeting in connection with this society was
held in the large hall of the City Terminus Hotel,
Cannon•street, under the presidency of the Earl of Hat'.
rowby. The Rev. G. Badenock read an abstract from the
report, which said that the efforts of the society in London
during the past year have been very widely extended.
At least 1,000 young men have come under
instruction in the several classes which have been
conducted by the Rev. R. Maguire, the Rev.
J. Ormiston, and others. Protestants classes
have also been held at Hull, Beverley, Plymouth,
Sheffield, Bristol, Cheltenham, Bath, Eastbourne,
New Maldon and Coombe, Stourbridge, Bury
St. Edmunds, Southsea, and Carlisle. The
results of these classes are thus stated :—Above
2,000 young men and women—a larger number than
are attending any single college in the kingdom—have
come under the system of instruction during the year.
The society will not rest satisfied—if funds are only placed
at their disposal—till they see these classes established in
every town. The chairman said it was essential to make
the people acquainted with the differences between
Romanism and Protestantism, and this information Was
given by the Scottish Reformation Society.

SHOEBURYNESS EXPERIMENTS.—The first prac-
tical trials of some of the new projectiles for the Indian
bronze field guns were made on Wednesday at Shoebury-
ness. Those tried were 9-pounder common, segment,
Boxer's Shrapnel, and double common shells. Fired
against a wooden house the shells passed through the walls
and burst inside with great destruction ; fired against
earthworks in the open very few of the dummies repro.
senting troops placed in them were hit, thus showing the
value of such works in actual warfare.

THE CASE OF MADAME RACIIEL.—It is under-
stood that an application will be made to the Home Secre-
tary for a commutation of the sentence of five years' penal
servitude passed on Madame Rachel, now that the Court
of Queen's Bench has given judgment in favour of the
Crown on the writ of error obtained on her behalf. Under
the Bail in Error Act, by virtue of which the defendant
was some time at liberty, it is provided that the time a,
defendant is at large on bail shall be added to the
imprisonment on the court affirming the judgment ,
Madame Rachel will return to Millbank.
THE MAYOR OF CORK DISABILITY BILL.—It iS
said that had the House of Commons proceeded on Tues.
day to hear evidence in support of the preamble of the
O'Sullivan Disability Bill, and had the Attorney-General
for Ireland relied upon the speech of the Mayor of Cork
at the Warren and Costello supper solely, the case for the
Crown must have broken down, by reason of the absence
of the only witness who could have, from his shorthand
notes, proved the ipsiainut rcrba used by the Mayor on that
occasion. At the banquet or supper referred to there
were but two newspaper reporters present, and of these
the gentleman in question alone took a verbatim note of
the particular expressions of the Mayor which have mid°
so much noise during the past fortnight, and afterwards
dictated it to his fellow pressmen, in whose paper, the
Cork Exainirer, the report of the proceedings alone ap-
peared. The omission of the report from the Cork Herold,
whose representative took the note of the Mayor's obser-
vations, would have been explained at the bar of the
House in a way corroborative of the remarks of
Mr. Maguire, M.P, on Tuesday, with respect to
the itnmateriality of some after-dinner speeches. When
the reporter of ,the Herald submitted his report to his
editor and proprietor, the latter, having read the now
well-known words of the Mayor, interrogated the gentle-
man of his staff touching the amount of exhiliration of
spirits evinced by the chief actors in the farewell festivity
to the Fenian convicts during the delivery of the speeches.
The res Ult off; lie..replies given by the reporter was the
immediate consignment of the report to the proverbial
editorial waste-paper basket; and thus, but for the inter-
change of courtesies between members of the press, the
world would never have heard of the after-supper siieech
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91 tile :40,379r PO.rlt_ I