The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-26 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH • 26, 1861.

NEW THEATRE-ROYAL, ADELPHI.-
Sole Proprietor and Manager, Mr. B. Webster.
Novel Attraction for the Passion Week. --ITO-NIGHT
( Tuesday), and every evening during the Week (Friday ex-
cepted), the celebrated Italian Illusionist Chevalier ANTO-
NIO POLETTI, in his extraordinary and wonderful enter-
tainment of NATURAL and CH YMICAL MAGIC; and
Pell's (the Original Bones) Ethiopian Minstrels. Doors open
at half-past Six, commence at Seven. Box-office open To-
morrow (Wednesday), Thursday, and Saturday, from 10 to 5.
No charge for booking.

ADELPHI, NEW THEATRE-ROYAL.
Sole Proprietor and Manager, Mr. Benj. Webster.
On EASTER MONDAY, a new drama, MAGLIORE,
PRESTIDIGITA/ OR. Messrs. B. Webster, J. L. Toole,
D. Fisher, &c.; Miss K. Kelly, Miss El. Simms, &c.
After which, OUR FEMALE AMERICAN COUSIN.
Miss Julia Daly.
Doors open at halt past 6—Commense at 7.

CANTERBURY-HAL L CONCERTS !!!
Westminster-road.
Proprietor ........C. Morton.
A. Grand Selection from Verdi's new Opera,
IL CORSARO,

(This opera has never been produced in this or any other
country, except at these Concerts), having met with that de-
cided success which charactise; the most popular works of
this great Master, will be performed EVERY EVENING ;
together with a Selection from LA FIGLIA DEL REGGI-
siENTO, by Donizetti,
principal Artistes—Misr Russell, Madame Maria, Miss
Tyrrell, Mr. H. Herbert, Signor Tivoli, H. Drummond, and
c. W. Bernard. Director, Mr. F. Jonghmans.
The Comic Department comprises Messrs. E. Marshall, A.
B. Hollingsworth, J. Blanchard, F. Bell, W. H. Welland, and
the Brothers Conrad.
John Martin's Three celebrated Pictures will remain on
view a short time longer in the Fine Arts Gallery of the
Establishment.

TH E OXFOR D,
No. 6, OXFORD-STREET.
Madame Parepa, Miss Russell, Madame Marietta, and Miss
Toole ; Mr. Swift, Mr. George Genge, Mr. Charles Greville,
and Mr. Santley ; Ikliss Roams Collins (the celebrated Vio-
liniste), and Mr. Levy, in addition to a host of talent, will
appear at
THE GRAND INAUGURATION CONCERT
THITHE OXFORD, 8, Oxford-S EVENING (TITESDAY),strea Met. rch 28

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
TRU Des Morning, lh. 30m.—Afternoen, lh. 52m.
To-mowsow.-Morning, 2h. 14m.—Afternoon, 2h. 20m.

TSB WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, MARCH 26, 1161.
THERMOMETER, IN TYE SHAD).
68—highest knee noon yesterday.
44—lowest this morning and during the night.
58—this day at noon.

Beßmangu-29.70.
WiND--South.Wasterly—light ; with cloudy weather.

LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1861.

To-day we have before us the instrument which
defines the mode in which one of the greatest social
and political changes of modern Europe is to be
effected. It is a change in what is now called
Europe, but the country and the inhabitants are,
as they were in ancient times, Asiatic rather than
European, and the manifesto or decree of the CZAR
has in it quite as much of the Tartar as of the
Western character. Allowing for the effect of
contact with a higher civilisation, and the improved
education of the Czars themselves, since the time of
PETER THE GREAT, we may trace in this remark-
able document the hand of the divinely appointed
Ruler of the people, their chief Priest as well as
their King, their Father as well as their Monarch,
in short all that a Russian peasant understands by
his customary cry of—" GOD and the CZAR."

The institution, whose end is now commenced,
and which is, at most, not to outlive two years, is by
no means so ancient an institution as some imagine.
It was originated in 1599, only, therefore, about
two hundred and sixty years ago, by the usurper
BORIS GODUNOFF, and its original intent seems to
have been to restrain the wandering habits of the
people, to make them amenable to regular Govern-
ment, to induce them to commence habits of civili-
zation, and perhaps as much as anything to make
it possible to levy taxes on them, and to raise sol-
diers from among them. It was not a European
but an Asiatic feudalism. The right in the soil was
held to be with the nobles, and the peasants were
settled in localities, in which they had to pay
to their chief three days' labour in
the week, for the right to cultivate
their share of the village or communal soil, the
other three days for themselves. This was the
simple origin, it would appear, of all the oppressive
usages which the nobles have for nearly three
hundred years engrafted upon it. Russian serf-
dom has not been in many respects so bad as
American slavery ; on his own land the serf was a
sort of freeman, and his master could not sell his
children or separate husband and wife; but he
could send him into the army, or vex him by fixing
days for service inconvenient to him ; or if he were
in a city, and thriving as a tradesman, could order
him home at once to his village and to agricultural
service ; and in numberless ways he had acquired
a power to make his life intolerable to him, if dis-
posed to tyranny. At this moment, however, the
strange fact is, that while Anglo-Saxon Republicans
in America are seceding and recombining in order
to maintain a far worse system of slavery than that
of Russia, the despotic GzAR is doing his utmost to
strike the fetters off his faithful and devoted

peasants.
And ALEXANDER 11. will do it too. Some of us
may feel a little disappointed not to see in the Im-
perial manifesto an immediate freedom conferred
on the serfs ; but besides that we ought to call to
mind our own West India apprenticeship, we
cannot, with our imperfect acquaintance with the
details of Russian peasant life and relations, take
upon us to pronounce that the CZAR has not adopted
the best course after all. We may be confident that
he is sincere ; the conduct of the House of
RoMANOFF towards its own serfs proves that. We
may be sure, too, that he is " master of the situa-
tion." The nobles dare not resist him. They dare
not resort to the good old Russian substitute for
dissolving Parliament, the assassination of their
EMPEROR ; it would, they know, and indeed say,
e the signal for a universal massacre
of their order ; they are but about 100,000
among forty millions of serfs, who would
certainly take a bloody revenge for the mur-
,sler of their protector. Hence, though they
hive submitted with an ill grace, and tried every
obstructive and delaying measure which did not
appea r like direct opposition, and which would
not cra'ate a rebellion, they have never dared to
refuse oi)edience to the Im •
peral will. The pea-
sants on th.oir part have waited wi •
th exemplary
patience, knoc'ing that they end the CZAR had
the nobles securo: and helpless between them, and
that the final res,,,at could not be long delayed.
It is not a little striking to us Westerns to
notice the religious as well as paternal style of
this remarkable his torical document. The CZAR
speaks of himself as he common father
01 all, and of dhe nobles as dwelling

originally in affectionate patriarchal rela-
tions with their peasantry ; and he laments
that, in the course of years, " The simplicity of
morals diminished as the diversity of the mutual
relations became complicated, as the paternal cha-
racter of the relations between the proprietors and
the peasants became weakened, and, moreover, as
the seigneurial authority fell sometimes into hands
exclusively occupied with their personal interests,
those bonds of mutual good will slackened, and a
wide opening was made for an arbitrary sway which
weighed upon the peasants, was unfavourable to
their welfare, and made them indifferent to all
progress under the conditions of their existence."
He commends, however, the present nobles
of the Empire for what they certainly
well knew to be no merit of theirs —he,
on his part, " came to the conviction that the work
of a serious improvement of the condition of the
peasants was a sacred inheritance bequeathed to us
by our ancestors—a mission which, in the course of
events, Divine Providence called upon us to fulfil."
And then, turning to the nobles, he adds :—" We
also count upon the generous devotion of our
faithful nobility, and we are happy to testify to that
body the gratitude it has deserved from us, as well
as from the country, for the disinterested support
it has given to the accomplishment of our designs.
Russia will not forget that the nobility, acting
solely upon its respect for the dignity of man and
its love for its neighbour, has spontaneously
renounced rights given to it by serfdom actually
abolished, and laid the foundation of a new future,
which is thrown open to the peasants."
Though not easy for us to appreciate the precise
bearing and probable working of all the arrange-
ments, this much is quite clear,—the peasant will
for two years remain liable to the obligations of the
old regime ; though we know from our own ex-
perience in the West Indies that their masters may
be glad to commute sooner an exceptional position
unpleasant to both parties. A certain portion of
his land he is to have as necessary to his main-
tenance, and for the purchase of the remainder he
may arrange with his landlord ; a fixed rent is to
be paid, if the landlord can get it from a person
who is not a tenant at will. And for the
settlement of all disputes on terms and
arrangements between peasants and landlords,
special courts are to be extensively created.
Government is to aid with loans for the purchase
of the property, but how the vast amount requisite
for the conversion of the land into the property of
the peasants, needy too, as so many of the nobles
are, and unable to live without fair payment, it is
difficult to understand.
We must, however, hail the measure as one of
the best omen. It will render war impossible for
Russia till the arrangements are settled—when the
peasants become small freeholders or copyholders,
then time will be too valuable in a country posses-
sing so much spare land, to be wasted in war.
A middle class will also arise, and Czars may be-
come in time the fathers of domestic industry and
progress, rather than the domineering plagues of
Eastern Europe.

It will be a fearful calamity if London is again
to witness a strike among the building operatives.
Already there are serious threatenings of it. But,
GOD grant that these ominous tokens of an appa-
rently oncoming evil may be speedily and utterly dis-
sipated ! It is doubly alarming because the thou-
sands upon thousands of workmen in this branch
of trade have barely as yet begun to recover from
the disastrous consequences brought upon them-
selves last year by an unequal, it might even be
termed a suicidal, struggle of a precisely similar
character. But it should besides this be borne in
especial recollection, before it may turn out to be
too late, that between the past strike, the dreadful
strike of 1860, and the seemingly future strike,
apparently in some points of view the inevitable
strike of 1861, there has befallen these unfortunate
bricklayers, these hodbearers, these toiling Israelites
among the masterful Egyptians by whom they are
employed, another and a very severe trial, for which,
however, they themselves are in no way respon-
sible—an ordeal allotted to them by an inscrutable
dispensation of Divine Providence. Midway between
the bygone summer of 1860 and the approaching
summer of 1861, there came that severe and length-
ened wintry season, which necessitated the inter-
ruption, for so long a period, of all kinds of build-
ing operations, throwing out of employment the
very men who most needed work, and that, more-
over, at the precise period when they most urgently
required it, both by reason of the severity of the
weather and of the calamitous prolongation of the
then recent idleness to which they had, during so
considerable a portion of 1860, been voluntarily
subjected. It must be quite manifest to any one,
upon an instant's reflection, that another strike
coming now so soon after its lamentable predecessor,
(that preceding strike having been, in its turn,
almost immediately followed by a frost that in
London alone threw hundreds of thousands of the
industrious population upon the charity of their
fellow-creatures), must prove, should it most lament-
ably come to pass, in spite of every endeavour to
prevent its appalling apparition—must prove, in
that deplorable contingency, disastrous beyond all
reasonable calculation.

The sufferings caused by the " turn-out" in
1860 are surely not yet forgotten. They will
hardly be forgotten for years to come by the
sufferers themselves. They still live vividly enough
in the recollection of all amongst us who looked upon
them as sympathising spectators, as spectators
struggling—how inadequately, it is woeful yet, to
this moment, to have in remembrance !—struggling,
each in his own way, as sympathising spectators
to minister some mite, some drop, some atom of
relief or comfort to those who were being sacrificed
to the Moloch Conspiracy.

The sufferings again, the yet more recently and
yet more wide-spread sufferings, consequent upon
the severity of the last winter and its long con-
tinuance as a preventative of labour, cannot in
their turn have in any way faded out of the
memory of the mass of the population. It was,
too, visible all through that death-dealing frost,
to be lost sight of, or to be regarded by
anyone as a matter of uncertainty. It
stalked howling through the streets, day
after day, in the form of clusters of working-men,
fathers of families most of them, pleading for a dole
of charity from the passers by. It besieged in
hungry crowds the offices of the• police magi-
strates, where relief in kind was distributed
tonumerous applicants as from the Conventual grille
of the Middle Ages, or, in later times, from the
buttery hatch of the Old English country gentle-
man. At this moment we do verily believe that a
bonfire of really terrible dimensions (remembering
the frightful significance of each little pasteboard
flake composing it !) might be made in one of the
public places of this capital, a huge and most
melancholy bonfire, composed entirely of the pawn-
tickets for poor furniture and poorer clothing not yet
redeemed from those readily accessible bankers and 1
usurers of the masses, pawn-tickets obtained for the
bare necessities of existence, for the daily crust and
the nightly garret-roof—by reason, first of all of
1 that accursed strike of 1860, and secondly, and,
41481 how soon afterwards, of that Wintry

season that has but just now terminated.
Yet already, hard upon the heels of these redupli-
cated calamities, come these sinister forebodings
that in the summer of 1861 the strike of 1860 will
be repeated. It is scarcely credible that men, to
their own grievous detriment, and to the mental
grief and bodily anguish of their wives and children,
should thus obdurately persist in acting in a manner
so miserably insensate, Why, the strike of last year
—which at its close, recollect, proved to have been
utterly abortive, realising none of the objects for the
attainment of which it was rashly originated—why,
that strike oflast year was so visibly evil in its effects,
was so glaringly pernicious and destructive, that it
absolutely told its tale upon the periodical returns
of the Bills of Mortality. True, that throughout the
mournful history of that terrible strike, the opera-
tives who ceased labour, the operatives who were
the first and the most grievous of all the sufferers
from it, evidenced, from first to last, the noblest
capacity for endurance, the most affecting calm—(a
calm stoical, however, in its stubbornness, rather
purely gliristian, seeing that it was, so to speak,
wilfully self-necessitated)—the most affecting calm
under a world of accumulated privations. Yet all
these were virtues born out of wrong—
virtues utterly thrown away and lost
fruitless of any good whatever, for
they result, as we all know, in nothing but death,
disease, and wretchedness.

Bearing in mind, moreover, that latterly there
has been a distinct conciliatory advance made by

the masters to the workmen with a view to the recon-
ciliation of these long existing differences—here
surely is afforded to both the very opportunity for
the effectual prevention of the recurrence of these
most miserable strikes, the very opportunity (for
their effectual, and we will hope, permanent pre-
vention) which by all those who like ourselves are
merely looking on at the disputants, as it were,
from without, could most eagerly have been desi-
derated, The advance which is understood to have
been now made by an intelligent cluster of the em-
ployers is one simply to the effect that by paying the
labourer henceforth by the hour instead of as
hitherto by the day, the bone, as one may say,
would be taken out of the wrist of each noisy leader
of the nine hours' movement. Instead of paying
the workmen as hitherto by the day—a system
yielding about 335. a week to the better class of
mechanics, and about a pound sterling per week to
the ordinary day labourer (pay yielding remu-
neration at the rate of 61d. an hour to the former,
and 4d. an hour to the latter, that is, to the
ordinary day labourer) instead of paying

them thus, it is suggested that the employers
should remunerate the employed by the hour, thus
placing the time of the employed more at his own
disposal and apportionment. It is proposed more-
over that while paying the skilled mechanic by
the hour his pay should be set down, not at the
rate of std. per hour, but at the rate of 7d.—the
day labourer still receiving his 4d. What may be
thought eventually by the workmen of such a com-
promise as the one just now particularised, time
alone can demonstrate. Let us only trust most
earnestly that the concession made now by the
masters in offering any proposition at all with a
view to a reconciliation of all differences on the
question, and to the obliteration of all heartburn-
ings in the past, may be so far responded to by the

honest-hearted workmen themselves, that the latter
may evidence in return a reasonable amount of
moderation. A repetition of the strike may thus
most surely be guarded against ; and instead of our
beholding masters and men any longer idly and
periodically breaking straws together, while the
former are seriously injuring their fortunes, the
latter wearing their hearts out meanwhile in use-
less longings and cruelly self-inflicted privations—
we may hear at length that they have mutually
and wisely contented themselves in one way or
another with simply splitting the difference.

M. KOSSUTEI has certainly got money's worth for
his notes, even should he never be able to use one
of them. The affidavit we publish to-day will be
read not only by most Englishmen, to whom it will
be, notwithstanding its legal form, a positive treat,
but it will be read all over France, the French
EMPEROR having an interest rather in its publica-
tion than its suppression ; it will find its way all
through Germany itself, and not be easily kept out
of Austria proper, while the Italians will cordially
welcome it to their tongue and to their country.
Nothing can keep it out of Hungary, for Lord
JOHN RUSSELL will be unable to send her
MAJESTY'S steamer the Banshee, to carry off copies
of the affidavit, as she carried away the Hungarian
arms to Constantinople ; and the clear assertion of
undeniable truth by the ex-Governor of Hungary,
will brand FRANCIS JOSEPH not only as a usurper
in Hungary, but as a traitor to the hereditary
claimant of the throne, FERDINAND V. It is said,
indeed, that the present court of Austria are endea-
vouring by every means to get FERDINAND to abdi-
cate the throne of Hungary, as he did that of
Austria, that they cannot persuade him to do it,
and that they consequently keep him a virtual
prisoner. Quito certain it is, however, that if
KOSSUTH'S appointment to be Governor-President
of Hungary be passed by, there is no evasion of the
fact that FERDINAND V. is the living and rightful
King of Hungary. Our courts of law, appealed to
by the Emperor of AUSTRIA, will certainly thus far
do him justice; the pleadings will prove that
that he may be Emperor of what he calls Austria,
but that he is not King of Hungary. The court
itself would almost seem, however reluctantly, to be
obliged to enter into the inquiry. How can it sus-
tain a demand from the King of Hnngary, unless
the plaintiff can prove that he is really King ?

We shall wait with some interest to see what Sir
HUGH CAIRNS' client will have to say to all this.
His counsel, it will be remembered, found this
reply so puzzling that he had to apply for an ex-
tension of time to put in his rejoinder ; what ability
can do for Count APPONYI and his Master, Sir
HUGH CAIRNS will assuredly do ; but we
do not see how he can turn a usurper into a King,
that King being yet living in the dominions of the
usurper himself ; and his subjects being unanimous
in asserting that he is still their King.
M. Koss= proves, indeed, that he is himself
still in the position to which he was elevated by the
Diet, and the duties of which he solemnly
swore to fulfil. That if FRANCIS JOSEPH
were King of HUNGARY he would have
no power to issue notes ; that hs is the only person
authorised to issue them ; that the Royal Arms
spoken of by the plaintiff do not exist in Hun-
gary ; that the use of the emblem, so called by the
plaintiff is the right of every Hungarian, and spe-
cially of the nobles, to which class KOSSUTH
belongs ; that the notes are in no sense " spurious
notes" being only what they profess to be, and
imitations of no other notes in existence ; and
further, that he had not attempted, and did not
intend to attempt, the introduction of these notes
into Hungary while the present system of forcible
dominion existed there. He explains also the
purpose for which he wanted them, which was to
do justice to the persons who suffered by the
Austrian confiscation of the Hungarian notes of
1849, and its shameless robbery of the national bul-
lion from the Hungarian Treasury on which that

circulation was based. The answer appears to be
superabundantly complete on all points, and we
do not wonder that, on behalf of his client, Sir
HUGH CAIRNS asked for time. We hope he
will get nothing else for him.

The Marquis and Marchioness of Chateaurenard
have left Wilton-crescent, and taken up their residence at
Albert-rate House.

Earl. Brownlow has left town to join Lady Marian
Alford at Rome.

The Countess of Antrim was safely delivered of
a son on the 22d inst., at Glenarm Castle, Ireland.
Viscountess Palmerston will have an assembly
on Saturday, the 13th of April, at Cambridge House.

Lord and Lady Herbert have left Belgrave-
square, for Wilton House, near Salisbury, for three weeks.
Their Serene Highnesses Prince Frederic of
Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg and Prince Victor of
Hohenlohe -Langenburg arrived at Windsor Castle on Sun-
day night.

The Archbishop of York has left Claridge's Hotel
for the Archiepiscopal Palace, York.
The Duchess of Leeds and Miss Lane Fox are
passing a few weeks at St. Leonard's-on-Sea.

The Marquis of Exeter has arrived at Claridge's
H otel from Burghley House, Stamford.

Sir Henry and the Hon. Lady Mildmay have
arrived at their house in Eaton-place, from Dogmerslield
Park, Hants.

The Right Hon. R. A. C. and Lady Mary
Hamilton have arrived at Farrance's Hotel, from Lincoln-
shire.

The Hon. George and Mrs. Barrington have
arrived at their residence in Hertford-street, from visiting
Viscount and Viscountess Barrington at Beckett House,
Berks.

Lord and Lady Rokeby leave town on Thursday
for Hazelwood House, Hefts, for the Easter holidays.

Lord and Lady Foley have left Grosvenor-square
for Worksop Manor, Notts.

Lord Courtenay has arrived at the Hotel Bristol,
Paris, from a tour in Algeria.

Mr. and Mrs. Barton and family have left
Claridge's Hotel for Paris.

Mr. and Mrs. Dudley C. Majoribanks have
arrived at the Queen's Hotel, Upper Norwood.
THE LATE DUCHESS OF KENT.—COWES, March
25, 1861.—Out of respect to the memory of her late Royal
Highness the Duchess of Kent, the inhabitants of Cowes
closed their shutters during the day of the funeral, the flags
on shore and afloat were hosted half-mast high—the Royal
Standard and the other flags at the R. Y. S. Castle were
also at half-mast, and orders were given for the guns to be
fired minutely from the R. Y. S. battery ; but a letter was
received from Dr. Davids, stating that the Rev. Mr. Hughes
was so dangerously ill that the firing of the cannons might
cause his death, they were, therefore, not discharged. The
rev. gentleman was doing duty for the Rev. J. B. Atkin-
son, at the Old Church, at West Cowes, on Sunday even-
ing, when, in the middle of his sermon, to the display of
his eongregation, he was seized with paralysis ; he became
almost inaudible, his sermon was suddenly brought to a
close, and it required the assistance of Dr. Gibson and one
of the churchwardens to remove him from the pulpit.

THE NEW ACT ON BANK OF ENGLAND PAYMENTS.
—Yesterday, the act which received the Royal assent on
Friday, was issued respecting certain payments to and from
the Bank of England in relation to the National Debt. The
primary object of the Act is to reduce the scale of allowance
to the Bank for managing the public debt as much as
£40,000 a-year. The new allowance will commence from
the sth of April next, the commencement of the financial
year. Besides, a new regulation as to the balances on the
dividend account, there is an important alteration with re-
gard to the transfer of stocks and annuities, including the
East India stock. The provision recites that the closing of
the transfer books before the half-yearly payments has
caused great inconvenience " by reason of the stock so
transferred carrying the right to the current half-year." It
is considered desirable to increase the facilities of transfer,
and the act provides that the books may be closed on any
day in the month preceding that on which the dividends are
payable, and the proprietor of the stock shall be entitled
to the then current half-year's dividend, and the person
to whom the transfer is made after the closing of the
books shall not be entitled to the then current half-year's
dividend on such stock. It is further provided that the
period for which the books are closed shall not exceed 15
days.
SETTLEMENT OF THE BATH STRIKE.—The differ-
ences between, the operative masons and their employers
have been settled, and on Monday the men resumed work.
During the last few days deputations from the employers
and employed have met several times to discuss the points
at issue. The result of their conferences was a recommen-

dation to their respective bodies of the following arrange-
ment, to which both parties have agreed :—The employers
to give their men an immediate advance of 4d. per day, and
to allow them to leave work at four o'clock on Saturdays ;
and the men, on their part, to promise to make no further
demand within 12 months from the present time. Either
party must give six months' notice of any intention to
make any alteration in the rate of wages or the hours of
labour. The operatives have thus gained the whole of
their demands, and the only exaction made from them is
that they shall not strike again:Nithin a year, and that they
shall give six months' notice of any intention to strike.
The advance of wages already nade in several branches of
the building trade has induced the plasterers and painters
of this city to form a society, vith a view to the improve-
ment of their condition.
FRANCE AND ITALY.—Although England may
lend every succour to Piedmmt, the Government of that
country is, and will continue to be, the intimate and insepa-
rable ally of France. It is incompliance with the persis-
tent advice of Louis Napoleon that Piedmont displays the
most surprising activity in mgmenting her fleet. There
are at this moment constructing no fewer than eight frigates
and four corvettes in the doclyards of Genoa, Naples, and
Castellamare, where there we constantly employed more
than 5,000 shipwrights ; two iron plated frigates are also
now constructing near Toulon, on account of Piedmont,
and a contract has been ooncladed in France for two other
vessels of the same description. In a few days a project of
law will be presented by the Government to the Italian
Parliament, demanding a suolementary,credit of 30,000,000
of francs, exclusively destind for the construction of six
other frigates.
CURIOUS OMEN, OR COINCIDENCE.—On Wed-
nesday night, or rather Thuroday morning, at three o'clock,
the inhabitants of the metropolis were roused by repeated
strokes of the new great bellat Westminster, and most per-
sons supposed it was for a death in the Royal family. There
might have been about 20 slew strokes, when it ceased. It
proved, however, to be duo to some derangement of the
clock, for at four and five o'clock ten or twelve strokes were
struck instead of the proper number. On mentioning this in
the morning to a friend, wFo is deep in London antiquities
he observed, that there is an opinion in the City that any-
thing the matter with St. Paul's great bell is an omen of ill
Westminster bell. This was at eleven on
see this morning
on:noredtheaaxeLtße mil.otdylartenloil ftnaahg. I
lamented eilnyte; and he added, I hope the opinion will
d Duchess of Kent was considered in
the least danger, and as you are aware she expired in less
than 24 hours. Ido not pause to comment on this curious
coincidence, but to ask whether any one can give any fur-
ther particulars as to this opinion.—Correspondent in
" Notes and Queries."

ELECTION LAW AMENDMENT BILL.--The Cor-
rupt Practices Prevention Act of 1854 expires in August,
and Sir G. C. Lewis has therefore brought in a new bill
to be substituted for it, in the main renewing the existing
law, but 'embodying alterations suggested by the select
committee which considered the subject last year. Theelee-
tion auditors are not continued ; the scheme proved a failure ;
but all payments are to be made through an authorised
agent, and as the publication of election expenses affords
protection against illegal expenditure to candidates and
their friends really desirous to avoid it, an account is
to be rendered to the returning officer and published in a
local newspaper. The pecuniary penalty for bribery, treating,
or undue influence is reduced from £5O to £2O, and that for
accepting a bribe to £lO, and the clause requiring that the
penalty be sued for in the superior courts is omitted. The of-
fence of treating is extended to the corruptlyproviding enter-
tainment by a candidate for 1 crsons other than electors, with
a view to influencing the election, and the votes of all who
corruptly accept such entertainment and of voters paid for
furnishing it are to be void. No money is to be given to a
voter for travelling expenses. but conveyance may bo pro-
vided for him at county elections. The clause pro-
viding for payment of costs by the prosecutor on the
failure of an indictment for bribery is discontinued,
as not in accordance with the ordinary course of crimi-
nal law, and tending to inlispose any one from prose-
cuting. It is made a misdemeanour for a person em-
ployed by a candidate for the purposes of an election to
vote thereat. There are smite clauses for regulating legal
proceedings, and proceedings before election committees;
treating may be proved befoiv proving agency. A certificate
of indemnity given by COM/I issioners to a witness making a
true disclosure is to extend only to such prosecutions and
punishments as he was liable to at the time when he gave
his evidence. County polling districts may be altered onthe
petition of 50 voters. A commission of inquiry may be
issued on the joint-address of both houses, where a petition
alleging extensive bribery, treating., or other corrupt prac-
tices at any election is presented within a limited period
after the time for presenting election petitions. Ono re-
commendation of the committee is not adopted, the resolu-
tion carried by Mr. Ayrton by a majority of one, that any
person in the employ of another be at liberty to absent him-
self for the time necessary for the purpose of voting for the
place where he resides without being subject to any loss of
wages, or other penalty.

EXPLOSION AT HOUNSLOW POWDER MILLS.—A
working charge explosion took place at the Irowaslow
Powder Mills of Messrs. Curtis and Harvey on Saturday
evening, just previously to the oessatian of work. The r'-
port was unusually loud, Lut 43 the material was in a very
imperfect st4to t 4 damage done is unimpor4nt, and what
is far more satisfactory no person was in any way injurecll

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THE SUN.