The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-31 00:00:00

- 111.1SW;LLAIVEQUS NEWS.

(Min: the A11,a16-Anierican Timms.)
A primitive three-penpy piece of• 1642, one of
;the earliest and rarest coins of New Englantli. has been
dug up .on'a street corner at Salem, MassachnEfetts.

A nclw manufact?ring enterprise at Providence
Is the :Rhode Lsland Building Block Company. These
blocks ire to be a SuliAlute for brick and stone: for build-
ing, ana Ire made bytiucorporating together by an Hu-
_
=rise- wisure andTchenrical pi:opysses lime and sand into
it substance as hard and cliirable as any stone. The blocks
-:11.3 three4iitnes the -sine of an ordinary bribk, ;and aro
turned out by the company's machine at the rate of 6,000
per day. By varying the' shape of the tnould orn.amental
blocks of ,the most elaborate pattern can be prdclucod.
e. Professoi F. H. Newhall, bf'Aliddleton, the for-
mer pastor of the Pynclidn,street church, who has
been: absent a year in . Europe, has returned to
Springfield, Massachusetts, very much improved in
health. Professor W. ".N. Rice, who has been his
companion in travelr will return about the middle of
September, and at once enter upon duties connected
with the chair of natural history at the Wesleyan
University. Mr. Rice spent the winter at Berlin, and at-
tended the lectures at the university there; and both pro-
fessors have been diligent in collecting curiosities and a
fu d of information concerning the old world as it is, and
as t was. .
_,_ he correspondent Qf , the,,Starylard says--" A.
groat haul of thieves, or supposed thieves, has been made
in Toronto. Detectives have arrested hip C. Moore and
his wife, D. Thompson and his wife, J. A. Morton and
his wife, Mrs. Sturges, and two or three other per-
sons. They are charged with the heavy robbery of the
Merchants' Union Express Company, on tho Hudson River
Railway, in New York, in May. Ono of them is an actor,
another proprietor of an hotel, a third a schoolmaster.
The Adams's Express Company has been robbed in Chi-
cago of $7,000. The intending thieves hired a room and
put up a card. After occupying the room two days they
received by express a package, purporting to contain a
small sum of money. While the messenger was in the
act of delivering this package he was seized by the
throat ; chloroform was placed under his nose ; ho was
beaten with an iron bar, and was finally robbed of all the
money in his possession."
General Harney was about to leave St. Louis
and the Upper Mississippi, and to complete arrangements
for removing the savages to the Northern reservations
The following despatch to the Democrat is dated St. Louis.
August 14 :—"Solomon City, Kansas.—Capt. Moody has
just arrived here, and reports that on Wednesday a band of
Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe Indians attacked the settle-
ment on Solomon River, fifty-miles north of here, killing
David Deaugardis and B. B. Bell, and mortally wounding
Mrs. Bell. The Indians also ravished two women on
Plum Creek, and carried off two little girls belonging to
Mr. A. A. Bell, living on Mulberry Creek. They alsc
killed a German and wounded a boy on Brown Creek
There i i a large number of persons missing from the vici-
nity of Brown Creek. All the stock has been run off, and
the country is stripped of provisions."
The changes in a country's climate by settlement
and cultivation of the soil often seem strange and incon-
sistent. A letter from a late traveller in Nebraska notes
some curious contrasts: "It is a frequent subject of re-
mark in the Ohio Valley, that settling the country, clear-
ing and ditching the land constantly makes it dryer ;
that old wells and springs are drying up, and each suc-
ceeding summer branches run dry which never did be-
fore. ' The "French Agricultural Report" makes the
same complaint, and calls upon the Government to
stop the destruction of the forests, as the means
of preserving the rivers. But here, with settle-
ment, exactly the reverse phenomena are presented, and
the quantity of rain in Western Nebraska and Kansas has
doubled within the memory of man. Perhaps this is duo
somewhat to the trees planted on new farms, but I think,
also, that breaking up the sod allows it to absorb more
moisture than it could in the prairie state, and in
many instances turning a hundred acres of sod
will renew an old spring. French branches aro
starting in gullies which have been dry for
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Thus, ' springs
break out in the thirsty wilderness, and streams of water
in the dry ground!' Here is an important principle at
work, which will enable agriculture to make great ad-
vances on what is now the American desert." Akin to
these are the facts of heavy rains this summer in Colorado
and California States where the rule of dry summers seems
to have been invariable heretofore.

The New York papers report that Mr. P. T.
Barnum ran a foot race on the 14th inst., at the Profile
House, New Hampshire. He had several competitors, but
distanced them all, after which he was borne from the
field on the shoulders of the crowd. Several thousand
spectators witnessed the race.

News from Constantinople states that Admiral
Farragut was to receive the visit of the Turkish Minis-
ters and of the diplomatic body on board his flagship the
Franklin last Wednesday. On Friday the Sultan was ex-
pected to pay a visit to the American admiral on board
the Franklin. Musurus Paella, the Turkish Ambassador
at the Court of St. James, arrived yesterday from London
on leave of absence.

Three students of Eastman College—l. P. Hind-
man, R. H. Gregory, and E. H. Waller, of Florida—swam
a match across the Hudson at Poughkeepsie on the 10th
inst. Hindman won the race, crossing in 25 minutes.
Gregory was second. The danger of the attempt was
considerable, and the authorities should interfere to pre-
vent a recurrence of foolhardy experiments.

Pugilism, under the smiles of the fair sex, is fast
attaining to the dignity of a "profession." When poor
Adah Menken claimed to be the wite of John C. Heenan,
a connection repudiated by the prize-fighter, she felt the
humiliation the more bitterly from the worli's estimate of
the man's status. The Spirit, in discussing the subject,
says that Heenan is now married "to one of the most re-
fined, intelligent, and beautiful ladies who ever graced the
American stage." Mike M'Coole seems to have drawn as
good a prize in the matrimonial lottery. Mike paraded
himself before the windows of a convent, and by his
"elegant" appearance captivated Miss Mary Norton, the
daughter of a wealthy contractor, to whom he has just
been married in St. Louis. The event gives scope to the
correspondents, and occupies mnch space in the local
papers. We believe Mike is under an engagement to
fight, and the young lady's advice about fulfilling it
was, " If there is honour to gain, then fight ; if for money,
then decline."

The Herald declares that the masterly letter of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer not merely repels the attack
upon the financial- policy of the Government, but fastens
the imputation of waste and extravagance upon Mr. Glad..
stone himself. The right honourable gentleman no doubt
thought it rather shrewd tactics to supplement his anti-
Church programme with a cry against Tory extravagance;
and the aviditS, With which Mr. Hugh Childers took up
his leader's cue indicated that the charge was to be
utilised upon the hustings. The one indispensable
condition of a successful move of this kind is that
the Government maligned shall be content to
remain silent under the. imputation. This condition
has not been fulfilled in.the present instance, and all the
calculations are necessarily overthrown. Mr. Ward Hunt
has accepted the challenge-of his predecessor, has refuted
his charges, and made some excessively damaging reflec-
tions upon his financial policy in 1866. Mr.
Gladstone is hoist with his own petard, and the
new Liberal cry is exploded ere it is a fortnight
old. We shall hear no more of Tory extrava-
gance. The most inveterate . and " unscrupulous
opponents of the Government will learn from the result
of this tourney between the late and the present Chair
11 or of the Exchequer that the less said about finance
the better. It is a question which the Liberal party are
chiefly concerned to keep in the background as much as
possible. Mr. Gladstone has burnt his fingers at it, and
his friends willtertainly-be. careful not to touch that end
of the poker for. the future.

Says the Daily News, Mr. Ward Hunt's letter altogether
fails to justify, or even to excuse, the large increase in the
public expenditure under Tory rule. It is little more, •
indeed, than a confession of the exigencies to which a weak
overnment is almost necessarily reduced. Ard from
that letter, with the uuwelzome facts which produced it,
the country will be able to estimate the cost of keeping a
weak Tory Ministry in office. During the last Circe
years of -his administration: Mr. Gladstone reduced
the expenditure by three millions, and with
the command he had acquired over the depart-
ments, had ho remained in power, we may be
sure the policy of retrenchment would have been
carried still further. By this time the reduction would
not improbably have reached five millions, thus bringing
the current expenditure down to the sum which, according
to Tory critics, is its natural and proper level. The Tory
Government, however, instead of effecting this reduction,
which, according to its own advocates, would have been so
easy, have increased the public expenditure by three
millions. According to the data supplied by themselves,
the continuance in office of a weak Tory Government
thus costs the country from six to eight millions annually.
The sum of the whole account (the Standard remarks;
is, that so far as the civil service expenditure is con-
cerned, the present Government has not increased it,
except in the fulfilment of engagements entered into by
the late Government, by more than the augmentation
of the votes for the educational department and a grant
towards the building of Glasgow University ; that of the
other two millions of increase, absorbed by the army
and navy, nearly half has gone to give increased pay
,and greater comforts to our soldiers and sailors,
(and the remainder has been spent in ships and
guns which were absolutely needed ; whilst the results of
the expenditure in these two services are, that the conver-
sion of small arms is nearly completed, that our forts aro
armed, that the navy has been brought into a much
greater condition 'of efficiency, and that service in the
army has been rendered so much more attractive, that
twenty-six thousand veteran troops have re-engaged them-
selves. Not only has the country got good money's worth,
for its increased outlay, but any postponement of the ad-,
litional expenditure would have made the burden far
more onerous when at last undertaken.

No one, the Telegraph observes, blames the Government
for converting our Enfield rifles, or for improving the pay
of the private soldier ; the accusation is that it did not do
these things without adding to the total expenditure of
the country. Mr. Hunt must be reminded that changes
h our national armaments, involving heavy cost, have
not been peculiar to the time during which he has held
office. Such causes of excessive outlay have been con-
tinuous for the last dozen years; they were of con-
stant occurrence between 1862 and 1866. Yet
they were met by a Liberal Ministry which did
not halt in the work of retrenchment. Here,
then, is the whole difference between the two
systems of adminstration. If Mr. Gladstone had held
office as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the last two
years, our rifles would have been converted and the pay of
the army would have been increased ; but the work would
have been accomplished step by step, simultaneously with
the enforcement of judicious economies, which would have
left the gross national expenditure no heavier than before.
The Government or the Minister, no matter of what
party, that does not make fresh expenditure conditional on
A previous retrenchment will forfeit the splendid oppor-
tunities of the time, and will fail to gain the confidence of
the people.
The Standard, commenting on the evidence being given
at the Abergele accident, draws attention to its unsatis-
factory nature with regard to the points whether the doors
of the railway carriages were locked, and how quickly the
fire spread. What can be said to the evidence of William
Roberts, a mason, who states that he ran a quarter of a
mile before he reached the train, and when he reached the
,pot " the carriage next to the Post-office van was just
catching fire?" There is also the statement of the driver
who leaped from the engine of the mail train. This state.
ment is not yet a piece of sworn evidence, but it is righ.
to refer to it for what it is worth. One version of
this statement makes the driver say that, on recovering
his footing after leaping from the engine, he gave a car-
riage key to a tall gentleman whom he never saw again.
That gentleman, he says, was standing on the steps of a
carriage, which almost immediately afterwards was seized
by the flames. There is also the extraordinary evidence
of the platelayers wife, Mrs. Dicken, supported as it is
by the evidence of a young lady, Miss Haughton. Incredible
as the statements of these two witnesses may appear, they
are not to be dismissed without consideration. If mar-
vellous, the allegations are at least coherent ; nor can
we finally decide that Miss Haughton's evidence is
worthless, merely because, in the opinion of the Assessor,
she was standing where she could not -have seen Mrs.
Dicken, as she says she did. Mere flat contradiction from
the company's solicitor is of little avail until testimony is
produced to refute what is thus alleged. On the question
of locked doors Lord Castlerosse has publicly declared, "I
have sufficient ground for knowing that some of the London
Carriages were locked on both sides." As for the Chester
carriages, the statement of the engine-driver—though not
yet given in legal form—indicates that some of these
carriages were locked on the platform side, and thergfm
very pooibly ox} the 04-§* 41§0.

*sty

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