Star.
London, England, 1824-05-15 00:00:00

LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

Thursday the Twenty-ninth Anniversary Meeting of
this Society was held at the Chapel, Great Queen-street,
Lincoln's Inn-fields. ROBERT HUMPH REY MARTIN,
Esq. in the Chair.
The Rev. GEORGE BURDER, Secretary to the Society,
stated, from the Reports, the great progress of the S -
ciety in the South Seas, where twenty islands u ere now
mined to Christianity, and where upwards of 10,000
copies of the New Testament were distributed, and the
Sabbath observed with holy solemnity. That the Rev.
Dr. Morrison, who had spent 17 years in studying and
interpreting the Chinese language, was introduc...d to
his Majesty, to whom he presented a Cody of the New
Testament in the Chinese language, and which is now.
in his fslajesty's library.
In alluding to the C.ISC of Mr. Smith, the Missionary
'at Deltiarard, the Repot L thus notices the prompt atten-
tion of his Majesty's Ministers to the subject: . _

" It is proper to aid, that the Directors, on being apprised of the
precarious state of Mr. Smith's health, made application to Earl
Bathurst that he might he permitted to retain to this country, on
the Society entering into the requisite securities. This application,
they have the pleasure to say, was immediately complied with on
the part of his Majesty's Government, whose prompt and uniformly
obliging attentions to the Directors in their various applications re-
lative to Mr. Smith's case, demand the respectful and grgeful ac-
knowledgments of the Society."
iOsEPH BUTTERWORTH, Esq. M.P. rejoiced at the
gratifying reports he had heard, and was happy at see-
ing Dr. Morrison, by whose means the dark cloud that
obscured the Chinese was likely to vanish, and that the
lights of the Christian Religion were likely to shine in
that country. He concluded by reading a lett:r from
an e,teenied friend to whom he had st.,z. a copy of the
trial, in which, after expressing surprise at the verdict,
his friend says, " I opened my will and immediately in-
serted £lOO for the benefit of the
Of course he (Mr. Butterworth) could not me.iti;4l
name of the party, but he would state that he was a
highly respectable member of the Church of England.
The lion. BAPTIST NOEL addressed the Alerting at
some length, chiefly animadverting upon thr proceed.
ings against Missionary ScriLli, and concluded by ex-
pressing a hope that a reversal of his sentence would be
obtained, and moved, " That this Aleeting are of opi-
nion that the innocence of the Rev. J. Smith was fully
and completely established," which was seconded by
Dr. WARDEOW, and carried by acclamations.
Drs. S ritEs and NVAucar addressed the Meeting, and
at its termination a handsome collection was made.

A few days ago a Memorial. signed by some of the
most eminent Merchants in the City of London, was
forwarded to his Majesty's Ministers, in which were
represented the great importance of the trade existing
between Great Britain and Colombia and Mexico; the
total want of regular channels of communication with
those rising and productive States; ar.d the advantages
which would be reaped by British merchants, horn the
establishment of Post-office packet stations in one con•
venient port of each of these Republics. It is understood
that this representation has been favourably received by
his Majesty's Government, and that two new chains of
packets will be established; the one with C&oru!;ia,
the other with Mexico, as swirl as the necessary arrange-
meats can be completed. This improvement in the
communication with Colombia and Mexico will rot be
attended with any additional expense to the Public, for
the foreign mails are now generally forwarded by his
Majesty's brigs, and the postages will fully repay the
expenses of the additional Yost-office Agents wiric:l it
will be necessary to employ. This will certainly be a
most important advantage to British subjects who are
interested in the prosperity of the new Amer ican S:ates.
Tuesday forenoon, about eleven o'clock, a fellow entered the
court-yard in front of Mr. Oldfield's house at Peckham, and,
passing through the conservatory, went round to the rear of the
house, got into the back parlour window, which was open, and com-
menced work by clearing the whole sideboard of valuable plate into
a large basket, which he carried. Just at the moment he was about
to retreat with the property, Mr. Oldfield happened to walk into
the room, and seeing a fellow of suspicious appearance there, was, at
the instant, unable to give the alarm. The circumstance gave the thief
an opportunity of jumping out of the window with the basket of plate,
which being too weighty for him, he dropped at the outside gate,
and escaped down one of the bye law in the neighbourhood.