30.-General Cluseret arrested by order of the Commune on the charge of mismanaging the supply of arms and ammunition along the line of the forts.

May 1.-After a debate protracted till near 2 A. M., Mr. Smith's motion, "That it is inexpedient that the income-tax should be increased to the extent contemplated in the financial proposals of the Government," was negatived by 335 votes to 250. In pleading against interference with the "ancestral system " of reducing debts by "terminable annuities," Mr. Gladstone warned the House that Government had reached the end of their concessions. Mr. Disraeli described the income-tax as a third line of defence to the country in case of war, and said it should not be lightly meddled with, especially as it pressed severely on particular classes.

The new International Exhibition, Royal Albert Hall, opened by the Prince of Wales as representing the Queen.

Michael Torpey convicted of the diamond robbery in Berkeley Street, and sentenced to eight years' penal servitude.

Versailles troops attack and carry the insurgent position embraced within the railway station at Clamart, dominating the Fort of Issy. This was amongst the sharpest encounters which had yet taken place, as many, it was said, as 300 being bayonetted in the enclosure.

2.-The Westmeath Peace Preservation Bill read a second time in the House of Lords, Lord Salisbury describing the main error of the Executive Government as the application of a system of judicature formed for a civilized nation to a Celtic nation, part of which was in the depths of barbarism. He would invest the Viceroy with adequate powers to deal with this population as if he had to deal with Indians.

Speaking in the German Parliament on the Bill for the incorporation of Alsace and Lorraine, Prince Bismarck said that on the 6th of August, 1866, "the French Ambassador handed me an ultimatum demanding the cession of Mayence to France, and telling us, in the alternative, to expect an immediate declaration of war. It was only the illness of the Emperor Napoleon which then prevented the outbreak of war. During the late war neutral Powers made mediatory proposals. In the first instance we were asked to content ourselves with the costs of the war and the razing of a fortress. This did not satisfy us. necessary that the bulwark from which France could sally forth for attack should be farther pushed back. Another proposal was to neutralize Alsace and Lorraine. But that neutral State would have possessed neither the power nor the will to preserve its neutrality in case of

war.

It was

We were obliged to incorporate Alsace with the territory of Germany in order to ensure the peace of Europe. It is true the aversion of

4. A motion submitted in the Commons by Mr. Torrens to fix the income-tax at 5d. instead of 6d. rejected by 294 to 248 votes.

5. Died at his residence, Devonshire-place, aged 86, George Thomas John Nugent, Marquis of Westmeath, an Irish representative peer, and the last survivor, it was thought, of the expedition to Egypt against Napoleon I.

6.-Vice-Chancellor Malins gives judgment in the case of Macbryde v. Eykyn, a suit heard to recover from the defendant, Mr. Roger Eykyn, M.P. for Windsor, 10,200/. Spanish Passive Bonds, and two sums of 400l. and 500/., which, according to the defendant's statement, had been lost in the course of transactions with the plaintiff's husband, Mr. C. Wilson Macbryde, in speculations on the Stock Exchange. Bill dismissed with costs.

Collision off Tynemouth between the steamer David Burn, out on a trial trip, and the Earl Percy. The former sank soon afterwards.

The High Joint Commissioners at New York, having met thirty-seven times, conclude their labours by signing a treaty providing for the establishment of two boards of arbitrationone to consider the Alabama and similar claims which will be recognized as national, and be settled on the principle of responsibility for depredations where Government has not exercised the utmost possible diligence and precaution to prevent the fitting out of privateers; the other will consider miscellaneous claims of both sides, confined principally to those arising out of the civil war. No claims arising out of the Fenian invasion of Canada will be admitted. All legitimate cotton claims will be considered, except those of British subjects domiciled in the South. The

San Juan boundary question to be arbitrated upon by the Emperor of Brazil. American vessels to navigate the St. Lawrence free, and the Canadian canals on payment of the regular tolls.

6. On the motion for going into committee on the Army Regulation Bill, Colonel Anson submits a resolution-" That in any scheme for the abolition of purchase in the army, the State, as well as the officers, must forego the advantages hitherto derived from that system; and in order to give the State that unrestricted power over the officers of the army which it is desirable it should possess, and also in justice to the officers of the army themselves, the regulation value of their commissions shall be at once returned to them."

8.-M. Thiers entreats the Parisians to aid the troops outside the walls. "The Govern

The

ment," he declared, "will not bombard Paris, as the Commune tells you. A bombardment threatens the entire city and renders it uninhabitable, and has for its object to intimidate citizens and to force them to surrender. Government will only use cannon to force in one of your gates, and will endeavour to limit to one point of attack the ravages of a war of which it is not the author. As soon as the soldiers shall have passed the enceinte you will raily round the national flag to aid our valiant army in destroying this sanguinary and cruel tyranny. It depends upon you to prevent those disasters which are inseparable from an assault. You are a hundred times more numerous than the partisans of the Commune. united, and open the gates which they close to law and order, and to your prosperity, as well as to that of France. When once those gates are open the sound of the cannons will cease, tranquillity, order, abundance, and peace will reappear within your walls. The Germans will evacuate our territory, and the traces of our misfortune will rapidly disappear. But if you do not act, the Government will be obliged to take the most energetic and certain means to deliver you."

Be

In Committee on the University Tests Bill, the Marquis of Salisbury carries by a majority of five votes, a new test in the form of a resolution:-"That no person shall be appointed to the office of tutor, assistant tutor, dean, censor, or lecturer in divinity, in any college now subsisting in the said universities, until he shall have made and subscribed the following declaration in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor, or in the University of Durham of the Warden-that is to say: 'I, A. B., do solemnly declare that while holding the office of [here name the office] I will not teach anything contrary to the teaching or Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.'"'

The Count de Chambord writes to a friend that he only asked to be allowed to devote every moment of his life to the security and

happiness of France, and to share her distresses before sharing her honours:-"It is asserted that the independence of the Papacy is dear to me, and that I am determined to obtain efficacious guarantees for it. That is true. The liberty of the Church is the first condition of To spiritual peace and of order in the State. protect the Holy See was ever the honourable duty of our country, and the most indisputable cause of its greatness among nations. Only in the periods of its greatest misfortunes has France abandoned this glorious protectorate. Rest assured if I am called it will be, not only because I represent right, but because I am order, reform-because I am the essential basis of that authority which is required to restore that which has perished, and to govern justly and according to law with the view of remedying the evils of the past, and of paving the way for the future. I shall be told that I hold the ancient sword of France in my hand, and in my breast the heart of a king and a father which recognizes no party. I am of no party, and I do not desire to return or to reign by means of party. I have no injury to avenge, no enemy to exile, no fortune to retrieve, except that of France. It is in my power to select from every quarter the men who are anxious to associate themselves with this grand undertaking. only bring back religion, concord, and peace. I desire to exercise no dictatorship but that of clemency, because in my hands, and in my hands alone, clemency is still justice. Thus it is, my dear friend, that I despair not of my country, and that I do not shrink from the magnitude of the task. 'La parole est à la France et l'heure à Dieu.'

I

8. Mr. Gladstone announces that Government proposed to abandon for this session Mr. Goschen's Local Rating and Local Government Bills, and also the licensing clause of the Home Secretary's Licensing Bill. It was still their intention, he said, to press forward the police clauses of that measure.

9. Came on for trial in the Court of Queen's Bench, Westminster, before the Lord Chief Justice and a special jury, the case of the Queen v. Boulton, Park, and others, charged with conspiring to induce others to commit felony. The examination of witnesses and speeches of counsel protracted the case to the 15th, when a verdict of Not Guilty was entered for all the defendants. In summing up, the Lord Chief Justice expressed his disapprobation of the form in which the case had been brought before the Court. "We are trying the defendants,' he said, "for conspiring to commit felonious crime, and the proof of it, if it amounts anything, amounts to proof of the actual commission of crime; and I am clearly of opinion that where the proof intended to be submitted to a jury is proof of the actual commission of crime, it is not the proper course to charge the parties with conspiring to commit it.' Coming to the actual facts of the case, the learned judge remarked

to

"It is

that what had been proved against the defendants Boulton and Park was sufficient to stamp them with the deepest disgrace, although they might not have had any felonious intention. Their going, for example, to the ladies' rooms at theatres and other public places was an offence which the Legislature might justly visit with corporal punishment. His lordship subsequently remarked that Hurt and Fiske should have been tried in Scotland, if at all. easy, however," he continued, "to see how all this happened. The police had taken up the case, and the whole course and conduct of it confirm the opinion I have always entertained as to the necessity for a public prosecutor to control and to conduct criminal prosecutions. The police seized the prisoners' letters, and found those of Hurt and Fiske; they then went to Edinburgh, and, without any authority, searched their lodgings, arrested them and put them on their trial here along with Park and Boulton, without taking them before a magistrate at all; and thus they are tried with the two other defendants for an alleged offence having no connection whatever with their conduct. A second indictment against the defendants for outraging decency by going about dressed as women was allowed to stand over, and in the meantime they were liberated on their own recognizances.

9. Mr. Miall's motion, "That it is expedient, at the earliest practicable period, to apply the policy initiated by the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by the Act of 1869, to the other Churches established by law in the United Kingdom," rejected by 374 to 89 votes. In the course of the discussion, Mr. Disraeli admitted that the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland involved the disestablishment of the Church in Scotland and in England. But, fortunately, the country was not governed by logic. It was governed by rhetoric, and not by logic, or otherwise it would have been erased long ago from the list of leading communities. No form of religion represented more fully the national sentiment than the Established Church. For his own part, he had always believed that, organically, the English were a religious people. We had partially educated them, we were now going to educate them completely. And when they were educated they would not fly to the conventicle; they would appreciate a learned clergy, a refined ritual, and the consolation of the beautiful offices of the Church. If the Church conducted itself with wisdom and discretion, he believed that every year this motion, if it were made, would be made under worse auspices and with less prospect of success. Let the Church remain tolerant, temperate, and comprehensive, and it would then be truly national. In conclusion, he expressed a strong conviction that the time had come when, in matters of great change, the country required repose, and appealed to the Government to remove the impression created by the Home Secretary, that they opposed the motion only because they did not yet see their way to carry

ing it. In closing the debate, Mr. Gladstone assured the House that the Government, in opposing the motion, did not limit that opposition to the present moment or base it on merely temporary grounds. If the movement represented by the Liberation Society had received any recent impulse, it was partly from embittered controversies in the Church, and partly also from the unfortunate error of those who insisted upon treating the case of the Church of Ireland entirely with reference to the theory of establishments, and not with reference to the broad, substantial arguments and facts upon which the Church of England was so strong. The Church of England was not a foreign Church-it was not a Church which, like the Church of Ireland, was imposed upon Ireland and maintained there by extrinsic power, but it was, whatever else it might be, the growth of the history and traditions of the country; it had existed from a period shortly after the Christian era, and for 1,300 years had never ceased to be the Church of the country; it had been in every age, as it was still, deeply rooted in the heart of the people, and intertwined with the local habits and feelings.

9.- The cases of small-pox in London during the past week rose to 288, the highest weekly number during the present epidemic, and almost three times as high as in any of the preceding epidemics during thirty-one years.

Eliza Jane Cook, a young married woman in straitened circumstances, throws twó of her children and herself into the Lea at Clapton. A little girl was rescued, but the mother and boy were drowned.

10. Dissension among the Communist leaders, the first Committee of Public Safety being dismissed to-day, and another appointed in its place. Commander Rossel, charged with the provisional title of Delegate of War, wrote that he felt himself incapable of continuing the responsibility of a commandant where everyone wished to deliberate, and no one to obey. Delescluze succeeded to the post of Delegate of War.

Professor Huxley carries a motion at the London School Board, "That measures be taken to ascertain whether any, and if so, what charitable or other endowments in the London school district ought to be applied, wholly or in part, to the augmentation of the school fund." The Professor took occasion to censure the management of Christ's Hospital in having so far departed from the wishes of those who founded the charity as to make it an educational institution for children belonging to the middle classes and neglecting the children of the poor.

Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot, and who had seen much service in the Crimea

11.- Came on in the Court of Common Pleas, before Lord Chief Justice Bovill and a jury, the gigantic case of Tichborne v. Lushington, occupying under one form or another the Courts at Westminster for the greater part of two years. Involving estates said to be worth 24,000l. a year, with a baronetcy attached, and depending mainly on evidence brought forward to identify the Claimant with the long-lost heir, the case excited the keenest public interest, and for a time in social circles put aside events of even national importance. The declaration stated that the plaintiff sued Franklin Lushington, as tenant of the trustees of the infant Alfred Joseph, to recover possession of the mansion known as Tichborne House, in the county of Southampton. He claimed to be the son of Sir James Doughty Tichborne, the youngest of three brothers, of whom the first died, the second took the estates and died, leaving a daughter, Miss Kate Doughty. The property was settled on the male line, and on the death of the second brother, without male issue, passed to the youngest brother James, who in August 1827, married Harriette Félicité Seymour, a French lady and a Roman Catholic, mother of Sir Roger Tichborne, born on the 5th of January, 1829. On the 4th of September, 1839, another son was born-James, who subsequently died, leaving a posthumous child, Alfred Joseph, who was the infant in possession of the estates. Sir Roger was brought up for several years in Paris, and received instruction principally from a tutor named Chatillon. In 1845 he went to Stonyhurst; was there for three years, and in October 1849, obtained a commission in the Carbineers, at that time in Ireland, and remained with his regiment three years and a half. At this time Sir Roger was light and slim in form, and extremely narrow in the chest; his pleasures, manners, and pursuits were those of a gentleman; he was fond of music; he was connected with the Seymours and the Townleys, and he visited at Sir Clifford Constable's, at Lord Camoys', and Lord Arundel of Wardour's; he was acquainted with the Radcliffes and some of the best families in the kingdom. In 1850 and 1851 he was a good deal at Tichborne, visiting his uncle Sir Edward, who had taken the name of Doughty, and whose daughter, Kate, was about Roger's age. Roger became very much attached to his cousin, and during a visit at Christmas 1851 the attachment was discovered. It was disapproved by Sir Edward, and an angry scene ensued, which led to Roger suddenly leaving Tichborne, with a resolve to go abroad. In January 1852 he made his will, and deposited a sealed packet with a gentleman named Gosford, an intimate and confidential friend, containing certain private wishes and ententions to be carried out if he lived.

Roger

then went to Par's to visit his parents, and at their earnest entreaty postponed the carrying

out of his design. But in December 1852 he had made up his mind to go to South America for a year and a half, and wrote to his parents to that effect. He also wrote to his cousin Kate that he hoped in three years to be united to her, and to another cousin, Mrs. Greenwood (who lived near Tichborne), that he hoped she would write to him, and that he should be always happy to answer her letters. With these intentions Roger sailed for South America, having one Moore as his valet. He arrived at Valparaiso in June 1853, and spent some months in travelling about the country. Here he heard of the death of his uncle, Sir Edward; but being desirous of further travel he communicated with his mother and friends at Tichborne, and sent home two likenesses of himself, produced in evidence. About the 20th of April, 1854, he embarked at Rio in the Bella; on the 26th a part of the wreck of the vessel was picked up, and the ship was never heard of again, nor any of the crew. The agents of Messrs. Glyns, Roger's bankers at Rio, heard of the loss of the vessel, and wrote to his family that he had embarked on board of her. For thirteen years nothing more was heard of Roger Tichborne. The will was proved by Mr. Gosford, his executor, the sealed packet was opened and destroyed, and a suit was instituted in which legal proof was given of his loss and death. The underwriters paid a heavy insurance on the vessel, and the owner never heard anything of the crew. The story of the Claimant was that he was picked up, with eight of the crew, about the 26th of April, and carried to Melbourne, where, he said, they were landed on the 24th of July, 1854; that on the day he landed he went with the captain to the Custom-house, and that the next day, leaving the wrecked sailors on board the ship, he went into the interior, where he resided for thirteen years under the name of Castro, this being, it was contended in defence, an alias for Arthur Orton, a butcher belonging to Wapping, who was known to have been at Wagga Wagga at this time. Unwilling to believe in the loss of her son, the Dowager Lady Tichborne advertised rewards for his discovery in various quarters, and one of them coming under the notice of one Cubitt, at Sydney, a friend of Gibbs, an attorney at Wagga Wagga, then acting in the bankruptcy of Castro, word was sent home to the Dowager, in December 1866, that her son was alive and well, at a place 600 miles from Sydney. Through the intervention of Gibbs and Cubitt the Claimant raised funds to proceed to England at the close of the year. He went, however, not direct, but by way of New York, and not to Paris, where the Dowager was awaiting him, but to England. He arrived on Christmas Day 1866, and the first visit he made was to Wapping, for the purpose of making inquiry regarding the Orton family. He afterwards visited Tichborne secretly, and was taken over the house and grounds. At Paris the Dowager made affidavit, that she recognized the Claimant as

her son Sir Roger; but her death deprived the defendants of any opportunity for cross-examination. She had, however, arranged to allow him 1,000l. per annum till his claim could be established. In an interview with Gosford, the Claimant made no allusion to the sealed packet, though they conversed about the will previously seen at Doctors' Commons. During a residence of some months at Croydon the Dowager was again with him, and also many old servants and friends of the family, as well as troopers in the Carbineers, the latter now the first witnesses produced to establish the identity of the claimant.

11.-Final Treaty of Peace signed between France and Germany.

Died at Collingwood, near Hawkhurst, aged 79 years, Sir John F. W. Herschel, the most distinguished of modern astronomers. The funeral took place on the 18th in Westminster Abbey, in presence of a great company of mourners. The place selected for the interment was near the grave of Sir Isaac Newton.

The property of M. Thiers seized by the Commune. A decree issued this morning set forth that "The Committee of Public Safety, considering that the proclamation of M. Thiers declares that the army will not bombard Paris, while every day women and children fall victims to the fratricidal projectiles of Versailles, and that it makes an appeal to treason in order to enter Paris, feeling it to be impossible to vanquish its heroic population by force of arms, orders that the goods and property of M. Thiers be seized by the Administration of the Domains, and his house in the Place St. Georges be razed to the ground Citizens Fontaine, Delegate of the Domains, and Andrien, Delegate of the Public Service, are charged with the immediate execution of the present decree." In the Assembly to-day M. Thiers demanded a vote of confidence from the Assembly, which was granted by 495 to 10 votes.

12.- Died at Paris, aged 89 years, M. Auber, composer of " Masaniello," and forty other

operas.

13. The Court of Session reverse a former decision in what was known as the "Paraguayan Case," and find Dr. Stewart liable in payment of the bill, chiefly on the ground that, although it had been got from him through fear and force, yet he had acknowledged his liability by eighteen months afterwards writing a letter, asking his brother to pay the amount of the bill from funds he had lodged in the Bank of Scotland. Madame Lynch was in the witness-box for nearly five hours

14. In consequence of a revolt in the garrison, the Communists withdraw from Fort Vanves, leaving it to be occupied by a portion of the investing force, who also retain the adjacent village after fighting through it house by house.

15. Mr. Muntz's amendment on the Army Bill, designed to limit its operation to regulation prices, and to leave over-regulation and the bonus system untouched, rejected by 260 to 195 votes.

a

The Pope issues Brief directed against the professors in the Roman University who had presented an address to Dr. Döllinger "overflowing with errors, blasphemy, and unbelief." His Holiness urged upon parochial priests the necessity of restraining the young from attending the lectures of such professors, and of opposing, at the same time, the torrent of unbelief into which they were likely to be driven.

16.-Destruction by the Commune of the Vendôme Column, erected by Napoleon I., principally of cannon taken at Ulm, to commemorate the victory of Austerlitz in 1805. It was covered with 425 bronze plaques, moulded in bas-relief to display the chief incidents in the Austrian campaign of that year. They were each 3 feet 8 inches high, and formed a continuous band, enclosing the column twenty-two times as it circled to the top, the entire length of the spiral being 840 feet. Instead of Charlemagne, as at first intended, it was surmounted by a statue of the First Napoleon in a Roman costume and crowned with laurel. After several postponements it was brought to the ground this afternoon in the presence of many thousands who had waited for hours to witness the spectacle. Owing to some engineering difficulties in cutting through the column at the base, it could not be brought down at the time originally fixed. The members of the Commune were installed in all their state in the balconies of the Etat Major of the National Guard and of the Minister of Justice, on the Place Vendôme, to witness the affair. Sentinels were posted about half way down the Rue de la Paix to prevent the crowd from approaching too close, as up to the last moment accidents were feared. After a good deal of intermittent drumming and trumpeting, and caracoling backwards and forwards of officers on horseback, and the continual ascent and descent of workmen -now of the column, now of its pedestal simply--and sundry flourishes of red flags, at about half-past five the ropes were tightened, and it was evident the end was at hand. Suddenly the column was observed to lean forward towards the Rue de la Paix, then finally to fall, with a dull heavy thud, raising, as it did so, an immense cloud of dust. Before it touched the ground it separated into three parts by its own weight, and on reaching the bed of dung and faggots spread to receive it, broke into at least thirty pieces. The statue of Napoleon, on reaching the ground, broke off from its pedestal at the ankles, then at the knees, the waist, and the neck, while the iron railings which surrounded the summit of the monument were shivered to pieces. Shortly after the column had fallen, spectators were permitted to traverse the Place to witness the