Vrniurial.

The Manchester Chamber of Commerce have spoken on the two India bills, and rejecting both have proposed a bill of their own. At a meeting of the Chamber on Thursday they adopted a petition to the House of Commons embodying their criticisms and proposals. They approve of the transfer of power from the Company to the Crown ; but they disap- prove of the Council proposed by bill No. 1, and still more of that pro-

posed by bill No. 2. In fact they "decidedly disapprove" of any elett've Council. Their scheme for the government of India is suggested as follows-

" That your petitioners would respectfully suggest to your Honourable House that the affairs of India in this country should be conducted by a Minister and a Secretary for India, having seats in the House of Commons, the former to be a member of the Cabinet, and the latter not to be required to vacate his seat or office in the event of a change of Ministry ; and that, in addition, an India Board should be created, consisting of four or more per- manent secretaries, with salaries of not less than 20001. per annum each, holding no patronage, and being disqualified for sitting in the House of Commons. And your petitioners would suggest that these secretaries should be nominated in the first instance by the Crown, subject to a Parliamentary vote, and that they should be selected as far as possible from the present ex- perienced Indian officials, with special reference to their fitness for the vari- ous departments of law, finance territorial regulations, and trade. "That on the occurrence of future vacancies the appointments should vest in the Minister for India. . . . . That it is essential for good govern- ment that India should be governed in India, and that for the purpose of fulfilling this condition the present Tull powers of the Governor-General in Council should be retained, and that the Governors of the minor Press- diaries of .Madras and Bombay should have larger powers ccerred upon them than they now possess. "That your petitioners regard the proposed legislation as a step in aid of future measures, believing that the prosperity of her Majesty's Indian empire must depend upon sound local government ; and that the object ought first to be—the gradual improvement of India, by giving and secur- ing rights to freeholders ; by a rapid and judicious expenditure, from local means, and on local security and guarantee, on such works of irrigation, roads, railways, and navigation as are most urgently needed; by equal laws, rigidly administered ; by the encouragement and diffusion of educe. lion and religion, tolerating and protecting all systems not directly at variance with morality ; and thus gradually fitting the entire population for the ultimate rights and duties of citizenship. That your petitioners de- sire to see the occupation and cultivation of the soil encouraged and ex- tended by the sale, throughout the whole of India, of land in fee simple. "That your petitioners beg to submit to your Honourable House that the present separation of classes among the European population of India is injurious, and that employment under Government should be open to all Europeans resident in India ; and your petitioners would further suggest that, with a view to facilitate the union of classes already adverted to, one Member of the Council at each of the Presidencies in India should be chosen from among the European residents, entirely unconnected with the services, for the purpose of securing a due representation of the interests of commerce and agriculture." They suggest that both bills should be referred to a Select Committee with a view to the enactment of such a preliminary measure for the go- vernment of India as will confer a direct and responsible power upon her Majesty's Government.

At the festival held in Manchester on the 25th March, to commemorate the opening of the Reform Synagogue in connexion with the parent insti- tution of Margaret Street, Cavendish Square, London, Mr. T. Theodores, a learned Jew and distinguished scholar, met the charges brought by Mr. Newdegate against the Jews, during the recent debate on the Oaths Bill. He said—

In former, times it would have been sufficient to point out the religious difference between the Jew and the Christian, which is a fact, to carry the sympathy of members of the Christian faith. That charm has no power in our day, and well the orator knew it. Hence the necessity of having recourse to declamation about the anti-social and unpatriotic character of the Jews, relying for proof on apocryphal vouchers, borrowed from chronicles undated, books unacknowledged, private conversations unwitnessed, confidential communications from people unknown, and allusions to persons unconnected in toto with the subject under debate. This was his necessity, and verily he has not been slow in making a virtue of his necessity. If such expedients were sufficient to insure Parliamentary success, in our days, who could stand against Mr. Newdegate? One of Mr. Newdeaate's authorities was the Hamburg Chronicle. No Hamburger would be 'base enough to indorse Mr. Newdegate's chronicled abuse after having witnessed the well-known behaviour of a Jewish citizen of Hamburg during the late commercial crisis. Of equal weight is Mr. Newdegate's statement of what has passed in the Prussian Chambers. That gentleman labours under the illusion that the Parliament of Prussia offered emancipation to the Jews on condition of their renunciation of the anti-social Talmudical doctrines, and, he adds, not one Jew would accept the proffered boon—ergo, the Jews cling with their well-known tenacity to an anti-social code. The simple truth is, that no such insult has been offered, and, consequently, no protest was necessary on the part of the Prussian Jews. A Mr. Wagner, of the Prussian Parliament, certainly did, a couple of sessions since, propose the elimination of Article 12 from the Constitution, the effect of which alteration would have been to destroy the equality of all citizens before the law, as guaranteed by the charter ; but the honourable gentleman was signally defeated. And, to com- plete the measure of absurdity involved in 'Mr. Newdegate's reference to Prussia, the said Mr. Wagner is most zealous for the preservation of the Talmud in its integrity, as a part of the Jewish religion.. he has written a pamphlet, both for the purpose of recommending the Talmud to the Jews, and of assuring them of his great love. Is Mr. Newdegate more accurate on other points ? Did he not assert of Dr. Adler's declared opinions that which Dr. Adler found himself constrained publicly contradict ? Does he not condole with the late Member for St. Alban's Mr. Raphael] for the per- secution to which that gentleman had subjected • self through his con- version from Judaism, though the Member for St. Alban's never stood in any connexion, either by faith or descent, with the Jewish people ? If such is the value of the honourable gentleman's facts, in what estimation can we hold his arguments ?

The West Riding has been remarkably backward in the movement whereby so much has been done for the reformation of juvenile delin- quents. It appears there are 127 young culprits committed by the Justices to reformatories, of whom nearly 100 have had to be sent to re- formatories in other counties. At the Spring Sessions in Pontefract, Mr. Edmund Denison and Mr. Monckton Milnes brought this " dis- graceful" state of things under notice. Mr. Denison thinks that the West Riding should have a reformatory of its own capable of accommo- dating from 300 to 400 youthful offenders. Nothing was done at the meeting except to give a Committee authority to arrange for the placing of offenders in any reformatory school, and to pay the expense thereof out of the county-rate.

The friends of the Birmingham Reformatory Institution at Saltley held their annual meeting at Dees Hotel, Birmingham, on Wednesday ; Lord Lyttelton in the chair. The report was exceedingly satisfactory.

In 1848 the County Magistrates of Berkshire, sitting in Quarter-Ses- sions, resolved that new Assize Courts should be created at Reading, and a committee was appointed to execute the work. But at another Court, held in the next year, it was decided not to erect new buildings until the county debt had been reduced by 16,0001. That has now been accomplished ; and at a Quarter-Sessions held in Reading on Monday, Mr. Merry proposed that steps should be taken to build the new courts. This was met by opposition, on the ground that no inconvenience is felt. Mr. Bros said the proposal was made merely for the sake of having a thing in the most complete order—to have another toy-shop, like the new gaol in Reading, where a vast expense had been incurred to introduce a new system, which practically did not render the gaol a whit more use- ful than the old one. On the other hand, Mr. Hayter showed that at present there is no office for the clerk of indictments, no retiring-room for the bar, no retiring-room for jurors in short, none of those conve- niences usually attached to courts of justice. After a smart discussion, the resolution was carried by 30 to 27.

The question of the erection of new assize courts at Reading appears to have been mooted not a bit too soon. The present courts are thus da. scribed, as in use during the present Assizes.

"The counsel, attorneys, and suitors attending the assize courts in this county have long complained of the wretched provision made for their accommodation. But now that Reading has been fixed upon as the last assize town on the Oxford Circuit, and the business has in consequence increased, the inconvenience of the existing courts has become aggravated so as to become an intolerable nuisance. There is not even room f4 gentlemen to sit down ; so that many of the counsel and nearly all the attorneys have been obliged to stand a great portion of the day. The seats provided for the counsel consist only of four rickety old benches, scarcely good enough for a ragged school ; and as to other arrangements, which are usually considered necessary for the sake of convenience and decency, we should be sorry to be called upon to describe them."

At the meetings of the ironmasters of the English iron districts it has been resolved to maintain the prices fixed in January. Trade is at pre- sent dull, but an improvement is expected. The demand for coal is slack ; most of the colliers have returned to work at the reduced prima offered by the masters—they feel that present resistance is hopeless,

The South Staffordshire ironmasters have declined to assent to the sliding scale of wages proposed by the peddlers.

The Reverend Samuel Smith and Sarah Smith his wife were tried at the Gloucester Assizes for maliciously cutting and wounding John Leech, with intent to murder him. Some of the facts of this extraordinary case will, no doubt, be within the reader's recollection. The whole story was completely brought out at the trial. The principal witnesses examined were Leech, the prosecutor, the railway servants, one of Mr. Smith's domestics, Mr. Lasbury, a Bristol bookseller, and a gunmaker's assistant. Mrs. Smith was defended by Mr. Huddlestone ; Mr. Smith defended himself. The story brought out is one of romantic interest. Leech, the prosecutor, wag, in 1846, a porter at Swan and Edgar's, in Regent Street. One of his fellow servants was Sarah Mills, a young girl of seventeen. Some kind of in- timacy, not clearly made out, arose between the porter and the maid. 'When she lift Swan and Edgar's Leech visited her at her new situation. There he first saw a rival, Mr. Samuel Smith, the son of a beneficed clergyman, and a student at Cambridge. Smith had met Mills in 1848, had at once proposed to marry her, and would, as he stated, have married her had his circumstances permitted. They were married in 1849. Smith did not take her home. He had passed with honours at Cambridge, and was then master of the Bishop's School at Bristol, and could not keep a wife there upon 1001. a year. She therefore lived with her friends in Kent, Shortly after her marriage, Leech heard that she was at Canterbury, and wrote to her. She invited him to come and see her ; he went, walked out with her' and slept in the same house. According to Leech's account, she told him that Mr. Smith had written to say that the marriage was not legal, and had offered her money to trouble him no more. After that Leech saw her in London several times, and once at his house near Croydon after he had become a road-contractor. [Under cross-examination, Leech declined to answer questions touching the nearness of the intimacy that subsisted between himself and Mrs. Smith in Kent and in London. He "had no particular reason," he wished to decline doing so.] Leech did not see her after the end of 1849, but he kept up a correspondence with her as late as 1851. In January 1858 he received a letter from Mrs. Smith. She called herself a widow, said she had three children and 10001., and invited Leech to meet his "dear old friend Sally," and to stop all night. Sally expressed her willingness to be his for ever, but there must be no more trifling" ; "nothing improper." After some negotiation, Leech went on the 3d Fe- bruary. Mrs. Smith, dressed in widow's weeds, met him. Ile fancied he saw the late Smith, and told her so ; she laughed at him. But Smith was there. Ile had brought with him a heavy cane, and a revolver loaded and capped, bought under a false name, the day before. Leech and Mrs. Smith took tickets for Tate. When they alighted, Mrs. Smith insisted on going over a dark lonely common. Before they had gone far Smith overtook them, and made Leech aware of his presence by beating him over the head. Leech closed with him, cried for help, and threw him on the ground. Help arrived, and, Smith threatening to blow out the brains of any one who molested him, made off with his partner. Leech was carried to the Railway Inn at Tate and cared for. The Smiths made their way to their home at Clifton. The next morning the revolver bought by Smith, and a widow's cap, were found on the common. None of the facts were denied.

Mr. Smith's defence was the most remarkable part of the evidence. He said that he had supported himself since he was fifteen ; and he descrikd how he came by his wife, how he brought her home after the birth of their first child in 1851, and how he had established a school bringing in 4001. a year. He had often observed that there was a melancholy about his wife, and she would sigh on his bosom and tell him that she was not worthy of him. He had often complained of her staying so much in Kent, and said that there must be some reason for her melancholy, though he could not tell what it was. She once told him of a letter she had received from the man Leech, and mentioned other circumstances which tended rather to excite his jealousy. But he overlooked it, as she continued to bear him children and managed the house well. At length, on the 22d of January last, she told him something which made him very unhappy, but he said he would forgive her if she would take an oath that nothing had happened since their marriage. She then knelt down and told him of the circum- stances under which the prosecutor Leech induced her to meet him at Can- terbury and committed adultery with her, and that Leech afterwards met her in London and promised that, if she would go and live with him, he would marry her in seven years. The prisoner then pro- ceeded to give a graphic description of his wife on her knees, with her children round her, imploring his forgiveness. The idea racked his mind that perhaps the children were not his own. His wife, how- ever, assured him that she had never done any-thing wrong since she had been living with him, and as he believed she had told him the truth, he promised to forgive her after that discovery. He dwelt upon the wrongs which had been done-him, till he forgot everything but himself. But be told his wife that he would forgive her if she would bring the man to Bristol in order that he might retaliate. He designed,' as Leech had lured his wife to Whitstable for his lust, Smith would lure the prosecutor to Tate, and there give him a sound thrashing. It was under his directious his wife wrote the letters, which he dictated. He then stated how he had in- sisted on his wife writing the letters, and disguising heraeIf as she had done, on the promise which he made her that he would not do Leech any serious injury. He bought the revolver for his own protection in case the prosecutor should draw a knife upon him ; but he solemnly denied that he had ever intended to use the pistol aggressively against Leech, for, had be done so he would not have acted as he had, so as to lead to his detection. His only in was to do what he had done—viz., to give Leech a good beating, in order to solace his outraged mind. He owned that he could not justify his conduct, which he should always deeply lament ; but he hoped his conduct would be justly appreciated by the Judge and Jury, who could not blame him for the burning indignation which had overcome his whole being. He implored the Jury not to find him guilty of felony. Mr. Huddleatone contended for Mrs. Smith that she was acting under con- straint. The Jury foundboth the prisoners guilty of "cutting and wound- ing with intent to disfigure and to do grievous bodily harm ', ; but they added that the female prisoner had committed no actual violence, and that she had acted throughout under the coercion of her husband. Mrs. Smith was admitted to baiL • Mr. Baron Channell, in passing sentence, reserved the points in herfavour. But he sentenced Mr. Smith to five years' penal servitude. Mrs. Smith seemed much agitated, but her husband received the severe sentence with great calmness. At the same Assizes, Dennis Trenfield, a solicitor who had been in practice for thirty years at Winchcombe, was convicted of forging two acceptances to a bond for 2001. He raised 200/. on a bond which purported to be signed by Mr. Timbrill and Mr. Dupre; Mr. Timbrill had been con- nected with him in money matters ; both signatures were forged. This was a very sad case. The prisoner appeared as a convict in the court where he had acted as Under-Sheriff. He had attempted suicide to avoid disgrace —he discharged a pistol at his face, broke his jaw-bone, and lodged two bullets, one of which is still in the back of his neck. The prosecutor re- commended the wretched culprit to mercy. Mr. Baron Channel], com- menting on the very serious aspect of the ease,—a solicitor defrauding his client,—said the sentence must be severe—ten years' penal servitude. Trenfield groaned heavily as he was removed from the dock.

At Liverpool Assizes, Mr. Dalzell, a young gentleman holding an appoint- ment at Liverpool, obtained a verdict for 6001. as compensation from Tyrer and Co., owners of a steamer, for hurts arising from negligence in the management of the vessel, at iock Ferry slip ; some tackling gave way, and a piece of iron cut Mr. Dakell's face, broke his jaw-bone, and knocked out several teeth. A technical objection by the defendants has been reserved for consideration.

Joseph Shepherd, the young man convicted on circumstantial evidence of the murder of Bethel Parkinson, was hanged at York on Saturday. Several remarkable circumstances occurred. The prisoner's father, when he visited his son last week, seemed almost devoid of human feeling—he even wished to be present at his son's execution ! Shepherd declared throughout that he was innocent. Ile laughed at the clergyman who attempted to bring him into a proper frame of mind. When told, during Friday night, that he could expect no rest in the next world if he died unrepentant, he remarked with a smile, "If there's no rest for me in the next world, I might as well have as much rest as I can here while I stop," and he laid himself down on his bed; he slept well. As the hour of death approached he was careless- " full of joke and fun." When led across a yard he was in high glee ; as he was in the open air, he said "There is just one chance for me, if I could only fly." On the scaffold, his obduracy seemed to give way; for while the chaplain was reciting a prayer, the convict once or twice said, "Lord have mercy upon me! Christ have mercy upon me ! " A great crowd witnessed the execution; the people were very orderly.

Epps, under-butler, and Burton, a watcher,. at Clamber, have been robbing the Duke of Newcastle of large quantities of wine, candles, and other property. A watch was set ; the dishonest servants were caught in the fact; and the Magistrates have committed them for trial.

An "accident" occurred on the railway. between Manchester and Shef- field on the evening of the 1st. A first-class carriage was observed to os- cillate and jolt very much ; a stationmaster's attention was called to it ; he jocosely remarked, "Oh, it's the notorious carriage ; but you're all right enough" ; and the train proceeded. Between Penistone and Wortley, where the turns of the line are sharp, the speed of the train became high ; the "notorious" carriage jolted more than ever, the occupants screamed in alarm, and presently the carriage left the rails, the portion of the train in the rear broke away, and before the train had been brought to a stand the wheels and springs of the carriage had been smashed, the body of the carriage was dragged along the road, and the inmates expected instant death. Fortunately, no one was dangerously hurt. It is stated that the disaster arose from the axle-trees, axles, and flanges of the carriage being much worn. "This narrow escape of so many lives," says the Sheffield Times, "has caused considerable dissatisfaction to be expressed by several persons as to the mode of conducting the affairs of the line, it being alleged that the remuneration of Mr. Watkins, the general manager, by a per- centage on the earnings of the Company and the dividends paid to the share- holders, offers an inducement to risk the lives of the public instead of spend- ing the necessary part of the earnings in the renewing and improvement of the railway plant."

The American bark Petrea, bound from Havre to New York with 217 emigrants on board, early on Sunday morning ran on to the shoals off the harbour of Chichester. During the day ineffectual efforts were made to get her off. A gale prevailed on Monday morning, and it was deemed ad- visable to land the passengers ; which was safely effected.

A violent thunderstorm broke over Bramshill on Saturday. A man who was ploughing and his four horses were struck down by the lightning, and the ploughman and one of the horses were killed.