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Mr. Bright and Alderman Kershaw met the members of the Stock- port Reform Association on Tuesday evening, and made speeches in ex- planation and recommendation of the resolutions lately adopted by the Con- ference of Parliamentary Reformers at Manchester. Mr. Bright loudly advertised the necessity that the people should make up their minds on the subject within the next two or three weeks ; and then declare them- selves, by meetings and petitions, so plainly " that no Minister shall be able to refuse to the population what reason, justice, and the constitution say that they ought to possess."

The local scheme of education for the boroughs of Manchester and Sal- ford is undergoing an investigation by the members of the Society of Friends in this town and neighbourhood ; and they have in preparation a protest for publication, to contain the grounds of their dissent from a plan which they regard as inimical to civil and religious liberty.—Mascheater Eraminer.

We learn that Lord John Russell has declined, on the part of the Go- vernment, after consulting Sir George Grey, to undertake the introduction and the conduct of the County Boards Bill hi the ensuing session. The measure will therefore, we presume, be again under the care of Mr. Mil- ner Gibsou.—Manchester Examiner.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Cobden were present at the annual soiree of the Halifax Mechanics Institute on Tuesday. The soiree was held in the Odd Fellows Hall ; and above 1200 persons, "in- eluding the elite of the district," were present.

Sir Charles Wood told his audience, that though, like his friend Mr. Cob- den, he is an old friend of mechanics institutions, yet, unlike him, he had never before been 'resent at the annual meeting of any mechanics institution so they must not expect from him any observations that could usefully direct their future proceedings. He therefore dilated on the general scope and. bearing of the institutions as instruments of education ; and introduced an assurance of his opinion that the strong feelings, he would not call them pre- judices, which have interfered with the progress of general education, are fast wearing away ; so that in a few years we shall see a much more rapid pro- gress made. At the Great Exhibition of Industry and Art, the greater part of the world were not only highly amused but highly instructed : he himself had studied mechanics early in youth, and it gave him both instruction and gratification to see aniong the machinery many things which other parties who accompanied him did not realize any interest in. It is also a great advantage that the means of reading are now so cheap. Only that very day in coming down by the train, he was amusing himself by looking at the books offered for sale at one of the railway stations. There he found a work on trigonometry by the side of Sir Walter Scott's novels; a wet a by Thucydides, and the Par- lour Library ; a treatise on well-sinking, and the last novel of the day ; all sold at prices accessible even to labourers, and those earning moderate wages.

Mr. Cobden rallied the men of Halifax in a manner to stimulate their local energies to the utmost. Huddersfield was pointed out as a far smaller town —a second-class town, a town with very few plate-glass windows, and with no better mills or manufactures—and yet one far ahead of Halifax in its Mechanics Institution. Mr. Cobden then with jocoseness took a sly tack, and affected to tremble lest the Chancellor of the Exchequer should go and tell these facts in the Cabinet. Mr. Cobden had heard Lord John Russell say something to the effect that an educational test would not be a bad franclese to ba admitted into this country ; and he had been trembling—he hoped their right honourable Member would not say anything about it at the next meet- ing of the Cabinet ; but if he were to say that Huddersfield has 1650 members in its Mechanics Institution with only one representative, while Halifax has two representatives and only 200 members in its institution ; and that while Huddersfield has built and provided accommodation suitable for her institu- tion, Halifax, which has got plate-glass windows, luxurious private houses, and superior mills, has thrust her institution into a garret ; if he were to Icy these things in Sir Charles Wood's presence, he hoped Sir Charles would say nothing about them out of that hall. If he did, however, they must engage him to mention them with the distinct understanding, that the men of Hali- fax have resolved, that, before the coming year runs out, this stigma', this great stigma on so important a Parliamentary borough shall be wiped out, and that they will have a far nobler institution than Huddersfield.

From this point Mr. Cobden glided off to another, of political complexion, but also of special interest to mechanics institutions—that of the paper-duty, the newspaper stamp, and the advertisement-duty. Upon the paper-duty he quite made a small House of Commons speech to his honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; of course, declaring that he had no desire to bait him politically on neutral ground ; and the audience highly enjoying the humour of an earwigged Minister. A soiree " on a scale of Considerable magnificence" was given in the Corn Exchange of Northampton on Tuesday, to celebrate the opening of a new suite of buildings for the occupation of the Northampton and North- amptonshire Mechanics Institute. The company mustered some eight hundred strong : it is stated that they were in full dress," but also that they included a great number of the operatives in the town. Earl Fitz- william presided; Lord Althorp, Lord Henley, Lord Wodehouse, the Earl of Aboyne, Mr. Vernon Smith, Mr. Layard the distinguished ex- plorer of the antiquities of Nineveh, Mr. Charles Knight, Mr. George Cruikshank, Dr. Conolly, and several clergymen, were on the platform. Mr. Layard gave an interesting popular description of those vast memorials of antiquity concerning which he has written with so much interest. Mr. Charles Knight protested—pace Mr. Cobden—that " newspapers " are not the only needful reading for 3'oung men. He told a little incident of the poet Wordsworth and Mr. Layard's book on Nineveh. He had the happiness and honour of a spring morning walk with the great poet Wordsworth in the vicinity of his own Itydal, a few months before his death ; and talking of literature, the poet said, "Sir, I have only read one modern book during the last two years, and that is Mr. Layard's 'Nineveh' which has given me more pleasure than any book I have read in my life."

At Elston, on Tuesday evening, the Conservative Member for South Staffordshire, Viscount Lewisham, heir to the Earldom of Dartmouth, gave a lecture to the members and friends of a mutual instruction society in connexion with St. Mary's Church, on the theme "Civility considered as Benevolence in Trifles.'

The Duke of Newcastle has inaugurated his rule upon the hereditary estates to which he has succeeded by the death of his father, by speeches of remarkable excellence to certain of his tenantry assembled at Newark. During the past fortnight, the Duke had been meeting the numerous ten- antry of the Clumber estates, in Nottinghamshire, for the purpose of re- adjusting the terms of their respective holdings. Those estates, which have been recently revalued, are the old patrimonial property, and are purely agricultural. To the farming tenants of the other estates, which have not yet been revalued, the allowance of ten per cent, made by the late Duke, has been continued. The new landlord invited the tenants of the Clumber property to his mansion at Clumber, where the audits were held instead of at the usual places, and where on several successive days they were hospitably entertained. The tenants of some of the more remote estates found it more convenient, at this season of the year, to attend at Newark. From the observations which the Duke made on one of these occasions, the last of which was on Thursday, our readers will see the course which he has adopted towards his tenants and in regard to the management of the property, as well as his views on the subject of Pro- tection.

"Prosperity to agriculture" was the toast. The Duke commenced in a tone of moat kindly-worded but frank and unflinching censure of the negli- gent farming shown by many of hit tenants,—especially in their want of due and proper economy of manure, and in their little effort to keep the land clear of weeds ; and, meeting the excuse that the tenants want funds, he said, it was doubtless true that in many instances, from constitutional listlessness or reliance on others, from unskilfulness, or from misfortune, many had at last come to that point that they had not the means to farm well—he did not mean to farm highly, but to farm well; with those who had come to that pass, he believed it to be the honest truth that they had better not farm at all. Going in a most forcible and persuasive manner over the confirmations of the Free-trade policy which the increasingly prosperous condition of the country now yearly accumulates, he concluded by very em- phatically assuring his tenants, that though it is quite possible that:they may get a Protectionist Ministry, under the bold and gallant Earl of Derby, with the very clever and eloquent Member for Bucks, or perhaps Mr. Geo Frederick Young, for leader in the House of Commons, yet they may quite confident they will not get back protection. No man thinks that the 5s. of the Earl of Derby would give more than 2s. of protection; and as for anything more substantial than that, a great landowning friend only lately assured him, that though of course still a Protectionist, he no more expects protection back than he expects to see the bottom of the Atlantic raised up and made the "upper stratum" ; while Mr. Disraeli's hocus-pocus of cer- tain shiftings from one pocket to the other, and ultimately back again, are illusory, or if substantial, more due to farmers on the Free-trade ground of general fairness, than en the special ground of countervailing protection.

The beginning of the Duke's speech was listened to in silence, but the middle and concluding parts called forth warm general adhesion.

In a second speech of thanks for his own health, the Duke explicitly stated his plans regarding the estates to which he has succeeded, and to his te- nants. Over the tenantry he desires to preside as over one great family, every member of which shall remember his fourfold obligations towards all the rest, in reference to the estate, the landlord, the other tenants, and the public. He announced that he has had a revaluation of the holdings, by two Protectionist surveyors, both tenant-farmers, and one of them him- bell a tenant on the estate : the result is a new rental, by which he will be a considerable loser. To those whose valuations have been reduced he grants the reduction immediately; those who have been put at a higher valuation he shall not raise at all, because they have raised the value of their holdings by their own industry and capital. In his first speech he had said that he personally should have to make great struggles to preserve his relationship of landlord with all the tenants of the estate : he now said that his means will not allow him to make those arrangements for draining which he thinks are the natural duty of the landlord; but he will gladly arrange to supply draining-pipes to every tenant ready to supply the labour for ef- fecting drainage. The cottages on the estate are in a deplorable condition : he hopes to make a yearly progress in bettering it. Education is in a most discreditable state—there is hardly a district of equal extent in England so badly off: be will not cease his efforts for education till every village has its school for the poor, and till there is a central school at which the better class of farmers may get a good education for their sons. He concluded with touching references to the funeral of his father, at which only tenantry were followers—where the pall was borne by eight tenants whose families had held under his family from two to three hundred years, and at which the coffin was borne by eight labourers chosen from families that had laboured on the estate for many more centuries. "These recollections bring to my mind again the recollection, that amongst other important duties to perform, I have now imposed upon me the honours of my ancestors. It is my duty that their mantle which has fallen upon my shoulders should not in my keeping be soiled. I feel that I have charge of the honour of an ancient name : I do not pretend to be without a feeling of pride in the name—I hope not a false pride; but I also know that it is my bounden duty that that name should be unsullied in my person, and that I should hand it down, as I hope I have received it, with credit to those who are to come after me. I have no overweening confidence in myself—I am aware of my deficiencies and of my weakness; but I have confidence in the result of energy and honest per- severance ; and, feeling at the same time not overwhelmed, but duly sensible of the importance and responsibility of the duties upon which I have en- tered, I now sit down, thanking you most sincerely for the kindness you have shown me, and expressing an earnest hope that I may never meet you ex- cept as a friend, and with the mutual sentiments which I believe we now feel towards each other ; and that at the end of my career, you or your sons as the case may be, may look upon my memory as that of a landlord whO had not neglected his duty, or acted otherwise than so as to have justly en- deared himself to you."

Lord Wharncliffe having had his Yorkshire estates revalued, has re- duced his rents in some instances from 20 to 30 per cent.

New works of water-supply and drainage for the town of Croydon were opened to the public on Thursday last week, with much ceremony ; the Archbishop of Cantertury coming from the archiepiscopal palace in the neighbourhood, at the lead of the local clergy and the local Board of Health, to deliver an address, and to open the valve which allowed the first flow of water. At a dinner in the evening, some statistics were given, which will be doubly interesting if they are likely to be fully justified by the performance of the new works.

"The water-supply of the Metropolis, taking three average London pa- rishes, supplied by trading companies, is 3/. a year per house, or Is. 2d. per week, the supply being intermittent and polluted by cisterns ; whereas at Croydon it will be supplied at 12s. per annum per house being equal to 3d.per week, free from all impurities, well aerated and fitted for immediate use at table. The works are provided for the progressive increase of the town ; and on doubling the present population, the cost will be but lid. per house per week generally, and Id. per week to the poorer homes. The present cost of drainage in the Metropolis is about 21. per house per year, or nd. per week; the total cost of the Croydon drainage will average 5s. 6:1. per house per veer, or lid. per week. It is hoped that there will not be in Croydon a single cess-pool, offensive gully-trap, or drain, within or near the habitations. The cost of the Croydon Public Health Act was 103/. whilst the taxed costa for the act for each private town during the sessions of 1849 and 1850 ave- raged 20001. each. The next work will be for applying sewage manure to agricultural purposes."

The authorities of the City of London' acting under the powers given by the words introduced into the Coal Act, have made a charge of Is. per ton on all coals introduced into Hertford and other places within twenty miles of London, measuring as "the crow flies." The price of coals in Hertford is therefore Is. per ton higher than at Ware. There is no longer any hope of redress, except by an appeal to the justice of Parliament.— Hertford Mercury.

The trustees of the Marquis of Bute have accepted the tenders of Messrs. Hemmingway and Pearson to form the new docks at Cardif4 for an outlay of some 300,0001.

The Bishop of Exeter has given judgment on a complaint made by a small number of the parishioners of Shevioke, Cornwall, against the Reverend J. Somers Cocks, Rector of Shevioke' respecting "certain partially executed designs for ornamenting the chancel of the church of Shevioke." The designs are thus described— "The North wall is covered with a diapered ground of red and white, the white being intended to be gilt. On this ground are five circular spaces or ' each of about two feet six inches in diameter. Within these circles are delineated, in water-colours--I. The Annunciation; 2. Our Lord • in Majesty,' seated on a rain- bow ; 3. Our Lord being led to execution ; 4. Our Lord with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus; 5. The first miracle in Cana of Galilee. These representations are stated to be all taken from Overbeck. They are all Scriptural subjects, and in design seem to be unobjectionable, with a single exception. In the Annunciation the angel is kneeling to the Virgin Mary. This is open to censure, as implying that the blessed Virgin is an object of adoration ; and this objection is not removed by the fact (in itself satisfactory) of the Virgin being also kneeling, with uplifted hands, as in prayer to God." The Bishop ordered that "the scandal of representing the angel as kneel- ing to the Virgin" be remos ed ; but no other part of the work was of a character to be forbidden. "In an age when no decoration is deemed too costly for the dwellings of the opulent among us, of all orders, it is surely a matter of just praise, rather than of reasonable censure, that a not opulent clergyman, modest and unpretending in his own house, devotes whatever means he can command to the somewhat sumptuous, it may be, yet sober and reverential adorning the house of God."

There have lately been several "garotte robberies" in Manchester, Birming ham, and Leeds. Last week, Mr. James Mann of Leeds was attacked by three men. One of them strangled him till he was temporarily insensible ; and so rendered it easy for the others to steal his money, and for aU to escape. On Saturday night, Mr. Whilock, draper, of Birmingham, was attacked in Dean Street, by two men who tried to "garotte" him : being a powerful man he beat off his two assailants, but a third joined them, and they then over- powered him, and, laying him insensible on the pavement, took off his watch. When the police discovered him, his face was covered with blood from wounds on the head, and his leg was broken. The new mode of robbery has even been adopted by juvenile criminals. The Manchester Borough Magistrates on Monday committed for trial Mary Ann Welch and Mary O'Brien, two girls each under the age of fifteen, for robbing Mary Mulch, a girl about the same age, of two shillings and three halfpence. The two girl thieves were seen to come out of a public-house, and to push against Alutch as they passed her ; money being heard to rattle in her pocket, one of them put her arm round Mutch's neck, and throttled her till she fell on the pavement, when the two rifled her pockets and ran off.

Mr. John Knapp, cattle-jobber of Bottesford, bought a pistol and loaded it with ball, as a protection across the meadows, in an evening walk home from Nottingham with a considerable sum of money. In a lonely pathway he saw five men. As he neared them, he put his pistol on full coo ready for use. The foremost of the men saluted him, but instantly after he had passed others of them he received a blow on the head from a life-preserver. He reared his pistol to the face of one of the men and drew the trigger ; but the nipple was defective, and the pistol would not fire ; and as soon as the rob- bers found that the danger from fire-arms was gone, they closed on him and beat him till he was senseless. They carried off' twenty-one pounds in gold. Mr. Knapp lies dangerously ill at the Talbot Inn, Nottingham. As the night was dark, he cannot describe the robbers.

In the county of Nottingham, where the Robin Hood spirit is hereditary, it is said that there are several "poaching associations," and it would seem as if there were a similar organized opposition to the game-laws in the county of Norfolk.

The preserves of Mr. Sherwin Sherwin, of Stapleford Rani Bmmoote, were beaten by poachers several times last week. On Mondai, the keepers had a set fight with some dozen ; and succeeded in capturing William Wheatley, a gigantic fellow from Spondon, near Derby, ',oho was stunned by wounds on the head. Wheatley was sent to gaol on Saturday, and his wife and six children must go to the workhouse at the coat of his parish. In the preserves of Sir Arthur Clifton, at Barton Wood, there was another more serious battle. The keepers were fewer than usual—only three, and the poachers were at least forty ; but the keepers had powerful eel from a mastiff named Lion, of great local fame. The keepers first met three men : they immediately let loose the dog—which, however, was half-muzzled—and rushed on. The foremost poacher drew his clasp-knife and ripped open the belly of the dog ; but the keepers were so fierce that they were on the point of overpowering the three poachers, when one of them gave a shrill whistle. "The grounds now seemed alive with men ; poachers poured in from all quarters. One of the keepers, less hurt than the others, states that there were 'a lane full.' The odds were fearful ; but the keepers still continued to fight valiantly. All attempts at capture were given up, and it was now merely in self-defence that Sir Arthur's men fought. In a short time they were completely overpowered, the poachers leaving them in the preserves frightfully mutilated. It is perfectly miraculous that no sacrifice of human life took place. Imagining that the villagers might be aroused, the poachersbeat a rapid retreat ; not, -however, before several of them were so fearfully

bruised as to be obliged to be carried out of the field." No one has been taken. The keepers are recovering, but Lion died on Tuesday morning. The parishes of Letton, Shipdham, and Cranworth, near IsTorwich, have been overrun by poachers, who have been so openly lawless that they have almost cleared the estate of Mr. Brampton Gurdon of game, and have threat- ened his gamekeeper, Mr. Whitear, with death if he interfered with them. Last Saturday night, some dozen of these men surrounded Mr. Whitear's house, ransacked it, and searched through all his out-buildings, shouting. to him to come forth from his concealment and be shot : as they drew off they fired a volley of guns. It would seem that they went straight from Mr. Whitear's house to Letton Park. During all the last week, a body of twelve of the Norwich Police, under Superintendent Parker, and Constable Roller, a powerful man, had been watching every night for the poachers ; and this night they soon encountered them. The Police had the three keepers armed with guns in their party ; the moon was bright, but they stole under the cover to within a hundred yards of the body of poachers ; they then stood upright and rushed forwards. The poachers cried "Stand !" when they were with- in eleven yards, and fired three guns. The keepers replied with two guns. Superintendent Parker received the charge of one poacher's gun, and fell fiat, as if dead ; Constable Greenacre was shot in the face and breast. The poachers made a vigorous resistance in the hand-to-hand fight, but were van- quished. Three were taken on the spot, and two were caught in pursuit ; and next day two more were arrested in their beds. All have been sent to gaol. Superintendent Parker is in a critical state ; twenty-five shots have been taken from his face and neck.

There have also been frays with poachers on the estate of Lord Ravens- worth ; and in the plantations of Kr. Locke, at Rowde Forde, in Wiltshire.

There was a fatal boiler explosion, yesterday sennight, at the mouth of the Lower Soundwell Pit Colliery, Kingswood, near Bristol. The boiler was one of the large circular kind peculiar to the district; it was about forty- eight feet in circumference ; it supplied the steam of an engine of twenty- horse power, and had worked well for five or six years. A "journey" of men had just been hauled up, and they had just withdrawn towards the counting-house, when, without any warning, the boiler blew up, and scat- tered to an immense distance the materials of the massive masonry into which it was built. Thomas Waller was killed on the spot; Francis Fowler, John Palmer, and a boy not named, were dreadfully scalded and wounded. Waller has left a widow and five children. Reports say that "fragments of the timber and iron-work, with pieces of iron pipe, strewed the ground for a distance of several hundred yards, and some of the shattered materials were carried nearly a quarter of a mile. The boiler was rent in every direction ; and its top, which must have weighed some tons, after knocking fifteen or twenty feet from a tall engine-stack, fell into a field more than one hundred yards distant ; a large portion of the ground of which it ploughed up as if it had been struck by a thunderbolt."