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The Congregational Union of England and Wales has just held its au- tumnal meeting at York; and the occasion was taken for a new anti-edu- stational manifesto. Since the Union held its spring meeting in London, and passed resolutions against the minute of the Privy Council on Educa- tion, a supplemental minute has appeared, providing that School-Inspectors shall not have authority to inquire into the religions instruction given in schools not belonging to the Established Church; which was presumed to obviate the dislike of Dissenters to official interference with religion. At the recent meeting this supplemental minute was the subject of a long dis- cussion, which ended in the adoption of resolutions confirming the previous decision: the Congregational Union declare that they do not object to the practice of giving information to the official Inspectors, but to the receiving of money from Government, however indireCtly, for religious instruction; all that involves compulsory taxation for religions purposes.

The slight improvement in the manufacturing districts, noticed last week, has not been maintained; indeed, the statistics of the. Lancashire cotton manufacture present a melancholy record of suffering.

• " The number of cotton-mills in the county," says a Blackburn correspondent of the Times, "may be stated from official returns, as far as attainable, at 920, employing about 170,000 bands. Of the mills above set down, nearly 200 are at present entirely closed; this number including, in a great majority of instances, mills employing many above the average of the whole number. Of the 170.000 bands employed in Lancashire in this important manufacture, the number in full work is only about 48,000; the number on short time, from two to four days a week, about 87.000; and the number unemployed, about 35,000. Many of those unemployed and working short time (earning a fourth, a third, or a half of their usual wages) have been so for many months, and many of those fully employed at present have been subjected to partial cessation of labourand short time during portions of the past six months; so that the resources of all have been more or less restricted, or annihilated."

Not only are the operatives destitute, but the shopkeepers and wholesale dealers are without income. At Blackburn, on Tuesday, considerable ex- citement was caused by a procession of more than a thousand unemployed bands, who begged from the inhabitants as they went through the town. This movement was preceded by an appeal placarded about the town on Saturday, addressed to the Guardians of the Poor and inhabitants, to the effect, that the present weight of suffering is insupportable; that although people deprecate violence, they cannot die from hunger; that as a legal right to support exists, the necessary tax must be levied for the purpose of affording it Liberal contributions of money, bread, bacon, meat, and flour, were extracted from the inhabitants.

At Ashton, no arrangement between the masters and operatives having been effected, the condition of the people: has become deplorable in the extreme.. Many persons have bean without food fur two days together; and respectable women are begging in the streets. Subscriptions were raised to afford some relief.

The distressed condition of the operatives of Oldham has led to a meeting of the gentry, clergy, and inhabitants, to devise means for alle- viating the suffering. The meeting was held on the 11th; and it resulted in the establishment of a relief committee; Mr. Duricuft, one of the Mem- Bliss for the Borough, giving a donation of 501.

A meeting, convened by the Mayor, was held in Preston on Friday week, to consider the propriety of establishing soup dispensaries in the borough. A variety of resolutions were agreed to unanimously, declaring the absolute necessity of endeavouring to alleviate the present distress by means of the preparation of soup and the distribution of bread; and appointing a com- mittee of management for carrying out the intentions of the meeting. A iist of subscriptions was also read, amounting to upwards of 4001.

On Saturday morning last, all the men employed on the Great Northern Railway were, without any previous notice, paid off; and the whole of the works are accordingly stopped. We understand, however, from the engi- neer of the company, that it is intended to retain about one-third of the men hitherto employed on this part of the line, and to push on the works between Lincoln and Peterborough with the utmost vigour, so as to open that part as soon as possible. The remaining portion, from Peterborough to London, is completely stopped.—Lincolnshire Times.

Mr. George Thurtell, a florist and landscape-gardener of Bury, who has hitherto maintained a high character, is in custody charged with divers robberies. Many articles suppcs si to have been stolen, and numerous duplicates, were found in his possession. The warrant was issued against him on a charge of stealing plate from a gentleman's house, the grounds of which he had been employed to lay out: be had been treated as a guest in the gentleman's house.

A forgery of five-pound notes of the North Wilts Bank has been discovered at Bath; where William Green, a young man, has uttered a number of spurious Mites purporting to be issued by the Chippenham branch. When he was arrested, serwiteen false notes were found upon him. He was committed for trial. The forgeries are skilfully done; the signatures are lithographed fac-similes of real signatures; but the different thickness and texture of the paper led to detection. To add to the excitement caused by the discovery, Inspector Gibson of the Bath Police log his life in endeavouring to trace the parties who aided the prisoner in the' fraud. He had been sent to Bristol; and while inspecting some back premi- ses, he fell into a cellar and sustained a severe fracture of the skull.

James Hearsey, a journeyman blacksmith of Reading, has attempted to murder his wife, in a fit of ralonsy. She is an elderly and not a good-looking woman; bet, under some notion that she had been unfaithful to him, Hearsey assailed her with a poker, striking her over the head so violently that the iron bent: the wo- man fell senseless, and Hearsey seems to have thought that he had killed her; for he immediately inflicted fatal wounds on his own throat with a razor. A Police- man served jug, in time to witness his death. The wife was not dead; but the hopes of hersrecovery are very faint. The unhappy couple had four children; one of whom saw the mother struck down, and gave the alarm. It appeared at the inquest that the man had recently exhibited a disordered state of mind; he had been jealous of his wife some years since: letters were read proving that he now not only suspected but was confident of her infidelity with an old man—a cripple from rheumatism who lodged in the house, and on whom the wife attended. There does not sewn to have been any cause for this jealousy. One of the letters hints prospectively at the crime which has been perpetrated. A verdict of " Tem- porary i sanity " was returned.

One Srurley has shot his brother-in-law, Mr. Page, a farmer of Cawston, near ,wieb, because he would not lend him money. Sturley had been unfortunate quvhikietfolipth tain a livelihood, apparently from his own misconduct; and tage and deal for him, having kept two of his children; but at length 'llhe farmer refuse -to lend any more money. On Tuesday morning, Sturley, armed withlwoliistels, wept from Norwich to Cawston; he saw Page, and asked for money; ant on receiving a steady refusal, fired both pistols, successively; the

contents of one passing through Page's month. His life is in danger. The assas- sin made no effort to escape.

The wife of Brown, a blacksmith of Higham, near Rochester, having died soon after childbirth in a very suspicious way, an inquest has been held. As soon as the inquirywas announced, the husband absconded. It appears that Mrs. Brown was seized with her fatal sickness after taking gruel given by her husband; and in the body a quantity of oxalic acid was detected. Brown had predicted the woman's death. The verdict was " Wilful murder" against him.

A fire having broken out, under suspicious circumstances, in a bat-shop at Nottingham, Spicer, the owner, has been arrested. Ile had just insured the stock for 4001.

An express-train on the York and Newcastle Railway has met with a serious accident. While it was going over Newham Bog, at the rate of forty miles an boar, the spring-pins of the engine gave way, causing the ploughs in front of the machine to tear up the sleepers; the rails were displaced, and the train of course was driven on to the road; the locomotive was completely buried in the bog, with the tender on the top of it, while a luggage-van and truck were turned upside-down. When the engine-driver and stoker had been extricated from the bog, it was found that the former was little hurt, but the fireman was so scalded and bruised that he was not expected to recover. Only one passenger was hurt—a gentle- man who was cut above the eye by falling against a window-frame. The coup- ling of the van broke, or the affair would probably have been more serious.

Two third-class passengers on the Manchester and Sheffield Railway having quarrelled and fought while the train was going. on, the guard separated them, locking one in a compartment by himself: on arriving at the Penistone station this man was missed; an engine was sent back, and the lifeless body was found on the road: the man had got out of the window while the train was proceeding rapidly, and the fall had killed him.

A porter has been killed at the Tewkesbury station, through the narrowness of an archway. As he was getting on a train going out, by some means he was jammed between a truck and the wall, the space between the two being only six or seven inches. In returning a verdict of Accidental death," the Coroner's Jury has called attention to the dangerous narrowness of the arch.