Vrofgrtres.

Tuesday's Gazette contained a notification by the Speaker, that in four- teen days he should issue a writ for the election of a Member in the room of Lord Worsley, now a Peer.

Lord Lincoln has consented to stand for the representation of Man- chester. His Lordship's friends boast of making good progress. Mean- while, Mr. Bright is actively in the field, addressing the electors at meetings in the various divisions of the borough.

Mr. Ex-Sheriff Laurie has issued an address to the electors of the borough of Pontefract, offering himself as a candidate at the next general election in the room of Lord Pollington, who has announced his intention to withdraw from Parliament. There have been several cattle-show meetings in the provinces during the week. On the whole, the speeches have been tame. At the meeting of the West Sussex Agricultural Association, at Steyning, on Monday, the Duke of Richmond made hardly se much as an allusion to the past; but contented himself with recommending drainage, the application of science to agriculture, attention to the welfare of tenants, and efforts to ameliorate the condition of the agricultural labourers, "nay—labourers of all classes." At the Arundel meeting on Tuesday, Mr. John Abel Smith, M.P., improved the occasion on behalf of the agricultural labourer. lie was one of then who could never think the proprietors of land in England had done their duty fully until something more had been done to make the labourer in- dependent of parish-relief; and he looked forward to the time when some plan might be devised tending to that great national object. He believed' that, great as was the glory of England in her Poor-law—for abused as that law had been, it was still the 'glory of England as compared with the rest of Europe—he felt it would be still greater if benefit societies could be so improved, by some public and "general plan, as to afford means to the labourer to secure himself, by contributions at short periods when in health-, against the pressure of sickness and distress in after life. For a beginninc, he would put down 251. as a prize to the labourer who, by means of benefit societies, or in any other way, by monthly, weekly, or other deposits, should have made the greatest saving . for the future. This announcement was much cheered.

A public meeting was held at the 'Guildhall of Exeter on Friday, to con- sider the sanatory condition of that city. The meeting was convened by requisition to the Mayor, who occupied the chair. Among thqse present, were Lord Ebrington, M.P., Sir John Duckworth, MP., Mr. Chadwick, and Dr. Southwood Smith; the two last named gentlemen attending as a de- putation from London. Mr. Chadwick made an excellent speech; so di4 Dr. Southwood Smith, in moving a resolution for forming a branch asso- ciation to act in concert with the parent Health of Towns Association. Although, he remarked, the human family has now lived together in communities for at least six thousand years, it has not made its abodes salubrious. "Air water, and light., are physical agents which are indispensable to human existence. They are the primary pabulum of life; and being so, they are provided for us by Nature in unlimited abundance; we have only to open our hands to receive them, always fresh, always pure, always inexhaustible. And yet there is no city or town so constructed as to admit everywhere free currents of fresh air; there are few houses so constructed as to admit of a proper degree of air and light; and al- most universally the contrivances for the supply of water have hitherto been to the last degree clumsy and inadequate. Wherever human beings reside, there must of necessity always be a large quantity of dead and decaying vegetable and animal matter, the refuse of food and clothing, and of the materials used in the various branches of trade and manufacture. By the decomposition of this matter, gases are produced which are poisonous to every human being who inhales them. To warn us of their danger, Nature has made them disgusting. One would have thought that the Bret effect of intelligence, not to speak of science, would have been fo provide for their immediate and complete removal; yet everywhere they are allowed to remain about,and to contaminate onr fields, our gardens, our streets, our houses, and the very innermost rooms in which we live and sleep. By a beautiful arrangement, decomposition and recomposition are correlative and equak By this law, the balance and the indestructibility of nature are maintained. In physical matter, the operation of this law is so perfect, that at the present mo ment there is perhaps not a single drop of water more or less in the earth than there was when the present order of things was first established. It is the same in organic matter. The plant in dying affords nourishment to the living animal; the animal in dying is reborn in &wens and fruits. There is not a single particle of the organic matter which is wasted in our towns and cities, which is lost to nature, or need be lost to us. As you have heard over and over again stated today, by the proper collection and appropriation of this wasted matter, every populous city might more than reproduce the fixxl it consumes. Bet, instead of returning this matter to nature, in such a way as that she may reendow it with the principle of life and restore it to us again in new forms of beauty and usefulness, we retain it among us—I will not say we permit it to be lost, that would be a comparative blessing—but we retain it among us, to ho a scourge, to produce disease, suffering, and premature death." According to the Reports of the Registrar-General, ten thousand lives have been destroyed. in a part only of England, by causes believed to be removeable. In the last quarter, the deaths were greater by 15,227 than those in the corre- sponding quarter of last year. In some places the mortality had more than doubled. The immediate cause of this dreadful mortality was attributed to the unusual heat which had promoted a' more than ordinarily rapid decomposition of animal and vegetable matter. When large masses of the people are thus allowed to perish from causes which are retnoveable, it is an immolation," for which those who know the remedy and have it in their power to use it are responsible.

The branch association was constituted, and steps were taken to carry on the movement.

Several of the parties in Oldham who were running their mills shore time are preparing to work their machinery full time. The greater parr of the mills in the borough are now working full time.—Manchester Coo rier.

At Blackburn, the spinners and manufacturers have resolved to continuo short time until the 30th instant.

"Cases of starvation" are reported in some of the country papers,—the effect in part of scanty employment, but more of the season: that nips the energies of the very poor at the time when they most need strength to struggle for life, and sends them to lie down and die in corners and re- mote places.

Bad potatoes and insufficient wages, and therefore insufficient food, are the imputed causes of a destructive fever in some parts of Berkshire. "In the parish of Upton, a hamlet adjoining Bluebury, in that county, the popu- lation, which was one hundred and forty-two souls seven weeks ago, is now reduced to seventy-three, sixty-nine buVing died within that short period. —many through want. Among the number, are four children of the nister; who, on attending the dying beds of the victims, caught the infection and conveyed it to his dwelling. According to the opinion of the physician of the place, the only alternative appears to be for every individual to quit the village, and for every dwelling to be destroyed, there being no other means left to stay the infection; such is, therefore, about to be done."

The Andover Union-house is full to overflowing with agricultural labourers and their families. The number of inmates is from two to three

hundred; and new iron bedsteads had to be purchased last week. The wages of the married agricultural labourers, with families of six to eight

children, all unemployed but the father, in many parishes in this union are but 8s. per week. From that pittance from ls. to Is 6d. per week rent is

deducted. Some single men are paid but 4e. to Is. per week, while some have no employment at all.

The Wa!Bingham Board of Guardians have issued a circular to the other anions of Essex, embodying a series of resolutions on the Removal Act. The resolutions declare that the operation of the act is likely to be attended 'with great hardship both to rate-payers and paupers; that it will create litigation and expense, and produce unfriendly feelings between neighbour- ing parishes and unions; and they add— It has become essentially necessary that the law of settlement should be done away with altogether, and that the maintenance of the poor should he national, and not parochial; that as labour is the source of all value, and every description of property is made and supported by labour, every description of property should be rated for the maintenance of the poor."

We understand that all the necessary legal and other steps for completing the transfer of the estate at Redmarley, recently purchased by Mr. Feargus O'Connor' under the hammer, at the Bell Hotel, Gloucester, are being proceeded with. The farm, which consists of 180 acres, is to form a Chartist coiiperative estate; upon which are to be located about sixty per- sons or families, with allotments of about two acres of land to each cottage. —Gloucester Journal.

An inquiry took place at Cambridge last week which has excited a great deal of attention. It was an inquest on the body of a girl who had died after being confined in a most ill-contrived prison, where she had been placed by the order of a Proctor of the University. We compress the story disclosed in the evidence. The deceased, Elizabeth Howe, was a prostitute: on the evening of the 6th November, the Reverend Mr. Kingsley, the Junior Proctor, encountered her in the streets; he gave her into the custody of constables whoaccompanied him; and she was locked up for the night in a place called "the Spinning-house." The room in which she Was lodged was without a fire, and she had a damp bed to sleep on; this brought on rheumatic fever, of which the girl died. On being examined, Mr. Kingsley admitted that Howe was not behaving indecently or disorderly when he arrested her: he apprehended her because the constables said she was a prostitute. She had only another girl with her. The Coroner asked—" Have you instructions as to your duties otherwise than the statutes of the University? " The witness re- fused at first to answer • but eventually he said—" I have no other instructions. I charter never read the chrter of Queen "Elizabeth, giving the 1Tniversity power to apprehend disorderly persons. Deceased was reprimanded the next morning, and discharged. I believe the University, has power to cause the apprehension of prostitutes in the street, although they may not be miscondnoting themselves." -" I am but partially acquainted with the internal arrangements of the Spinning- house. It appears to me to be a proper place to confine females. I don't know how females are accommodated in i gaols. I am not certain that I have seen the interior of the cell. I believe I was n it a few days ago. I merely delivered her to the keeper. The glass [the single pane in a window] was broken the last time I saw the cell." Persons who had been imprisoned in the Spinning-house de- scribed it as a dreadful place—cold and damp; the bed-clothes were very damp. The Coroner summed up. He was in a state of doubt as to the legality of the practice which Mr. Kingsley had carried out: it was founded on a charter of F.lieabeth, which had afterwards been embodied in an act of Parliament; still he doubted the power to arrest a peaceable person without a warrant. If the arrest was illegal, the Proctor would be involved in a charge of manslaughter. The Jury, after a lengthened consultation, returned the following verdict— "We find that Elizabeth Howe died of rheumatic fbver, caused by a violent cold caught at the Spinning-house, on the night of the 6th of November; she having Nen conveyed thither In the custody of William Townley. Kingsley, Proctorof the Unfree- shy, and confined for that night in a cold and damp cell, from the effeMs of which she died. The Jury cannot separate without expressing their abhorrence at a system which sanctions the apprehension of females when not offending against the general law of the land, and confining them in a gaol unfit for the worst of felons. The Jury also request the Coroner to forward a report of the whole of the proceedings to the Se- cretary of State for the Home Department."

A correspondent of the Times, "A Cantab," points out to what shameful inva- sions of propriety and of personal liberty the desiotic powers of the Proctors may lead. He says—" The unfortunate deceased, Elizabeth Howe, was a remarkably good-looking and lady-like girl, of nineteen; by far superior to the generality of that class of persons to which she unhappily belonged. It appears in evidence, that on the 6th of November last, while committing no offence of any sort or kind, she was seized by the Proctor and his myrmidons": might not the same treat- ment have fallen on a female whose character was spotless? He avers that it has. "Let me ask the Proctors at present in office, whether or no the following circumstance actually occurred during the last fortnight. A young lady of the highest respectability was quitting a friend's house in the company of a male re- lation ; the latter returned, after passing the gate, in search of a forgotten um- brella, leaving his fair companion for an instant unprotected; and, to his astonish- ment, on hastening to rejoin her, found that she bad disappeared. The young lady, in spite of her appearance and protestations, had actually been conveyed to the Spinning-house by the loathsome satellites of a Proctor; whom I hereby in- vite to publish his own name if he dare, and to disprove the above statement if he can. I have simply adduced the above instance to show that a girl need not even be known to these gentlemen, far less misconduct herself in their presence, to in- sure an introduction to their pestilential establishment. The merest accident may place a modest and virtuous young woman in the immediate society of the most abandoned of her sex."

The four Proctors of the University have since addressed a letter to the Times denying the truth of" A Cantab's " statement. They quote his charge and then say, "We, the undersigned, the Proctors at present office, hereby declare that there is not the slightest foundation for the above statement, but that it is a pure fabrication from beginning to end."

The Magistrates of Hertford were engaged on Saturday in investigating a most atrocious case of highway robbery anal attempted murder. The culprits were Pearse and Smith, who pretended to be travelling brush-sellers, but were believed to follow worse occupations when opportunity offered; the prosecutor was James Jarvis, a hawker of earthen-ware. On the 21st November, -having sold his goods, he was proceeding homewards in his cart; at Ware he mentioned, in the hearina -of the prisoners, that he had sold out and was going to Datchworth: on the react two stones were thrown at his head; and immediately after this he was assailed -and beaten by two men who bad got into the cart: the ruffians tried to rifle his lockets; he struggled, and one proporld to murder him, as they could then "-search him better"; the other replied, So we will—he's got money, because he said he had sold all his goods? They then beat him still more savagely. He managed to jerk himself out of the cart; but the attack being continued, he gave himself up for lost, till some persons were heard approaching, and the robbers ran off, having only taken a few pence. The poor man's head and face were horribly mangled. A huge club, soaked with blood, was found near the spot where the assault was made; it had been recently cut for the murderous work. Jarvis re- cognized his assailants by their voices. Other circumstances also implicated them. They were committed for trial.

The score jeons accused of robberies of malt at Abingdon, have at length, aller411.0 reliminary investigation, been committed for trial.