26 JULY 1851, Page 11

The Select Committee on Newspaper Stamps have published their report.

They do not directly recommend the abolition of the stamp, but they sug- gest that "news is not in itself a desirable subject of taxation.'

The delegates of the Peace Congress gave a soiree yesterday at Willis's Rooms to their foreign friends: seven hundred persons were present. Two Roman Catholic Bishops—Dr. Turner, Bishop of Salford, and Dr. Errington, Bishop of Plymouth, were consecrated yesterday at Manchester, by Cardinal Wiseman ; the Irish Primate Cullen, the Bishop of Beverley, the Bishop of Birmingham and the Bishop of Northampton, assisting in the ceremony. The spectacle was open to the public. Five shillings was charged for the choir-aisles, half-a-crown and eighteenpence for other places. At these prices there was a full church.

A Roman Catholic priest is accused by the Secretary of the Ragged Schools, in a letter to the Times, of exciting the ill feeling of the people against the schools in Edward Mews, near Manchester Square. The women and chil- dren have torn up Bibles, Testaments, and little reward-books, with "hor- rible yells," opposite the schools. The priests arc said to have threatened their hocks, that if their children were not removed from the schools, their names would be called at the altar. The proximate cause of the outburst, which took place so long ago as the 16th instant, was an attempt on the part of the priest to get at the names of the children in the school by walk- ing in and asking them their names. The Reverend Mr. Oakeley, head of St. John's Roman Catholic Church, Islington, has written a letter, denying that the schoolmaster who was brought up at the Clerkenwell Police Court a day or two ago, charged with cruelty to a child, is a priest or ecclesiastic of any kind.

Sarah Barber has been found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged, at Not- tingham, for poisoning her husband at Eastwood. Ingram, her paramour, was acquitted.

Spanish papers of the 20th inform us that cholera has ceased in the Canary Islands.

A " fast " young man died at Pisa, rejecting the good offices of sundry monks, who threatened him with "the Devil"; and exacting a promise from a friend that he would not leave his body until it was buried. The friend, a Corsican, accordingly watched over the body in the burial-ground. At dead of night, "the Devil" stood by his side, draped in black and red, having enormous horns and a long tail. He was asked what he wanted; bat as he gave no intelligible reply, and made advances towards the body, the Corsican coolly drew a pistol and shot the Devil dead. He proved to be the convent " bellman" !

Rumours have gradually crept into the papers of the defeat of a Russian army under General Niesterow by the Circassians. This day's news confirms previous rumours. The Russians fled over the plains of Tiflis. The loss of the army in men, ammunition, weapons, and horses, is far greater than has been sustained for years ; nearly all the strongholds which had been conquered, and maintained at such an immense expense, have been again lost. Report adds that one of the commanders of the Hungarian campaigns is to be Com- mander-in-chief of the Caucasian army.