Ebe Vrabincts.

Meetings of the " Protectionist-party," and of Protectionist agricultural societies in different districts, continue a leading feature of provincial events.

An "unusually strong meeting" of the party in Huntingdonshire, held at the county-town on Saturday, was marked by a speech of Earl Fitz-

william. in opposition to the Protectionist feeling of the assemblage. Earl Fitzwilliam admitted that the convocation of the meeting might be attri- buted principally to the tenantry of the county, and he declared his entire respect

for that class of his countrymen. He avowed his dependence upon that class. " Myself belonging to another class, 1 beg to express to you that I consider that other class as pensioners upon the industry of those who are their tenants. It is to their industry and the employment of their capital that we.owe oar incomes." But so are the interests of all classes bound up together, that he deemed it "im- possible for the Legislature to accomplish the interest of one class without in some degree compromising the welfare of all others. Whenever they have attempted it, it has always failed, even in accomplishing the interest of that class for whose protection it has endeavoured to legislate. I wish to consider all the people of England as one family. The gentleman who moved the resolution [demanding a restoration of protection] said that also, and that he did not wish to see one class arrayed against another. In that opinion I entirely concur: I have never rejoiced in such differences. I have been desirous of helping all classes, instead of setting them one against another. Though you may have seen that there are districts in this empire in which the class connected with the landed interest does not enjoy that popularity which I trust it does in other parts of England, yet you must at- tribute that to a deep conviction in thelltninds of the population, in the minds of the peasantry, in the minds of thousands of the inhabitants of these districts, that the legislation of England on this question of the Corn-laws has not been intended for the benefit of the whole, but for the benefit of one class in particular. (Great cheering.) I do not say that it is so. I state this only as the deep conviction which exists in the minds of millions of nay fellow countrymen, that such was the intention of the Legislature." He combated a statement contained in the resolution, that free trade is the cause of distress existing among the agriculturists. "What was the case under protection ? for of course you would expect something better from protection than from the want of it. (Applause.) Exactly so; but why is it that you have now a price of thirty-five shillings a quarter, and what was the law of 1815? I wish to know, if we are not to have that law, what are we to have? (A Voice—" The law of 1846-1842—in fact, protection.") Protection is a very vague word. I want something more definite upon that head; and I doubt whether any gentle- man in this hall can give me any definite law which he would propose instead of free trade. (A Voice—" We would go back to the law of 1842.") Well, what was the law of 1842? (A Voice—"From four to ten shillings a quarter.") That gentleman is greatly mistaken. The protective law was the law of 1828; and I would suggest that gentlemen should not contradict- unless they are sure of their fact, and that they are right. Now, previously to 1842, what was the law which existed ? I pause for a reply. (Silence.) What! no answer? Well thee, in compassion for you, Twill tell you. The law of 1842 was the amended law or 1828. Well, but what was' the law of 1828? It was not, as the gentleman in the body of the hall observed, a duty of from four to ten shillings. It was a law of a sliding scale; under the operation of which, you will bear in mind, in the year 1835 the average was precisely the same as that of which you have been complaining. . . . . I will tell you why I apprehend the imports of the last year to have been so very great. Do you remember, gentlemen, what was the state of things in the earlier part of the year 1847? I wish to ask the question, be- cause I want to know from those gentlemen who complain of the prices of 1835, what they were in 1847. Why, about a hundred shillings the quarter. Die reason why there has been this great importation was the high prices in England in 1847. Those high prices created a great importation in 1847, especially con- sidering the season; and the consequence was a great depression in the price of produce. Of that there can be no doubt. That importation couldmot have taken place unless for the relaxation of what iscalled free trade; but what would have been the condition of the people of this country if that relaxation had ml taken place? You have not however, answered the question which I put: whet is your answer to the question of what would you have instead of free trade. (A Voice—" A fixed duty, to keep up the revenue, and protection to native in- dustry.") Well, but if you protect native industry you must exclude the cols (Cries of "No, nor) There was some sense in the proposition for a fixed duty: the revenue now derived from foreign corn is not as large a revenue as you might have derived from it; but that you can go back to protection or restrictive dnuee, now, is a thing utterly impossible. (Loud cries of " No, no " Why net? " What is to prevent it?" "Is it because the King of the West Riding =owe shall not?") It is not because the King of the West Riding says you shall not—LY the way, I think that gentleman has been talking a great deal toe-much, and that he is a class legislator—it is not because the King of the West Riding says you shall not, but because I think you will find a public feeling in England which will make it impossible for you, under present circumstances, to return to pro- tection. (A Voice—" Well, what objection have you to try the sense of the peo- pie of England'on the subject,' Great cheering.) Well, if you could try it, what would you do yourselves? You could not get.a proper man for your pur- pose from the gentlemen around me; and through all Cambridgeshire, North- amptonshire, Lincolnshire, and other agricultural counties, you cannot get better men than they are. Whom weu'd you displace? Those very persons who are acting upon the principle on which you wish them to act; and therefore I think that if you succeeded in your proposal, it would not be attended with any great success After the law of 1815, you remember what happened in.1821 and 1822., After the law of 1828 you remember what happened in the year 1835. The Legislature after all these attempts thought it was better to leave things to take their ordinary course, and to let the people of this country buy and sell wherever they thought it moat advisable to do so." (Lord Fitzwilliam sat down amidst groans and hisses.) Mr. J. Game Day contested some of Lord Fitzwilliam'a statistics, and supported the resolution; which was carried with only a few dissentient hands. A resolution affirming that the present House of Commons does not possess the confidence nor " represent the present opinions of the people " was proposed by Mr. Fryer, and opposed by Captain Duberly, and Pro- fessor Pryme, late M.P. for Cambridge: it was carried by a " considerable majority."

A meeting of gentlemen favourable to Protection doctrines was held on Wednesday, at Edenbridge in Kent, to form a local society in connexion with the National Association for the Protection of Native Industry and Capitals Earl Stanhope, the longest speaker, declared, that " if the exist- ing distress continues it will be utterly impossible to collect any taxes: the people will neither be able nor willing to pay them." A local society was organized, and provision was made for funds by the adoption of the voluntary "penny rate" towards a Protection fund, originally promulgated at a meeting in the county some weeks since.

The meeting of the Blandford Agricultural Society, on Saturday, was characterized by the passing of a specific resolution to suspend the standing rule excluding the discussion of politics. Mr. George Bankes; M.P., Mr. Her Seymer, M.P., and Mr. Grantley Berkeley, were the chief speakers. The speech of Mr. Bankes made a brief complimentary reference to Ireland, and the movement in favour of protection there set on foot. Mr. Seymer teak the Times to task for its ignorance of practical matters of farming; and Mr. Grantley Berkeley " unmasked " Mr. Cobden's perseverance in agitation, by explaining that he had made a magnificent. fortune at it and was feed, to keep it up; and he asked what " tyranny was so monstrous as that of the turbulent Quaker " Bright—what could equal the tyrannical sentiments of this " Demomutic.despot"?

The tenantry of Mr. FL C. Start, of Critchell House, invited their land- lord to an entertainment in the Crown Inn, Blandford, on Tuesday week, and presented him with his portrait, by way of expressing the high esteem and regard in which they hold hilt• as a most exemplary and liberal land- lord. Mr. J. Harvey, a tenant whose family have held their farm from father to son for one hundred and forty-two years under Mr. Sturt's family, presided; there were about sixty tenants present, and the Reverend Mr. Heatable was among them. The Chairman stated, that there were many other tenants whose families had held for terms as long and unbroken as his own. Mr. Start stated his views of what are the duties of a landlord— " It is the duty of a landlord to find every accommodation 8w the due cultiva- tion of the farm, and conveniences for modern. cultivation. It is proper that all permanent improvements should be done at the cost of thelandlord. Those things I alwaysthave been and am ready to do." The landlord's improvements should include " commodious, salubrious, and sun-regarding cottages"; and he had laid out 10,0001 in that manner. " I think, so far as labour is concerned, that must be adjusted between the labourers and yourselves."

Mr. Heatable was of course a speaker: his health was drunk with marked signs of his popularity.

He admitted that last year he lost a great deal-of money—all the interest of his money; he onlymade half his rent. It cost him 4101. In manual labour upon 100 acres. However; his farming operations were treated as a sort of public property. His experiments had been attended with great lose, but also with great gratification to himself, and they were not without profit to others. He had made mistakes about sheep, bat was determined this year not to be beaten in the article of pigs; and so =smith details about pig-rearing.

The East Riding of Yorkshire Union of Mechanics' Institutes held an annual soiree, in the Mechanics' Hall at Beverley, on Wednesday last week. The report stated, that since the establishment of the Union, in January 1848, when the three institutions of Beverley, Driffields and Bridlington, were its whole component members, it had been joined by ten more insti- tutions. Four new primary institutions have been formed, at Bridlington Quay, Filen Market Weighton, and Nafferton, and fbur " village branches" have been opened, at Brandesimrton, Froding:ham, Kilham, and Langtofts " It is intended to establish reading-rooms and libraries, with occasional lea. tures, in every village and hamlet in the East Riding." The Reverend J. Aspinall, Rector of Althorpe in Lincolnshire, made a speech which suitably followed up the gratifying statements of the report by a oongratulatory view of the general position of the education question, which he enlivened by much amusing anecdotical illustration. He contrasted the present position of his fellow labonrers with that which they occupied only some years ago. Then the wort was indeed up-hill toil ; now the chief business at such meetings as the present is to report successful progress, and take stock for farther operations. " We are all on one-side. Our contro- versies are like that which we lately' read of in some West Indian' pipet.= Master and I,' said the Negro, ' have been arguing all mornint' which is the place to plant the rice in. He says this is the right spot, and I say the same; and we have been at it these two bourse" (Laughter.) Referring to. the boast of the Emperor Au- gustus that he found Rome brieWand left it marble, so, he thought, it would in the end be said of the educationists of the nineteenth century, that they found the fabric of society based upon the ignorance and left it resting upon the intelligence of the masses of the people. In an eloquent review of the past, he acknowledged the immense obligation's which vrenwtr to the names written in the annals of intellect; but he thought you might still maintain, that not until the pre- sent centers,' did the education of the masses of society properly and fully be- gm. "Let us say what we will, popular education has no history, pedigree, or genealogy, beyond the present century. When we see alt that is now doing to stimulate and develop-the intellect of the masses; the-printing.pnsss, that men- tal railway, as I before called it, so busily at work, the-cheap trains of literature laid on in all directionsand' the steam of education well np, and the engineers and stokers, schoolmasters tutore, so actively employed in every quarter of the lands—when, I say, we behold smelt things, we may venture to anticipate the ar- rival of a time when an' untaught and ignorant man in society shall be as great a rarity as a mummy translated from the Egyptian pit to the British Museum:" An American newspaper supplied an anecdote in- point. re one of them, net long ago, " I read that a man, being charged with intoxication at some public meeting, promptly answered, ' Intoxicated! to be sure I am; I've been intoxicated these three years. Brother and I are on a Temperance mission; he lectures, and I am the frightful example.' " (Loud laughter.) Since the time of Goldsmith, who used to quote satirically the advertisement—" Wanted, an usher to an academy. N.B. He must beable to read and dress hair," we have advanced a considerable step; ushers have now to deal mneh more with the inside and not the outside of their pupils' heads than they used to have. " A century ago, it was remarked' by a lady of high rank on the first appearance of a young gentleman at a court ball, ` So admirable a dancer must succeed in life.' That, if you please, was the tri- umph of heels over head. (Laughter.) But thanks to the advancing intelli- gence of mankind, all that is changed, and we are now, I think, approaching the triumph of head over heels. . . . . Not long since, a certain noble lord had a party of visitors in his house, among whom were some very able and scientific men. He had also, as a guest at the same time, an individual of the highest rank in the Peerage. It was remarked, and thought strange at the moment, that day after day the noble Duke ventured, even with the several professors thereof, into the discussion of various elegies with which no one had previously suspected that he bad even an acquaintance. It was also observed that he vanished from the general company every day two or three hours before dinner was announced. He left, and then the secret came out from mine books and papers which he had care- lessly omitted to take with him, and from which it appeared that he-had every morning diligently read up for the evening's debate. My informant smiled as he related to me this little anecdote; but, fur, my part, I admired themoble Duke— I admired his practical tribute to the spirit of the age, in that, instead of seeking to crush down society by the weight of his rank, he descended into the arena, like Ivanhoe striking the shield of the Templar with the sharp point of his lance, to do his bast', and' hold his own, and take his chance as a good and true knight in the tournament of intellect."

Having illustrated the connexion between ignorance and crime, Mr. Aspinall retired with an illustrative self-rebuke for maintaining a truism. "And when at any moment i find myself thus reviling the departed, I am reminded of the story of the village doctor, who when one day summoned to a patient at some little distance, being a sportsman likewise, took his gun with him, and crossed the fields to his destination. At last, as he approached the cottage to which he was bound, a girl came rushing wildly out, and half imploringly and half indignantly shrieked, 'He is dead, Sir; you need not have brought your gun." (Laughter.) The example of the leading' Metropolitan journals in establishing cents missions of inquiry into extensive branches of social evils and grievances, especially the latest example set by the Morning Chronicle in its commission concerning Labour and the Poor, has been fitly and ably followed by' the Hull Advertiser, one of the best-informed and best-conducted of the pro- vinoial journals. Under the head of " An Inquiry into the Social Condi- tion of the Working Classes in Hull," it begins a series of papers on the industry, the poverty, and the vice of all those divisions of the local popu- lation below the grade of middle classes. The opening paper is full of important and interesting facts, and is written in a spirit of earnest can- dour promising a valuable result.

The Reverend Martin Amphlett, Rector of Church Leash, near Eveeham, has incurred the censure of hie diocesan for his conduct in relation to the marriage of a Baptist lady to an orthodox Churchman. The Worcester journal had stated that Mr. Amphlett first refused to marry the parties; and afterwarde, on consent- ing to marry them, had in performing the ceremony not admitted the parties as usual to the rails round the communion-table. The Bishop of Worcester wrote to Mr. Amphlett to inform him that his conduct' had been very irregular. His original refusal bad been wisely abandoned: and "if it is correctly stated that you celebrated marriage between the parties 'standing- round a table' plated in the aisle,' you were' guilty of a gross violation of the rubric; which f request may not be repeated." The rubric expressly assumes that during the latter part of the service at least, the "man and woman" are " kneeling before the Lord's table."

The draymen and porters of the Midland Railway' at the Leeds and -the Brad- ford stations have struck, in consequence of an attempt to reduce- their wages. Much delay has occurred in the goods-traffic from the inexperience of the new hands.

The Company-have been obliged to succumb at Derby: the goods guards and porters who had turned out there hare returned to work, the former at their ori- ginal wages, and the others with a promise of an increase to that amount on any rise in• the price of food. It was found impossible to carry' en the traffic with any degree of regularity with the untrained rustics who had been hired. The police- men and pointsmen on the line have sent a paper to the Directors informing them that lithe intended reduction of 5 per cent on their wages is carried out they will resign simultaneously : traffic would indeed be dangerous on the lice in such a conjuncture.

After full argument and deliberation, the Magistrates of Salford have refused

to convict the manufacturers against whom Mr. Leonard Homer had preferred informations some time since for a breach of the Factory Aet in the sense as- cribed to that statute by Mr. Homer. This decision upholds the system of re- lays where not morethan ten hours a day of work are practically exacted front the young'persons employed. The' Bench was guided by Mr. Traffied and Mr. Brandt, two gentlemen educated forth& bar; and their decision will be influen- tial with other bodies of the Magistracy in the districts concerned.

William Murray, of Kelloe, near Durham, has been committed for trial for uttering some of thelorged notes of the Darlington bank which were recently pat into circulation.

A boy of fourteen has committed a murderat Motel. Three ytaing mein were out walking on Sunday afternoon, and they saw- two lade, Darnley and Collins, leaping over a post. One of the young men called- out sportively, "Over it!" Collins abused him, and from words they got to blows; Dating joined in the scuffle, producing a pistol, and threatening to fire its The squabble ceased, and the young men walked on; but the boys followed them. Collins palled out from his pocket a "life-preserver," and flourished it threateningly. William Braund, one of the young men, exclaimed that be-would tell Collies mother. Another scuffle arose, and Collins and Braised fell to the ground Denney again produced his pistol, threatened to shoot Braund or one of• his companions; and, after more squabbling, he deliberately shot Braund in the chest. Braund died in a few minutes. The murderer ran off, but he was pursued and taken: An inquest was begun on Monday. The evidence generally. was to the purport of the foregoing narrative. Denney was seen to cock the pistol just before- he fired' it. When taken he uttered words that showed he knew what crime he had committed. Daring the inquiry, he exhibited great unconcern, staring at the wit- nesses with much effrontery. The investigation closed on Wednesday, with a verdict of " Wilful !Mader"; Which the boy heard with the same indifference

ro

that he had exhibited thughout.

Ellis Jones, a publican of Caraarvon, has perished under suspicious circum- stances. He went to the pier-head at night, accompanied by two policemen; snl his body was found in the water nest day. One of the policemen had been in the water, antheas so much hurt that his life was endangered. The second police- man gave this explanation. Jones-challenged the wounded offioer to a trial cf in throwing a Largo stone; the stone struck the policeman, and he fell into the water; Jones dashed in after him; the second policeman managed to

save his brother officer, but could not rescue the publican. But on the head of Jones there was a severe wound, besides several bruises: bow were these re- ceived? Appearances point to a conflict between the parties. Ann Evans, the wife of a workman of Dudley, has been frustrated in an attempt to destroy her family. A child saw her sharpen a knife, and told the father: he rushed up stairs to a bedroom, where he found his wife cutting the throat of one of the children, stifling its cries by holding a pillow over its month. The woman flew at her husband, and attempted to stab him; but he overpowered her. The child was not dead, but its condition is almost hopeless.

Two guards have perished on the Cambridge line of railway. As a goods-train was about to start from Broxbouroe, a guard, though he had been warned, stood carelessly on the step of a brake-van, instead of entering ; the sudden jerk of the engine threw him off, and the train passed over his body. The death of the other man, Gobey, took place under very distressing circumstances. He was about shortly to be married, and his intended bride was a passenger in the train: he got down from his box and stood on a step talking to the young woman; as the train neared Cheshunt, he attempted to regain his proper place, but fell between the carriages, and the train passed over him.

Two maid-servants, in the family of the Reverend T. H. Davies, the incumbent of Trinity Church, Nottingham, having incautiously lighted a coke fire in a stove in their bedroom, after stopping up the chimney, they were both found in the morning insensible. One died soon after the discovery; the other is expected to recover. It appeared at the inquest, that not only was the vent by the chim- ney stopped, but a quilt had been tucked in along the bottom of the door to ex- clude all cold air. A verdict was given that the young woman had been accident- ally suffocated.

There have been very great floods in Norfolk. AboutNorwich, Yarmouth, and Lowestoft, two-thirds of the land was under water. Much damage has been done, and many sheep were carried away. There has been some difficulty in keeping the railway in working order; the water endangering the stability of the rails.