The appointment of Lord Seymour to be Chief Commissioner of

Woods and Forests has created a vacancy in the representation of Totnes. Lord Seymour stands for reelection ; but a party in the borough is dissatisfied with his Lordship, and has sent a deputation to London requesting Mr, Edward Miall to be a candidate. Lord Seymour is making the best of his time by a personal canvass. The election is fixed for Monday.

In a lengthened oration to a Protectionist meeting at Pontefract on Saturday, Mr. Busfeild Ferrand stated that the manufacturers in Lanca- shire are dosing their mills and running short time ; with much wild philippic against that class— These men are eager to turn their counting-house into their church ; their ledger is their Bible; their money is their god. They spin slave-grown cotton, insist on using slave-grown sugar, daub their calicoes fraudulently with slave-grown flour-paste, work their women slaves fifteen hours a day in an atmosphere more destructive to human life than that of Sierra Leone, and are only prevented from working little children to death by a stringent act of Parliament. Slaves of the Devil, during the last seventy years their trade has destroyed more human beings in England than the cholera has destroyed in the whole of Europe. He advised his hearers to call meetings and or- ganize a wool-league, and vow they will never wear cotton if they can get woollen or linen goods. The Duke of Bedford put down the hair-tax by wearing cropped hair when hair-powder was as generally worn as cotton is now. Cotton is now above, below, and everywhere; cotton and base apos- tacy are all that are required now-a-days even to make a Prime Minister of the kingdom : but let two hundred meetings be called and cotton would be scouted, while wool would be up sixpence a pound before next clipping. "Sir Robert Peel says he sympathizes with you; and he lays his band upon his heart in the House of Commons when he says so. He says he hopes never to live to see protection restored : I tell you that his life is in your hands if you choose, for in two years you will have protection back."

Mercy Catherine Newton was arraigned, last week, for the third time, at Shrewsbury, on the charge of murdering her mother Anne Newton, at Bridgenorth, on the 5th December 1848. At the last Spring Assizes a jury sat two days on her trial, and were discharged from inability to agree on a verdict ; and at the Summer Assizes a second jury sat two days. and a night, and were discharged from a similar inability—a juryman having fallen se- riously ill. But the points were made so much more clearly, and the testi- mony balanced so much more definitely, that the narrative has the interest of freshness.

In the outset, the prisoner's avowed desire for her mother's death was shown. Again and again, she had prayed her mother to die; on her knees besought her to commit suicide; and reproached her for living till her daughter's hair was grey, keeping her out of money to which she would suc- ceed on her mother's death. She had beaten her mother, torn her flesh, tried to cut out her tongue with a razor, to strangle her, with her fingers, and to choke her with a handkerchief. Her mother had refused to prefer a charge ; but magistrates had warned her that her relation had murdered his wife, and that she might be the second of the family hanged. She had said yes, she was sure she should come to be hanged for killing her mother but she would first drive a stake through her heart in her grave. Mrs. Newton was seventy-two years old; very active in body and mind ; somewhat flighty, saying un- reasonable things occasionally when excited, but not insane : she was much attached to her unnatural daughter. Mercy Catherine Newton was housekeeper of Mr. Dyer, a bedridden old gentleman living at Bridgenorth ; she was assisted by a servant, Mary Cor- field. On the 5th December 1848, Mrs. Newton came to Mr. Dyer's house, and slept there in the kitchen on a sofa. When the servant Corfield left the mother and daughter to go to bed, the mother was lying on the sofa drawn near the fire, and the daughter was undressing to go to bed up-stairs. A quart of rum had been sent for, and the daughter had drunk about half of it, except some in a tea-cup that she presented to Corfield. The mother took no rum, though a drinker—none was found in her stomach after death. Once in the night Corfield heard a "screech" and an exclamation, "Don't, Kitty !" she went down stairs, but as on listening she heard mother and daughter "tallying comfortably," she returned to bed. At about two in the morning she was awakened by amok° in her room; she ran down, and found the kitchen full of smoke, and the sofa on fire, but the floor drenched with water. She roused Mr. boughty, a neighbour and relation of Mr. Dyer ; but coming back with him, found the door fastened : after some running ”hither and thither, they were admitted at a back-door by the prisoner, who was in her night-clothes, scorched by fire and yet dripping wet. When ac- cused of burning her mother, she answered, " What have I to do with my mother ? " She took from the cupboard the rum-bottle, containing about as much rum as had been left the night before, and offered some to Mr. Doughty : on his refusal, she drank it herself, and from that moment seemed to become quite tipsy. When Mary Corfield said she would look for Mrs. Newton, the prisoner said, "You will not find her" ; and before Corfield re- turned after the discovery, she ejaculated, " Passion ! passion ! but when the passion's over, I forgive." Mrs. Newton was found dead in the yard, with all the appearances of having died by fire ; her clothes were consumed, and her body was literally charred over from the knees to the chin—the feet mid lower parts of the legs were unburnt; four pairs of sheets which had been in the kitchen lay round her, burnt to tinder. On Mercy Newton's way to prison, still tipsy, us when she uttered the other sen- tences, she said—"This will be a second Severn Hall job. Passion, passion! when the passion is over, I forgive directly." At the inquest, the Impression created by the evidence was that death had been caused by burn- ing; but at the first and second trial it was maintained, on the testimony of medical men who made a post-mortem examination, that the burning. must have happened after death ; and it was shown to be probable that violence had been done before the death. The deceased had a very prominent nose ; when found dead on her face in the yard, her nose was crushed level with the cheeks : now this flattened position the nose never changed, as it would have done if it had been merely depressed after death ; the nose must have been violently forced down sonic time before death, and been held down at the time while the stiffness of death came on. There were no blisters on the scorched surface, nor any red line of demarcation between the charred and the unburnt regions; both which things there would have been had the burning happened to living tissues. It was proved that the fire in the grate was nearly out when Corfield came down stairs and found the sofa burning, ' and that the sofa was burning only at the end farthest from the fireplace. The sofa was saturated with oil, the prisoner's night-dress had been dabbled in oil, and there were on the floor foot-prints marked in oil, which for months afterwards repelled water on scouring-days : now the night before, the prisoner had brought into the kitchen a butter-boat full of melted butter, and was seen with a bottle full of oil in her hand, and in the morning both the butter-boat and the bottle were found on the hob of the fireplace empty. The counsel for the Crown suggested that Mercy Newton had suffocated Iter mother with the sheets, by holding them down on her face with such violence as to crush her nose fat; and had afterwards poured the oil and butter on her garments and the sheets, and set fire to them, with the object of suggesting death by accidental burning.

For the prisoner, it was proved that Mrs. Newton had actually set fire to herself once before, while sleeping on that very sofa; that she was chilly, and always drew the sofa close to the fire, even moving the fender to do so more perfectly; and that she habitually smoked a pipe in bed. The mother might have waked on fire, have run out into the yard in flames, with the sheets about her, have fallen on her face in a swoon, and been burnt to death as she lay : this would explain both the permanent flattening of the features and the absence of blistering ; for the actual death would not occur till some time after the fall forwards on the face, and the fire in its slow progress [the yard was open to the sky, and much rain had fallen] would consume after death the tissues originally blistered and demarked by a red line before death. Some doubt was also thrown on the medical inferences : first, it is not positive that blistering and a red line occur universally to tissues burnt before death, if paralysis, Ste. have supervened ; secondly, the medical men had omitted to examine some points which would have thrown important light on the cause of death. The Judge himself, in his summing-up, ad- verted to this omission as important.

The Jury retired, and in twenty-five minutes returned with a verdict of "Not guilty." Three or four persons cheered. At the former trials Mercy Newton was firm and composed, offering sug- gestions to her attorney : at this trial she remained in one corner of the dock, and cried throughout the trial.

Robert Connie° Bird and Sarah Bird were tried at Exeter, on Friday, for the murder of their servant-girl, Mary Ann Parsons, in January last, by beating and starving her to death. Bird was a farmer at a lone house about eight miles from Bideford ; Sarah Bird is his wife : Mary Parsons was a little girl of fourteen, taken by them from Bideford Union Workhouse, in September last, to be their servant. The girl had before been taken out of the workhouse to service t and been brought back again as too weak for the place, suffering with the itch and ringworm. When she went to Mr. Bird's she was cured of these diseases, and in good health : she was a notably good girl, very clean in her habits, and industrious. In November Mrs. Bird de- scribed her as one of the best girls she ever had in her house ; but on Christ- i:nos eve she stated, that Mary Anne had taken to stealing and telling lies ; end from that time forward the girl seems to have been treated with a con- tinued cruelty that at last proved fatal. The proofs were partly given by eye-witnesses ; but chiefly by witnesses repeating admissions of guilt made by the prisoners themselves, which were corroborated by medical testimony on the state of the poor girl's body after death.

Three labourers deposed to having at different times seen Mrs. Bird beat the child till it was very bloody on the face, on the neck, and on the back of the head : once she used a hazel stick with " spraggles" on it [the project- ing knots of small branches not trimmed close] ; another time, a furze-stub; another time, leather thongs. Grace Parsons, the mother of the child, went to see her daughter on the 4th of January ; and was very politely received by Mrs. Bird and invited to take tea : she went up-stairs, and found her daughter dead. Mrs. Bird asked her not to have an inquest, and prayed her on her knees to forgive her, for the sake of her own poor children. Mary Branch, a blacksmith's wife, who laid the child's body out, found it dirty, wounded with "cuts big and "very bad indeed," "covered

• with blood." She went down stairs and said, "how came you to serve the child so Mrs. Bird tried to bribe her, as she had tried the mother. •• She said, • Will you do what I am will to ask you? I'll be a friend to you as lung as I live; for one word of yours will go a great way? I said, Well, Mrs. Bird, I can't ; for I have seven children of my own, and my conscience won't let me.' She said, • I have flogged her at different and different times.' After that we went down staff' s. She said Molly had calkx1donn stairs to her little boy for something to drink ; she said, Come down yourself, if you want a servant to attend you' : the child came down as well as she could, and gave a ramble and fell down; Mrs. Bird took her by the arm ; she said she was like as if drunk, but said, I baint, be I ?' She could not bear the light of the candle."

Mrs. Sarah Jane Norman, daughter of the Governor of the Gaol at Bide- ford, chanced to be present at the gaol when Bird and his wife were brought to prison. Mrs. Bird said aloud, it was her husband was the last that beat the child. The husband cried and said nothing. Mrs. Bird clasped her hands and lifted her eyes to the ceiling, and said, "Good Lord Jesus Christ, hear my prayers this once, and answer hiene and bring me through this trial, and I'll never do the like again ; and walk as upright as angels m heaven !" Their uncle came to see them. He said, "Robert you'll never see me any more : it was the kick you gave her on Christmas-day that killed her." ftird held up his finger, and shook his head ; and the old man at once stopped.

Mr. Turner surgeon, gave the result of a post-mortem examination made on the 5th of January, the day after that on which the child was said to have died. .There were a vast number of wounds and abscesses of some standing on the arms; the nails of the fingers on the left hand had been gone for some time, and the bone of the middle-finger was protruding—the result, probably, of frost-bites and a low state of the system. On the right hip was a slough as large as the palm of the hand. The viscera were perfectly sound ; the stomach was perfectly empty ; the general condition extremely reduced, The cause of death was congestion of the brain, from aninjury to the head by a blow or fall. The appearances exhibited could not have been exhibited within thirty hours after death; the child must have been dead at least three days. [The weather was extremely cold.]

For the defence it was urged, that the immediate cause of death was a fall or a blow—most likely the former : if a fall, neither party was guilty ; if a blow, there was nothing at all to fix the guilt on both of the prisoners, or either one more than the other.

; This view received the sanction of Mr. Justice Talfourd in his summing- up. In order to maintain an indictment for murder or manslaughter, it must be made out that the unlawful act was the cause of death. The cause of death was an injury to the head by a fall or a blew : the Jury could not leap in the dark, and in the absence of proof infer that a blow was struck, or if struck dealt by either one prisoner rather than the other. If the death had been caused by privation or want of food, the male prisoner alone would , be responsible; if a long succession of wrongs had caused the death, there would be a ease; but the medical testimony failed to establish either such case. The prisoners must therefore be acquitted. On this direction the Jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty." Mr. Slade said, he would not ask for the diseberge of the prisoners : ho thought it safer that they should not be discharged at present. There was a general outcry—" What ! are these persons to go entirely without punishment ?"

At Hereford Assizes, John Horne was tried for returning to this country before the expiration of his term of transportation. Horne was convicted m 1839 of housebreaking in Kent, sentenced to transportation for ten years, and sent to Sydney. He behaved with such propriety and intelligence as to obtain much liberty and trust ; while engaged as a diver in blowing up wrecks with the assistance of a diving-bell, he escaped to an American vessel, and left Australia for New York when only six years of his sen- tence of ten years had expired. He came to London and worked on rail- ways till November lad ; when, losing work and being overtaken by want, he delivered himself to the Police at Ross, as a convict returned before his time. His sentence had expired in October last. On his present trial, a flaw was found in the indictment. The crime of being at large before ex- piration of sentence is made punishable by " death, as in cases of felony" ; the act of being so at large must therefore be described as " fele/dimity" being at large ; but " feloniously" had been omitted by the clerk who copied the indictment from the draft. Mr. Justice Pattison held the omis- sion to be fatal, and on his direction the prisoner was acquitted,—all parties seeming to think it was one of those cases where you might " rejoice that the strict letter of the law was defeated by a technicality.'

At Maidstone Assizes on Saturday, three respectable-looking young men were tried, before Mr. Montague Chambers, Q.C., for being out armed in pursuit of game. The noticeable point in the case was the manner in which evidence had been obtained against the accused. An under-keeper to Mr. Burnett, of Crayford, sent a man to a public-house at 'Woolwich to meet the suspected persons ; he was to get into conversation with them, drink with them, represent that he was a poacher, and then pump them. This fellow —one Eaves—carried out his instructions, tossing halfpence with the young men for large quantities of beer ; and he alleged that Are of them had ad- mitted that they were engaged in poaching at Crayford. In cross-examina- tion, the witness cut a sorry figure : he confessed his memory would be bet- ter or worse according to the amount that he was paid; he should remember more if two sovereigns were given to him than if he had one only. The case for the prosecution was weak in other respects. The counsel for the defence made good use of Eaves. In summing up, Mr. Chambers severely condemned the " abominable " proceeding in the employment of Eaves to worm out evidence while drinking with the suspected persons. The Jury at once returned a verdict of acquittal.

On Monday, James Taftli was tried on two indictments for defrauding a benefit society at Chatham, of which he was secretary. The case was stopped by the Judge on a technicality : the society was nnenrolled, the prisoner was a member of it, and it could not be said that he was a servant to him. self. In directing the Jury to acquit the prisoner, Mr. Justice Maule re- marked that it was a great pity when these societies did not get themselves enrolled ; because when they are enrolled trustees are generally appointed, and in such a case the prisoner might have been indicted as their servant.

At Liverpool Assizes, on Saturday, George Winterbottom was tried for the manslaughter of John Siddall, at Oldham. The prisoner is a cotton-spin- ner, but for two years past he has practiseras a quack or "herbalist." He treated Bidden for an advanced consumption ; administering to him alternate hot vapour-baths and cold shower-baths, and also medicines : one day after he had been thus treated, Siddall died. Medical men lied ascribed his death to the prisoner's treatment of the case. This was the opening statement for the prosecution. At the close of it, Mr.Pollock asked the Judge whether, from the case as stated on behalf of the prosecution, the charge of manslaughter be sustained ? Mr. Baron Alderson said, that male fides must be shown, or such an amount of ignorance as implies male fides. The question was, whether the prisoner had done his best ? for if that were so, he ought not to be tried for manslaughter. All great improvements had taken place in opposi- tion to the old practitioners; and if people were liable to be tried for acting contrary to the regular system, no one would attempt to make new discoveries in medicine. When a person had acted bona fide, a charge of manslaughter, according to the late case, cannot be supported.—Verdiet, "Not. guilty."

A family of ten persona have been poisoned, at Stow Bardolph in Norfolk, by sugar with winch some deleterious substance had been mixed. The sugar had been purchased at Ibwnham, for the use of the family of Mr. Page, a fanner • when employed for tea, it produced a nausea, and white particles were Observed in the sugar and a white sediment in the tea-cups. It was then used to sweeten a fruit pudding, of which all the family partook. Every one was taken ill ; medical aid was obtained, but Mr. Page died.

The old man Carrington, whose wife was killed by their insane son, at Eversden, has also died.

At Burnham in Buckinghamshire, nearly the whole of a fiirm-steading has been burnt, by the third fire that has occurred in the village within it month. The flames had hardly subsided when a fresh alarm arose : fail buildings were blazing at Langley, four miles from Burnham ; and a good deal of property was destroyed.