SCOTLAND.
The strike of colliers and miners at Airdrie, Coatbridge, and other places near Glasgow, is not relaxed. The differences between the masters and men are very complicated, and not very intelligible at a distance. One point is a dispute as to the giving of warning by the men on leaving work. A fortnight's warning is usual; but some men have signed special agreements to give a month's warning. They are paid monthly ; and some have given warning a week after pay-day : the men insist that they need only work a fortnight ; certain masters main- tain, not only that the men must work a month, but that they cannot give warning till next pay-day ; which would oblige them to work seven weeks longer. The truck system is another grievance. Several of the men have been arrested on a charge of breach of contract ; and that gave an impulse to the strike, which has become so general that in some places all the iron-furnaces have gone out of blast for want of fuel. Men wander about by night, in troops of fifty or a hundred, ravaging the potato and turnip fields. By day, women and children levy a "black mail," the payment of which is found to be a safeguard to the payer's house at night. At Airdrie, the shopkeepers assist the strikers ; who sit in sullen indolence gazing at the military that occupy the place. The miners have offered to submit their differences to we Sheriff, Mr. Alison ; but, in a proclamation which he has issued, be in- timates that they are impracticable : he warns them that depredation of potatoes with maletreatment of watchmen amounts to " stouthrief," punishable by death or transportation. Ile exhorts well-disposed per- sons to enrol themselves as special constables, and others to give in- foznation to the Police. Thus stood matters when the Glasgow Argus orrhursday was despatched.
The strike has extended to the Lothians and Fifeshire, where great numbers of miners have put forth demands like those of Lanarkshire ; and in Aberdeen, say the authorities in a proclamation, inflammatory and threatening harangues of local agitators have made it necessary for them to warn the evil-disposed that they will repress and purish d"-- turbance.
Mrs. Cassels, a woman of imbecile mind, and paralytic, has been dis- covered in Glasgow caged in a press three and a half feet long by two and a half broad; a prey to filth and vermin. A warrant has been issued against her husband, who is out of the way. He is a sawyer, and he had hitherto borne a very respectable character.
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