NEWS OF THE WEEK A T nine o'clock on Thursday evening
a great explosion took place in the Local Government Office, which wrecked the .room in which it appears to have occurred and forced out the win-
• dows, hurled a huge stone, weighing between one and two hundred- weight, through the wall of the Police-station in King Street, and broke almost every window, including all the heavy plate- glass windows, on the south side of Parliament Street. For one hundred and fifty yards the heavy plate-glass lay literally in heaps in the streets of Parliament Street, King Street, Charles Street, &c. The effect of the explosion is described as _resembling that of an 80-ton gun. It startled the House of Commons, and the Speaker sent to ask what had caused it, and was then told it was due to a gas explosion, which, however, is -certainly now known to have been a mistake. Gun-cotton, .dynamite, or ordinary gunpowder will alone account for the appearances ; but it is not yet known where the ex- plosives were placed, whether in the cellars of the Local Government Office or between the balustrades and the windows. It is not seriously doubted that the explosion was due to some infernal machine placed in the Local Government Office by Fenian conspirators, as a kind of answer to Mr- Gladstone's speech of Wednesday last,—and a very imbecile as well as wanton answer too, an answer which can only con- firm every one who previously objected to further concession, in the wisdom of that attitude of finality.
