NEWS OF THE WEEK.
AN alarm was spread through London on Thursday evening, principally by excited newsboys, who lied at the top of their voices and with a profound air of conviction, that the Queen had been assassinated. The report even reached the Houses of Parlia- anent ; but it was promptly dissipated by Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone, who made a short statement of facts to each House. It Appears that a lad of seventeen, named Arthur O'Connor, a grand- son of Feargus O'Connor, but now a clerk in an oilman's shop in the Borough, had resolved to frighten Her Majesty into pardon- ing the Fenian prisoners, and for this purpose procured a pistol with a broken flint-lock, and tried to reach the Queen's carriage on Thanksgiving Day. He failed, from the density of the crowd ; but on Thursday, at half-past five, as the Queen was re-entering Buckingham Palace by the garden gate, O'Connor scaled the rail- ings, ran up to the carriage on the wrong side, ran round to the sight one, and presented the petition and the pistol at Her Majesty's head. The Queen, with her usual courage, merely lamed back in the carriage, and the criminal was at once arrested by the attendants and equerries. His pistol was not loaded, and could not have been fired if it had been, his notion, as he himself admits, having been to frighten the Queen out of her signature. That of course is a grave offence, and as the ease with which the Lad reached Her Majesty may encourage other attempts, it is pro- bable that Sir Robert Peel's Act, which inflicts whipping on persons who threaten the Sovereign, will be carried out.
