The French mail of the 13th March arrived on the 29th April.
The mail leaves for Europe to-morrow by the P. &O. str. Travancore.
The following Reuter's telegrams have been received during the week The Tolls fixed by the International Commission are applicable on 29th April but the Canal Company have notified the Board of Trade that they will not allow vessels to pass unless on paying the Company's Rates.
Grant has refused his sanction to the Bill for the Inflation of the Currency.
The Deficit on the Indian Budgets for 1874 and 1875, including Extraordinary and Famine Expenditure, is 114 millions. the Loans required are 8 millions.
In the House of Commons, Mr. Bourke, replying to Mr. Reid, said that Mr. Wade had again been instructed on the 30th January to bring the silting of the Woosung River at Shanghai to the notice of the Chinese Government.
The Canal difficulty has been settled. Lesseps has yielded.
Malcomps has been appointed Captain-General.
The Canal difficulty has been settled by the submission of Lesseps. It is probable that the Powers will reconsider the question of dues.
'The German Tribunal has sentenced the Bishop of Nancy to two years' imprisonment for his hostile pastoral.
The Reichstag is closed. The Kmperor's speech was strongly pacific.
Shanghai has been intent on racing during the week, and only yesterday collected itself to face the outgoing mail. The weather has been perfect—a cloudless sky, and the heat of the sun tempered by a pleasant breeze. The Racing was very good, and a large number of spectators attended to witness it, on the Grand Stand.
The Spring Racket Handicap has been played through, and has resulted in Turnbull winning the A. and McMinnies the B. Sweepstakes. A full table of scores will be found on another page.
We print, elsewhere, a report which has been circulated by the Chamber of Commerce, in English and Chinese, roxarding the deterioration in quality of Chinese Silk, Attention is called to the warnings issued by the Chamber in 1872, and to the verification of its prediction that great reduction in value would follow unless more care were taken in reeling and packing. The warning having been neglected, and the result having happened, Chinese Silk Merchants are now urged to impress further, on the producers, the necessity for more careful and honest preparation, to enable China Silk to recover its position in the market, We publish, above, one of the most satisfactory telegrams that Reuter has sent for along time. In the first place it shows an old China hand (Mr, Robert Reid) coming forward in our interests directly he gets into Parliament; and in the second it shows that Government are alive to the fact that there is a place called Shanghai, and are not altogether deaf to its requirements.
The British Minister is instructed to press the Woosung Bar question on the Chinese, and we are viad to hear from Peking that the French Minister has received instructions identical with Mr, Wade's, The matter is, in fact, now being really (and ce-operatively) pressed by all the Ministers on the Tsungli yamen. If the Chinese cannot be moved, we repeat what we have before suggested: let foreigners do the work themselves, and stop the cost out of the Tonnage Dues.
The fact that the French Municipal Council intend making one or more roads through the ground in which the Ningpo joss-house stands, and which is very generally underlaid by old graves, has called forth a display of feeling on the part of the Ningpo Chinese. The other morning some 809 or 1,000 assembled on the ground, where they remained 4 or 5 hours, protesting by their presence and utterances
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.