The Chair man, after a consultation, found this to be the case, and the sentence was re duced to one of eighteen months' hard labor." When a prisoner has to correct the magistrate's law, and is able to prove that he is only liable to two years' hard labor instead of seven years' penal servi tude, it would seem to be time that the Home Secretary's attention should be in vited to the case. A telegram in the Times, dated Jan. 26, says: — "The Madrid correspondent of the Temps telegraphs that the negotia tions between London and Madrid rela tive to the treaty of commerce are making little progress. The Spanish Government demands a modification of the English duties on Avines, so as to en able those of Navarre, Arragon, and Catalonia to compete with the French, which the Spaniards maintain are favored by the present scale. They propose to raise the limit of low duty from 26 to 34 degrees. They likewise demand the es tablishment of a custom-house at Gib raltar, with a view of putting an end to smuggling between it and the mainland. In return, all that Spain offers is a change in the differential duty on foreign vessels and of the duties on English imports into the West Indies, and a return to ilio treatment of the " most favored nation." The Spanish vine-growers, the Temps' correspondent adds, have been more than ever urging the Government to hasten the negotiations with England since the denunciation of the treaties with France. A San Francisco journal says : — " Ten years from now, if this island colony con tinues its immigration policy, and Cali fornia remains without an immigration bureau, New Zealand will be the more populous country of the two." A minister in the south of Scotland had a parishioner, we are told, who, to show her affection for her pastor, sent him every morning, by the hands of her daughter, a couple of what she wished him to understand were new-laid eggs, for breakfast. 