Distress of Nations

Our exchange papers, among the many strange things that make up the motley mixture of plentiful crops and hard times, acts of wickedness, Miller's millennium in 1843, together with a great many accounts of bible societies; missionary doings; Sunday school advancements; temperance movements; marvellous [marvelous] conversions from the influence of tracts, &c., have a full proportion of mobs, riots, and calamity. A large mob in Philadelphia made war upon the blacks in the fore part of last month, shed blood, burnt to the ground a costly and spacious Hall, and a meeting house; and destroyed other property. The military were called to restore peace.

In Cincinnati, about the same time, some boys insulted a military German company, while training and after dismissed, which finally terminated in a riot of the citizens, in which considerable blood was shed, though we believe no lives were lost.

From England we have selected the following:-

"Threatened Disturbances-Birmingham, July 14.-The accounts received this day from Burslem, (the metropolis of the potteries,) and the mining and manufacturing districts of the neighborhood, are of the most alarming description. It would appear, that influenced by the badness of trade, or by some other motive, there has been within the last two or three weeks an attempt made to reduce the wages of the men employed in the collieries of North Staffordshire, and the turnout of the miners has necessarily, by the want of coal, seriously affected the men occupied in the potteries and iron works.

The proximate cause of the facts appears to be the reduction of 7d per week from the wages hitherto paid by Mr. Sparrow, near Burslem. Such is the magnitude of his establishment that the reduction of 4d in each man's wages will make a difference of not less than L300 per week. Be the cause, however, what it may, the potteries according to the last accounts, are in a fearful state. Yesterday, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Tunstal

and Lane-end, the chief towns within the potteries, were greatly excited; so much so, indeed, that the authorities deemed it necessary to call in the immediate aid of the county police and military.

The turnouts, to the amount of some thousands, visited the collieries, iron works, and potteries, where men were to be found who had accepted reduced scale of wages, and in some instances inflicted personal violence upon men whom they found peaceably engaged at work. At Fenton Park it is stated that one man was thrown into scalding hot water, and in other places acts of the grossest violence were committed.

Yesterday the discontented assembled in great numbers, and their line of muster, if not of march, extended from Tunstal to Lane-end a distance of at least seven miles. Some detachments of yeomanry paraded the district, but this description of force being deemed insufficient to meet the emergency, application was made for the assistance of her Majesty's troops, and the same evening a troop of the 3d Dragoons, from the Birmingham barracks, left this town for the disturbed districts.

Persons arriving from Burslem to day state that no less the 6,000 workmen have turned out, and that boat loads, of assistants for a row have arrived from Bilston and other manufacturing districts of South Staffordshire. The insurgents were to-day marching for Cheadle, but it was confidently hoped that the precautionary measures adopted by the authorities would prevent further outrage."

Besides appearances so emblematic of the "distress of nations," as the foregoing-and along with the great fires, tornadoes, and earthquakes which agitate some portions of the globe, more or less, every week, we present the following second visit of that awful scourge to mankind,-the Cholera.

(->) The Asiatic Cholera, which raged so fearfully in India ten years ago, and spread from thence nearly over the entire world, has again made its appearance there; and the most fearful accounts are given of its ravages. At Calcutta, Bombay, and in the Deccan this pestilence was raging fearfully; and we have before us in one of the Irish papers, a letter from an officer of the 22d regiment, stationed at Camp Kurrachee, which says that in the course of one month there were buried, from that regiment alone the band-master, sergeant major, three sergeants, a hundred and twenty men, twelve women, and twenty children.