A numerous gathering of persons employed in the manufacture of matches was held on Sunday afternoon in Victoria Park, at which a resolution was unanimously passed condemning Mr. Lowe’s proposed impost in strong terms. According to one of the speakers, the daily bread of 15,000 persons in the east of London depends upon the trade in matches. Several thousand persons engaged in the match trade on Monday assembled in the Bow Road, and having formed a procession, set out to march to the House of Commons, there to present a petition against the threatened duty on matches. At a short distance from its starting-point the procession was broken up by the police, but the people managed in some degree to re-form their ranks, and, after many difficulties (more especially in their progress along the Thames Embankment), they arrived at the Houses of Parliament. This, however, was not accomplished without another collision with the police, in which one or two arrests were made. One party of the processionists even succeeded in making their way into Westminster Hall, but they were speedily removed. PURCHASE IN THE ARMY ABOLISHED BY ROYAL WARRANT (1871). =Source.=--_The Illustrated London News_, July 22, 1871. On Thursday (July 20) Sir George Grey asked the Government whether that House, having sanctioned their proposal for the indemnification of officers on the abolition of purchase in the Army, they intend to take measures to prevent the future violation of the law involved in the continued payment of over-regulation prices for commissions. Mr. Gladstone made a long reply, in the course of which he stated that, after consideration, the Government had resolved to advise Her Majesty to take the decisive step of cancelling the warrant under which purchase was legal. That advice had been accepted and acted upon by Her Majesty, and a new warrant had now been framed in terms conformable to the law, so that it was his duty to announce, on the part of the Government, that at present purchase in the Army no longer existed. (Loud and continued cheers.) When he said that purchase no longer existed, he was reminded by his right hon. friend (Mr. Cardwell) to explain that it did not mean that it was extinguished from the present moment, but a day had been named--November 1 of the present year--from and after which there could be no purchase or sale of commissions in the British Army. Although the amendment of the Duke of Richmond had been carried in the House of Lords [155 for the amendment, which was against the second reading, 130 against], he was advised that that would not prevent the Bill from being proceeded with; and it would now remain to be seen how the House of Lords would act under the circumstances which he had stated, and whether, purchase being abolished, they would go on with the other portions of the Bill.