The executive government having, in 1861, appointed commissioners to superintend the collection of products and manufactures of the island for the London exhibition of 1862, the duty was judiciously performed, and the articles forwarded to the exhibition under the charge of Mr. Henry Haszard, the secretary to the commissioners. A profound sensation was caused in the island by intelligence of the seizure of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, civil servants of the Southern States, when under the protection of the English flag, on their passage from Havana to England on board the steamship _Trent_. A remonstrance was forwarded by the British government to that of the Northern States; and the act of the commander of the _San Jacinto_—the American vessel by which the outrage was committed—having been disapproved of by the American government, the Southern commissioners were set at liberty, and the dispute happily terminated. On the eighth of January, 1862, intelligence of the death of His Royal Highness Prince Albert reached the island. He died at Windsor Castle on the fourteenth of December, 1861, in the forty-second year of his age. Official intimation of his death was communicated to the lieutenant-governor by the Duke of Newcastle, and His Excellency ordered that forty-two minute-guns should be fired from Saint George’s Battery at twelve o’clock, noon; and Her Majesty’s faithful subjects were enjoined to put themselves into mourning. The life of the departed Prince was one of singular purity and usefulness, and his memory will forever stand honorably associated with that of Queen Victoria, than whom a more virtuous and beloved Sovereign never swayed a British sceptre. An address of condolence to Her Majesty was adopted by the legislature.