THE SUNDOWNERS SWAG.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 102, 10 July 1877, Page 2

THE SUNDOWNERS SWAG.

' the settlers constant cry is land !> Land ! ! Land!!l "Rights and mights of landless Rights.'' In no way that one can fix it can I tumble down to apprehending the cause of the apathetic indifference shown by the settlers of Bank's. Peninsula, towards obtaining from the Government, a survey of, and little for, their land purchases. I am told that money has been paid for land that does not exist, except on paper; it is also said that the land office officials, are well aware of this fact, and procrastinate over it. How very paternal it is of the Government to take, and take care to keep, the monies of the land buying governed, the said governed seeming to be drowsily satisfied that its all right and will be sure to come right. What a splendid crop of litigation is being sown for the gentlemen of the long robe to "harvest and garner in due season." Is it not acknowledged that the land on the Peninsula, as surveyed, is more or less wrong in description and area, whilst that which is bought and unsurveyed, if to be found may, on survey, not agree with the descriptions given, or quantity required, according to the occupying •licenses. This Sundowner has been told that surveys recently made have only tended to more muddelize previously existing muddles. Why not then bring personal and united pressure to bear upon the survey department, and let them know that you wish your freeholds brought out clear from the chaotic confusion into which they havegot ? If you do not heed John Sundowner, heed what Mr. Nalder and the Editor of the Mail has told you on this subject. Do not sleep on this any longer! Just rouse up and feel if you are awake ! Do as I do use the columns of the press. " Mightiest of the mighty means, On which the arm of progress leans, Man's noblest mission to ad vance, His woes assuage, his weal enhance, His rights enforce, his wrongs redress, — Mightiest of mighty-is the press." Well done the - Borough Council! Economically done too I consider. I see they have selected their 2,000 acre endowment at the small total cost of £18 ss. 4d. I doubt if it could be done cheaper. The Council, it seems, have had no expensive land agents who do nothing under a quarter of a century of pounds, merely as an eye opener with weightier refreshments to follow. Your Ma3 r or has proved himself the right man, he has saved the boroughs finances by himself doing work which an agent would require to be paid for rather extravagantly, say at the least some fifty pounds more, over and above, your small outlay. I do not know if it is allowable, but if it is, I would suggest that His Worship be, in some shape or other, reimbursed for the time, trouble, and expense it must have cost him over this cheaply executed business. " T'is well for us to initiate The virtues of the wise and great." All tbe paths of this life are not always "paths of pleasantness;" so doubtless 0 must have thought a local Inspector of Weights and Measures ** on a recent occasion. In the course .of his official peregrinations, the Inspector in question called at McSuet's, the drapers, and there discovered an unstamped spring balance which he must have thought would have looked the better for a little polishing. Drawing Mrs. McSuet's attention to this fact, the much trusting Inspector requested the polishing to be proceeded with right away, and intimated his intention of seizing the said balance, when properly polished according to his ideas, and summoning McSuetfor having the unstamped article in his possession. " From information received" the Inspector of Weights and Measures, on his return, was considerably knocked off his balance, and his complacency got extensively ruffled, when told that, in his absence, a feat of prestidigitation had been performed which " beat Banagher," Heller, or Anderson, into nonentity. Whilst that balance was getting its face washed, it vanished ; no cabalistic incantation was used, McSuet avers, : yet it went " into thin air." Was this not enough to ruffie any man ? Do his blessedest, the Inspector of Weights did, but no " information received" cooeyed to him, and he left McSuet's a saddened, man. and dolefully sang as he went his way, the refrain of his ditty being " summons, example, Aylmer." Ah, Mr.' Inspector, as Ovid wrote: — " Our advantages fry away : Gather flowers while ye may." I am a poor miserable woe-begone old rooster. I am completely -knocked off my perch and into the gutter. It gives me the"caving spazziihs*" when I think that the idol I have set up for my worship of scrawl is nothing more than frail mortality You were that idol, Mr. Editor! but now. now, sorrowfully I reiterate now, " your goose'is cooked" in my estimation. For the sake of my respectability and to keep "my good name" free from the -.taint.of suspicion I must ignore you. You have collared, cribbed, pinched, and appropn-. ated, a communication from a '' Minister of the Crown" to the "people's William" Montgomery, and would have thrown dust j in our eyes by passing off that communi- j cation as being addressed to yourself. You j have explained, have you ? Doesn't satisfy | Jack—that's me. Oh no, Sir. Like the chimney-sweep, I shall in future pick my company: —. ' T ' t , " Honour pricks me. Yea, but how it honour prick me off when I come on ? how then? Can honour set to a leg? No. iOr an arm? No. Or take away the .grief of a wound ? No. Honour hath no skill in. surgery, then? No. What is. honour? A word. WHat is" that word, honour ? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it ? He that died ©'Wednesday. Doth he feel it ? No

Doth he hear it. No. Is it insensible, then ? Yea, to the dead. But will it nbt live with the living? Why? Destraction will not suffer it: therefore, I'll none of it: honour is a mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism:" Adieu.