The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, MARCH 19.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 174, 19 March 1878, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, MARCH 19.

This Census Collector —that useful pest, whose arduous duties, let it be said, do not always lead him to recline upon an official bed of roses—has come, and, in some cases, lias gone. Some old philosophical twaddler of note, who flourished •some time in the seventeenth century, once delivered himself of the wise and original .•saying, that it was the pins and needles of life which caused men the greatest annoyance. And we have no doubt but that that indispensable and necessary evil, the Census functionary in question, lias been oftentimes blessed with all that fervour which a British bosom can fulminate, when trying to extract from householders—of the fairer gender especially — those mystically worded particulars which the law of the land demands should be given him in duly legal orthodox fashion. But if during past years the ambulating labors of that official have at times taken him into somewhat thorny paths, what, in the name.of goodness, must have been the

unfortunate's fate this year ? The formidable document left at the people's door's is no longer the palpably decipherable "instrument" —to adopt the lawyers and piano-tuners' phraseology— of the past, which any well-balanced brain might perhaps grasp in something like an hour's deep cogitation. As civilization has marched onward, so has grown the desire of a bountiful fatherland to know what all its children are about, even in their most intimate occupations. The Census-paper of the period—probably another sequential excrescence of Abolition —is a fearfully and wondrously got up affair, replete with directions more impossible one than the other, as to how a perfect fireworks of queries shall be categorically " fixed " for certain purposes, of State. No wonder that some of bur contempories have shown signs of mental depression, since endeavouring through their correspondence columns to extricate some of their readers in trouble, from the sea of doubt into which a perusal of the newly concocted document had plunged them. Not only are the householders under the new Census regime compelled to register their " state of health," but if they happen to belong to the Chinese race they are to be set down as " unmarried, unless they have had wives in New Zealand," whatever that celestial appeal may mean. '* Magistrates, town councillors, and other important public officers, are to state their profession or occupation after their official title." The " other important public officers" refers, as a matter of course, to poundkeepers, night-watchmen, and lamplighters. Then some startling combinations are twisted under the unfortunate " household 3r's " nose. " Teachers, authors, public writers, and artists are to state the par ticular branch of science, literature, or art which they cultivate." What an endless vista of delight is thus opened for the thousand " cultivators" of the good things in question. Sign-painters will all be there, and so will chiropodists in these days of iodine successes. Then goes on the indefatigable document; — state your " occupation in the past." What a ticklish thing the satisfying this query must have proved to some people, provided they did tell the truth ! Women are to write " domestic duties," when only employed in the capacity of wife, mother, daughter, &c. But what about one's mother-in-law ? Would any man dare say that he employed her in domestic duties ? The word " capacity " used with reference to only employing women as wives, mothers, daughters, and sisis perfumed with idealistic romance. But n sterner sense of the dried and withered realities of life soon dispels the pleasureable feeling, when the plain spoken question of " number of rooms in the house." stares one in the face. Altogether, we are very much afraid the result of this year's Census will probably be that about one-sixteenth of the forms will be correctly filled ; that severe mental derangements, with effects of a more or less fats.il character, will lay up some of the officials concerned, the compiling clerks especially, and that the well-known equanimity of temper of a good proportion of the "householders " —Chinese, or of different persuasions— will be sorely unhinged for a considerable time to come. Perhaps,, in future attempts at statistic-gathering , , the Government may find it more convenient to better classify their queries, and to also abstain from pushing people into a corner by such a singular demand as the following, which we fancy might have been more judiciously left out: —" If Presbyterian, state particularly what sect, whether &c, &c."