The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 357, 19 December 1879, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19.

• -The ire.at length to which our notice o[ thp'Exhibition has extended compels us to hold over luai'y items of interest.

At the conclusion of the Model Yacht Race on Tuesday, Mr E. S. Latter very generously presented his yncht ttie " Amateur" to the Bazaar. She U a beautiful model, and took the first prize at the Exhibition. The Committee purpose raffling her, and"any person desirous of taking a share can do so by applying at our office, the. winner or buyer will have a good chance of making a profit on the transaction, by entering her at the Head of the Bay on Friday, the 26th instant, where there is £5 to be competed for.

The business transacted in the General Assembly since our last has been unimportant. On the question of fixing the amount of the Property Tax, members did not appear to know their own minds, as several divisions was taken with varying results. The matter ended, however, by the amount being fixed as originally proposed, at Id in the £1. The prorogation probably took place yesterday.

The Wellington correspondent of the Lyttelton Times says:—A lively scene occurred in the House about midnight on Saturday, when opinion was divided as to whether business should go on into the small hours of Sunday. Mr Macandrew left the House indignantly, exclaiming, "If these be the tents ye dwell in, I am sorry for you." Mr Downie Stewart also made a parade of being extremely sbocked ) but, strange to say, both Mr Dick and Mr Fulton —the latter of whom was announced to preach on Sunday, and both of whom are regarded as representing the ultraSabbath party in the House —voted in favour of going on with the business, presumably in anticipation that votes affecting themselves personally, or the districts they represent, would come on for discussion. The whole affair caused much amusement, and was a ferti'e source of chaff in the lobbies. Tawhai brought matters to a climax by solemnly reciting a parable in which he likened the House to two men. one of whom had seven shillings a, week the other nothing. The latter asked the former for six shillings, which he squandered. The poor man thereafter went to the rich man for the seventh shilling ; and Tawhai added "In like manner God has given us six days to work, and we wanted a seventh." The house apparently concurred, and adjourned immediately after this.

Says " Frank Fudge",in the Saturday Advertiser: —" Poverty Bay is certainly not a misnomer for that delightful region up North which calls its capital city Gisborne. A few weeks ago it was my painful duty to chronicle in this column the plaintive wail and melancholy dirge of the bearer of the Poverty Bay Standard, and it is now my disagreeable duty to have to announce that the Herald o' that ilk appears to be in a veiy lamentable A sad and pitiful, yet racy and humorous appeal to its advertisers and subscribers will be found on our Public Opinion page. The editor at the same time gives his Bank Manager a slightrubbing down, illustrating how ignorant of newspaper affairs the majority of those financial derni-gode are , Some of these officials look upon a news" paper business in the same light as they do upon a grocery or drapery trade. They fancy that subscribers and advertisers can and should be pushed for their accounts in the same mamer as consumers of tea and sugar and wearers of clothing are hunted up. They appear to be unconscious of the fact that the larger number of subscribers a newspaper has, the more money must it necessarily have out, for subscribers and advertisers, as a rule, do not pay in advance I do not maintain that Bank managers should give unlimited credit to even wellestablished and prosperous newspapers, but I do contend that it is manifestly unjust to apply the same cut and dried rules to journalists as to ordinary traders. Bankers should be careful to satisfy themselves as to the solvency of a newspaper property before giving accommodation, but when they obtain such satisfaction, they should stretch a point to lend a hand on a pinch to such an enterprise. The proprietor of the Poverty Bay Herald, if we can place faith in his editorial, is evidently in a corner just now, and his banker, as well as his subscribers and advertisers, should come to the rescue."