Surplus Revenue.—Our readers will stare

Evening Post, Issue 90, 24 May 1865, Page 3

Surplus Revenue. — Our readers will stare

at the heading, and think we are joking ; nevertheless, it is no less true than welcome The General Government has recently remitted to the various provinces one half of the surplus due to them up to June, 1864. The Canterbury Government comes in for £4195 on this account, and we hear that the Provincial Secretary has determined to share the gratification he experienced at the receipt of this somewhat unexpected windfall, by distributing part of the amount between the Christchurch and Lyttelton Town Councils. Both of the respectable bodies seam, by the reports of their meetings, to have arrived at the utmost depths of low spirits, in consequence of their poverty. We hope they -will now cheer up a bit and give up the notion of running away. — Lyttolton Times. What Lord Chancellors cost the Country — There are now no less than four ex Lord Chancellors : to wit, Lord Brougham, Lord St. Leonards, Lord Cranworth, and Lord Chelmsford, each receiving a pension of £5,000 a-year ; besides two Irish ex-Lord Chancellors— the Right Honorable Joseph Napier and the Right Hon. Francis Blackburn, each receiving £3692 6s. (a curious sum this ?) our old friend Brougham has received this j65,0(J0 a-year for thirty years — altogether, therJfcpre, he has taken £150,000 for doing nothing; and, I think, we may say that during these thirty years the country has paid in salaries and pensions to Lord Chancellors at least a million of mono) » which is over £33,000 a-year.— lllustrated Times. Josh Billings, in the Troy News, gives \ s weekly seintillortions of the ripest wisdom. The lait is in the form of ad vires to a young lady as to how she shall receive a proposal. • You ought to take it kind, looking down hill, with an expreshun, about half ticklid and half scart. After the pop iz over, it yure luvvei 1 wants tew kiss you, I don't think I would cay yes or no, but let the thing kind ov take its own course. There is one thing I have always stuck tew, and that iz, give me long courtships and short engagements. The Confederate Iron-Clads.— The Confederate iron-clad ship about which so many mysterious paragraphs have gone round the English and foreign journals, is the Stonewall, commanded by Capt. Page, C.S.N. She is one of the two formidable vessels built by M. Armand, of Bordeaux, and constituted with her consort the subject of a correspondence, with which our readers are probably familiar, between the French Government and the late Mr. Dayton. The Stonewall is a vessel of great power, heavy armed, and fully manned. Her crew is principally composed of the men who served under Capt. Wardell in the Confederate war steamer Florida. — Index. There was a field-day at the Supreme Court, on Monday, no less than 45 debtors' cases having been heard. The majority received their final order. Final order ! What a subject for a sermon ! I wonder none of our clergy have dilated upon it. A mere moralist might write lessons by the score on the Debtors.' Court. The Divorce Court is nothing to it. How much hard work, swindling, honest care, impudent scoundrelism, do those 45 cases represent !— Lyttelton Chronicle.