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Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2525, 21 March 1871, Page 2

The Governor’s Visit.— His Excellency the Governor has arranged to leave Dunedin on Friday next. He purposes going overland to Christchurch, and expects to reach the residence of the Hon. Mr Holmes on Saturday afternoon. He will pass through Oamaru on Monday.

Electro-Biology. —Captain Wilson, who has attained some celebrity as a medical mesmerist, will give a lecture at the Masonic Hall, to-morrow evening, on Electro-Biology. Captain Wilson’s testimonials are of a high order, and extend over several years. He aims to making the science, of which he is professor, useful as a remedial .agent, and ris thus distinguished from those who aim more at astonishing than bringing its mysterious power into useful operation His lecture is likely to prove not only amusing but instructive.

Fabulous.—The mining reporter of the Southern Cross says that the richness of the Caledonian mine is almost fabulous. Scarcely a day passes but something is revealed to further excitement, astonishment, and admiration, and cause folks to altogether lose sight of the tenth commandment. “Specimens, specimens !” is still t'.o cry, and although the two-stamper battery is kept hard at work on the precious stud’ the supply is far more than kept up. This morning when I called at the machine there was half-

a-tou weuht on hand, and a few of the stones were amongst the richest I have ever seen; one of them appeared to contain at least eighty per cent, of gold. To render my report of to-day consistent in its tenor with that of yesterday, I may state that richer stuff was struck in the upper levels during the night. The lode there is now 6ft wide, and through its centre runs a band of gold nearly one foot wide. Mysterious.—A rather strange circumstance has, within the last few days, been brought to 1 ght. It appears that, about a fortnight or three weeks sincy a Chinaman asked permission to leave a bundle at the residence of Mr C. F. Roberts, of Enterprise Gully. Leave was granted, but the claimant not since making his appearance, Mr Roberts became suspicious there might be something wrong, and caused the bundle to be opened, when it was found to contain six tins or jars of opium. When it is remembered that a few months back a case containing opium was lost on its tiansit from Dunedin to Clyde, for which the owner recovered from Cobb and Co. the sum of L 65, and when it is borne in mind that a Chinaman died in Nascby a few days’ back from the effect of opium eating or smoking, and that tho deceased Chinaman was identified by Mr Roberts’s children as the man who left the bundle, and that the quantity left in Mr Roberts’s care was far in excess of what an ordinary Chinaman would be supposed to possess for private use, there appears to us to be, to say ihe least of it, something not a little mysterious in the whole affair. Action for Libel.—The Nelson evening paper of March 10 says : An application was made in the Supremo Court this morning, by Mr Connolly, on behalf of Sir David Monro for a rule nisi calling upon David Mitchell Luckie and Edwin Gmrgo Collins, proprietors of the Colonial newspaper, to show cause why a criminal information should not be exhibited against them for scandalous libels upon Sir David Monro. Tho case having been stated by Mr Connolly, his Honor the Judge, in granting the rule, said that to impute to a man the having acted on party motives was not in itself a libel. To serve a party was, in the opinion of politicians generally, to serve their country, as by so doing they kept the reins of Government in the hands of those whom they thought the most able to handle them. Parliamentary Government was only to be be carried on by means of party, and to say that a man was a “party man” was what was done every day by newspaper writers and private individuals without their incurring any penalty, but to say or write that the Speaker of the House of’ Representatives, t/ua Speaker was a party man was libellous, if false. Pr'una facie. the second article in the Colonist entitled, “Who put hack the clock ?” did contain an imputation against the Speaker of having acted in the chair for party purposes. The extract from the article in the New Zealand Spectator contained the sting of the lib>d, it being there stated that a Ministerial Bill being in difficulties, the Speaker took advantage of his position to extricate it from those difficulties by ordering tli e clock of the House to be put back, whereas the affidavit of Sir David Monro, which at the present stage of the proceedings he (the Judge) was bound to assume to be true, stated that no such difficulties ex'stecl, the Bill having passed through all its stages, and nothing remaining but to adopt the title a mere formal matter, and no essential part of the Bill, and therefore to assert that it was in difficulties was a misstatement of a cardinal fact. Rule granted.

A special meeting of the No. 1 'Company City •Guards will be held at the Glasgow Arms Hotel, to-morrow (Wednesday) eventing, at J.3Q, on business of great importance.

A public lecture,, under the auspices of the Sons of Temperance, will be delivered by Mr J. B Park, at the Congregational Hall, Moray Place, to morrow (Wednesday) evening, at 8 o’clock. Subject: Glimpses of the beautiful.