OUR MELBOURNE LETTER.

Evening Star, Issue 3858, 6 July 1875, Page 2

OUR MELBOURNE LETTER.

Fire is the most common theme of talk just now. Within a week or two larger losses have been experienced than have occurred from this cause in Melbourne during many years. The immense destruction at the Sandtidge Sugar Works was followed by another in King street, where the stores of Messrs Luke and Co., tea merchants, and of Mr Francis, were destroyed. The former firm, it is said, held stock to the amount of LLi 000, all covered by insurance; concerning the latter house the public have no information either as io value of stock, amount of damage, or insurance. Mr Francis holds a large inteust in the Sugar Company, Much sympathy is expressed for Mr Luke, who has been very long and very favorably known in commercial circles, and to whose rising business this check comes most inopportunely. No clue to the origin of the fire has been discovered.

What is the matter with Sydney business ? is a . question constantly asked here, but never satisfactorily answered. Very large quantities of store ca.tle are purchased from that side by our graziers; formerly bills were always accepted; no losses or inoonve-’ nience through this course have been suffered by the sellers for many years, yet of late, and without any alleged reason, it has been totally departed from, and hard cash insisted upon. We are obliged to have cattle, so must pay the money, yet general business in the older Colony does not seem very stable. Houses here complain of some depression, and attribute it to the waste ©f capital on unproductive land speculations, and perhaps in part to the falling off in gold yield. The latter cause is most generally assigned. My cynical friend suggests that it is therefore moat certainly not the true one. It does not, at any rate, seem sufficient to account for the effects. A very odd case came before the Supreme Court this week on a writ of habeas. A, country gentleman sent his children to a hoarding school near town for a year, in a few months he called for them to take them home for the holidays. The schoolmaster coolly refused to let them go, or to let him see them, and told him to “ to get them the best way he could.” No allegation, or even insinuation was at any time made, that there was the least to object to the father as a fit person to take care of his own children—except that he once gave them some sweet-meat—-but {a shameful aspersioh was made, on mereherenay, against the mother’s character. The Judges actually _ thought tit to treat this trumpery statement in a serious way, and to investigate it in favor of the schoolmaster. The slander on the lady was shown td be utterly untrue, and the children were restored; but not without an amount of annoyance to the parents on which the school people had evidently reckoned as a means, if not exactly of levying black-mail, >t any rate, something very much like it.

As I i anticipated, the Prior case, in which the Asylum authorities were charged with illtreating a lunatic, has utterly broken down as far as oral evidence goes. The medical witnesses, however, deposed to facts showing that the man had certainly met with rough usago during his residence in the institution. But whether this particular instance of rough usage was or was not absolutely necessary to protect other patients cannot possibly be ascertained, though even the complainant’s own witnesses and his own admission showed that forcible restraint must often have been needful for him. An unfortunate accident happened at the .Royal last Monday. A gasfitter’s apprentice engaged to repair a hydrogen gasholder, was specially warned not to strike a light; he disobeyed, and the inevitable explosion that resulted blew him and another man through the roof of the shed where the apparatus stood. The author of the mischief was killed instantly; his companion, who was in the employment of the lessees, was severely hurt, but is recovering. Barrett, the wife murderer, is spared capital punishment, and is to suffer life imprisonment with hard labor. Our Government has lost some important cases before the Privy Council, but nobody seems to care. Perhaps wo shall see what Mr Higinbotham will say on Tuesday when the House meets. He was virulent against the Court of Appeal the n ght before the telegram came. What will he be now ? Politics arc as quiet as before—perhaps a little more so.