Untitled

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 284, 10 December 1901, Page 4

Reciprocity in regard to international trade on an equitable basis may perhaj s work well, but if carried out fully it must lead towards direct taxation. Nelson Colonist. The struggle for a crust. The Queensland State teacher in the main gets starvation wages and the toughest treatment, yet there arc 1482 candidates down for next month's examinations. —Bulletin. The law says that a woman need not give evidence against her husband, nor a man against himself, yet, in a N.S.W. court, the other day, a man was committed for seven days because of reluctance to give evidence likely to incriminate his son. —Bulletin.

Ono Yictoria mother now argues that Church bazaar raflles are at least as pernicious as totes or sweeps. Her own small boy and another, at a recent bazaar, took tickets in a penny raiile and won a trophy each—one a bottle of wine, the other a bottle of pickles. Failing to sell them, or rattle them again, the boys decided on a picnic and wolfed their prizes. Found in a state of collapse, they were taken off in the ambulance to the Children’s Hospital.—Bulletin. In spite, however, of all that has been done, it is obvious from the figures quoted by the Inspector-General that there arc still many eases of children willing and fit for a course of secondary education, but unable, owing to their individual circumstances and the conditions of the existing system, to obtain it.—Wellington Post. After all, the Parliamentary system, as we know it, is awkward, cumbersome, and often supremely foolish. It operates most of its time on the lines of its teamster, who, having a big load to draw a long dis tance, and a fine team of one hundred horses to draw it, divides his horses, putting sixty to draw in one direction, and forty to puli in the other. This is the prin ciple of government by opposition.—Mel bourne Punch.

The c-omet-like appearance and disappearance of the State Fire Insurance Bill are notorious. Next session it will be dangled again before the democratic nose like Billy Buttons’ bunch of carrots. The Cabinet would probably like to bury it. but they cannot do so. Hence it travels round like the Elective Executive, Referendum, and butter seasons. Carterton Times,