The Globe. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1033, 17 October 1877, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1877.

A snoET time ago we directed attention to the proposal made in France to annex the New Hebrides to New Caledonia, and thus create another convict settlement in these seas. The question is too important to be overlooked, and we therefore hope that those in a position to bring pressure to bear upon the various Colonial Governments will do so at once, in order that a protest may be sent home on the subject. Australasia has too_ long rested under the stigma of convictism to quietly allow another attempt to be made to still further damage our reputation. Not only should the proposal be strenuously opposed, every effort should be made to induce the French Goverameat to cease to uw evsa Jfew

Caledonia as a convict station. The New Hebrides, as some of our readers are aware, have been selected by the Presbyterian Church of these colonies as their field of missionary labor. Many lives have been sacrificed in the effort to christianise them, and with the most satisfactory results. The Presbyterian Church would therefore, we think, only be doing its duty, if it strongly protested against the iniquity of the proposal. Through its instrumentality these islands have been reclaimed from barbarism, and rendered safe for white occupation, but if the scum of the French criminal population is allowed to bo poured upon them, then indeed their last state will be worse than the first.

Acco-RDiNU to the latest accounts from home, opinion is not by any means so enthusiastic as it once was in favour of the cause of Holy Russia. In spile of the efforts on the part of the Spectator, Times, and other journals, to discredit the stories of Bussiau and Bulgarian cruelties are beginning to have an effect upon public opinion—and it is generally felt that it is the Inst for territory, and the desire to become master of the Dardanelles, which are the true motives which have brought about the war, and not a desire to redress the supposed grievances of the Christian subjects of the Porte. The true condition of the inhabitants of Bulgaria is forcibly shown in a letter from Mr. Forbes, the special correspondent of the Daily News. " Mr. Forbes narrates," says the correspondent of a Melbourne contemporary, " with perhaps unconscious candour, how that the Russians spoke to him of their great disappointment with Bulgaria. They had come as ' liberators' to a country which was supposed to be groaning under some brutal form of tyranny. They expected to find the people 'oppressed, impoverished; impeded in the exercise of their religion, sure not for an hour of their lives, of the honour of their women, of their property.' They find a state of things entirely the reverse of this. The Bulgarians, they discover, ' live in comfort. The Russian peasant cannot compare with them in competence or in prosperity. Their grain crops stretch far and wide. Every village has its teeming herd of cattle, brood mares with foals, goats, and sheep. Last year's straw is yet in their stackyards. Milk may be bought in every house. In the villages for one mosque there are half-a-dozen Christian churches. No man experiences anywhere a difficulty in gettiiig silver for a napoleon.' These things, so different from what they are in Eussian villages, naturally make a great impression on the ' liberators,' who may reasonably make some comparisons not entirely in favor of Holy Eussia. They furnish, \as we might suppose, a fact rather awkward for those who have been | working upon our feelings by harrowf ing pictures of Bulgarian misery and I Turkish oppression. It is amusing to \ see how the Daily News gets over the I very malapropos revelations of its cor- | respondent It discovers in the pros- < perity of the Bulgarians a new reason | why they should be protected by other \ nations' in those interests which belong I to the progress of a people in eivilisaI tion.' But surely the state of things ':, pictured by the Daily News' corres- ■ pondent furnishes a very good argu- ■■ ment for the contrary, proving as it does that the Bulgarians are in pos- ; session already of a great deal of what \ belongs to ' tne progress of a people in civilisation.' " I _-o

It is impossible to shut our eyes to the fact, that the decisions of Mr. Mellish in the Resident Magistrate's Court, Christchurch, are frequently very unsatisfactory. An impression has got abroad, unfortunately we are afraid too well founded, that his sentences are dictated by no recognisable rule, and without due consideration of all the circumstances of the various cases. The consequence is that distrust is engendered in the minds of litigants, which, unless steps are taken to remove the impression, will have a most injurious effect on the public mind, and which may soon call for the active interference of the Govern merit. However well qualified Mr. Mellish may have been to act as a magistrate in a smaller district, a strong feeling exists here, that removal to another district would be very desirable. The decision of the Magistrate in the ease of assault heard before the Court this morning is a case in point. The evidence clearly showed that a gross assault was committed, and yet all the punishment inflicted was that the accused was bound over to keep the peace in two sureties of £250 each, and himself in £SOO. Such a penalty might have had some effect had the accused been a man to whom the finding of £SOO would be a matter of difficulty, but in the case in question, the defendant being a man of means, the penalty was certainly most inadequate.