NEW SOUTH WALES.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1714, 18 August 1879, Page 3

NEW SOUTH WALES.

[FEOai OEB OWN COBEBSPONDBNT.] Sydney, Ist August.

Parliament adjourned on the 25th ultimo, after a session almost unparalleled in duration, having extended over ten months. During that time a host of small measures has been dealt with, but no matter of what may bo termed national importance has been settled. In the Legislative Assembly there have been seventy-five public Bills, of which thirty-six have been passed and assented to, one reserved for the Royal consent, three negatived on the motion for the second reading, fourteen disc'/iarged and withdrawn, four sent to

i the Legislative Council and not returned, and 1 the balance left as a legacy for the next Parliament. The Council has contributed eight public Bills. It would be too much to say that all these measures are worthless. On the contrary! among their number are comprisod some very serviceable Acts, and many meet various administrative needs, but the smallness of them all is truly remarkable. The best are an Adulteration of Food Prevention, passed several months before the close of the session® and a Married Woman’s Property Act. The former is a stringent and well meant Act, in the face of which it should bo impossible to sell any inferior or adulterated article whatever. But nobody takes (ho faintest notice of it. The low public houses dispense their poisons with perfect impunity, and I have drunk a glass of sherry at a firstclass restaurant which has made my blood curdle. The fact appears to bo that as an Act is just as strong as its weakest clause, i the same way as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, tho possibility of enforcing this well-meant measure is extremely dubious on account of bad drafting. Tho words “in a degree injurious to health ” are scattered broadcast through it, and tho definition of what is a degree of admixture injurious to health is left for lawyers to wrangle over in Court. The; chance of securing a conviction is thus made somewhat of the slenderest. As yet, however, not a single information under the Act has boon laid. As for the balance of the measures which have become law, I will just write down a sample half dozen, and not afflict your readers with further detail : Clergy Returns Transfer, Customs Regulation, Felons Apprehension, Grape Vines and Grape Importation, Waratah Council Chambers, and so on. Several resolutions of public interest have, however, boon passed’by tho Assembly. Among these arc tho resolutions affirming the necessity for duplication of tho submarine cable between Australia and Singapore. But the most important business done has been tho authorisation of tho borrowing of over seven millions sterling for public works, principally railways, for extending existing communication further inland, and for construction of fresh ramifications. In the list of works originally submitted in these loan estimates was an amount for the extension of tho existing line from its present terminus, about a mile and n half, to tho wharfages at what la known as Circular Quay, and also for certain suburban lines. These have been, however, thrown out, much to the disgust of suburban property owners. _ The country members made a dead set at tho items, and in sooth I don’t wonder at it. The expense of acquiring the requisite land for tho ine was not oven estimated. The appropriation, for which authority was asked, applied merely to the cost of construction, and not oven the route was settled. It was oretty well understood that landowners were ooking forward to a grand chance of looting the Treasury by demands for compensation, and after all the suburbs are very efficiently served by excellent ’busses running at most reasonable rates, at frequent intervals, and over first-rate roads.

The concluding acts in our political drama just before the fall of the curtain, were the adoption in the Legislative Assembly of Sir Henry Parkea’ resolutions condemning the Legislative Council, and the affirmation in tho Council of counter-resolutions by tho Hon. Mr Docker, justifying the action of that Chamber. The newspapers kept the dispute alive awhile after the prorogation, but have pretty thoroughly worried tho theme into shredo.aand now, after ten months of politics, are d'oVoting their attention to topics amusingly various. One of the newly-born dailies has already come to grief, and appears no longer. The proprietors alleged as the cause of discontinuance an innocent fiction about an accident to the machinery. But the cause had been too obvious during the latter part of the journal’s brief career. Tho printing had become disgracefully slovenly, and there was evidence of total incapacity to run the paper. The most obvious items of local nows were passed over without notice, and altogether, the “ Courier” deserved to die. The “ Daily Telegraph,” however, survives, and is beautifully printed and excellently arranged. Its literary matter is, however, somewhat weak, and I think it has fallen short of what was expected and desired by tho public. I have heard a good deal t £ comment, and the general verdict seems to be that “ granny,” as the “ Sydney Morning Herald” is rather slightingly called, is tho best after all. Hardly had tho prerogation of Parliament taken place when the colony was roused anew by a tremendous rolling of the drum-eccle-siastical. The Roman Catholic Archbishop, Dr Vaughan, had only been waiting until this opportunity to give publicity to a pastoral letter on the subject of our educational system. His object in holding back till now was to prevent any discussion taking place in Parliament this session on his pronunciamento. Tho pastoral was sent simultaneously to all tho metropolitan papers for publication, and is a lengthy and outspoken declaration of war against tho secular system of education, which has been adopted in the colony. There appears to me to be reason forserious concern in the present condition of the political outlook. The archbishop’s manifesto strikes mo as being in tho same category as the Assembly’s resolutions, adverse to the Legislative Council. The former, as well as the latter, may, I believe, be traced to the one agency. I consider the pastoral as having been provoked by a speech made about a couple of months ago by Sir Henry Parkos, when formally opening a new public school. Ho then announced that it was his intention next session to revise and amend the Education Act, and plainly stated that the alterations ho had in view would have the effect of still further restricting the limited recognition and assistance which is at present conceded to denominational schools. The Archbishop has taken this as a challenge, as, no doubt, it was intended he should ; and now there are interposed to intercept the Legislature from practical legislation, two causes of useless disturbance and commotion, viz, a contest between the two Houses of Parliament, and a religious contention which it will prove more difficult to allay than it has been to rouse. If ever there was a time when statesmen who were actuated with a single purpose to serve the best interests of tho colony, would have shrunk from allowing anything to intrude that would involve a postponement of essential legislation, it is, as regards New South Wales, now. Tho colony is quivering upon an apex, if, indeed, it has not, after an epoch of exceptional and adventitious ascension, begun to gravitate down the other side. The land policy, which was instrumental in creating our much vaunted surplus, begins to show how rotten it has always been at tho core. Money from alienations by auction no longer pours in as it did a few years ago, and the ordinary revenue must, before long, prove inadequate to sustain tho weight of bloated establishments and to endure tho strain of the extravagant scale of expenditure which the accumulation of that surplus encouraged and occasioned. We borrowed but the other day some three millions, and will make our appearance as borrowers of a larger sum very shortly ; and, although the bulk of tho amounts so procured will be applied to the construction of reproductive works, the past experience of every colony has taught that the process of recoupment from such enterprises is never immediate, nor invariably realized oven after lapse of years. Our surplus has melted like last year’s snow; and to-day there remains unappropriated little more than halt a million. This would, perhaps, have mattered little were there in the cobuy anything to justify expectation of an elastic and expanding revenue. But there exists nothing of the kind. The productive capabilities of tho laad have been but little enhanced by our agrarian system after nearly eighteen years’ of experiment. Tho land laws which were to have settled a vast population on the soil, and to substitute, in hundreds of thousands of spots, tillage for grazing, have utterly failed to do anything of the kind. They have called into existence in tho country districts a population of traffickers and landjobbers. Immense quantities of land have indeed been selected, but they have been selected cheap only to be sold at a profit to round off large estates held by wealthy (piattors. Settlement, in fact, has been utterly to alier.alion, and tillage again has only in an infinitesimal degree followed settlement. The land law has so operated that it has almost invariably payed bettor to sell them to cultivate.

Of course, under those 'circumstances, not only is the revenue inelastic, but business suffers likewise. I am told that there is not in Sydney a single line which is not overdone. New establishments have been opened from time to time, although there has been no increase in the number of customers to justify or support them. It has followed that they have had to try and get a share in what busi-

ness was in existence before they started, and the consequence has been that in almost every business (here has been a "cutting” trade for some time past. This sort of thing cannot of course exist for ever. The weakest or least pushing houses must go to the wall, and during the past fortnight there have been three failures of respectable firms, which should have been profitable concerns had there been anything for them to do. Myers and Solomon have liabilities approaching £80,000; Messrs Teas, Stuart and Burnett about £28,000 ; and Mcs?rs Gilchrist, Stubbs, and Weston, about £6OOO. I hear also that one of the largest of the drapery firms here is simply carrying on under inspection, for cash only, in order to work off heavy stocks and consignments and to avert a disastrous sacrifice. Yon may imagine how pleasant such a neighbor is to the other drapers who require to make a profit. It has been authoritatively denied that any decision to postpone the opening of the Exhibition until the Ist October has been arrived at, but at I ho same time no definite date has been fixed. Sir Henry Parkee, in denying the report in question, spoke of the latter part of September as the probable time, and the difference between the latter part of September and the Ist of October is rather too fine. The central dome of the building has now been roofed in, and a very fine object it makes in the general view of Sydney from any of the elevated points in the suburbs, looming as prominently as does the dome of St. Paul’s in a general view of London. Exhibitors, commissioners, and exhibits commence to at rive with increasing rapidity. The Japanese commissioners, three in number, are here, as is also Mr Yilliers, artiat for the London “Graphic.” The Japanese gentlemen are bustling about, after the fashion of men of their active nation, inquiring into and inspecting all kinds of public institutions, and their dapper little figures, dressed in the most dandy European fashion, are quite familiar already in our streets. While trade is languid and employment scanty, banking business continues to prosper. The Mercantile Bank, a comparatively small institution, has Just declared a dividend of nine per cent. But the Commercial Bank has far outdone such moderate returns. The directors about a week ago presented their chairman (Mr Jones) with an honorarium of 1000 guineas, in recognition of his share in promoting the prosperity which the Bank has enjoyed of late. Mr Jones has been a director about thirfy years, and chairman for over a decade. The prosperity of the Bank has been something prodigious, especially ef late. The dividends for some half-years past have reached 25 per cent per annum, while reserve fund has been increasing at the rate of |£50,000 per annum, so that at the present time it amounts to £525,000 actually £25,000 more than the paid-up capital ?