AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2077, 20 October 1880, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

[By Tbik&baph.]

[Per B.e. Tararna, at Bussell.]

A portion of the Australian news per the above ship appeared in our issue of yesterday. The following are additional items: — MELBOURNE, October 13.

An exhibit of gold, value £150,000, will be placed in the west nave of the exhibition by the Bank of Australasia. The original letter book used by Governor King in 1802 haa been placed in the New South Wales Court. The dinner by the Victorian Commissioners, given to the foreign Commissioners at the exhibition in the Town Hall yesterday, was largely attended. The Governor was present. Sir Henry Parkes proposed the Parliament of Victoria, and spoke generally on Parliaments. He then said that having this exhibition planted on- the hills of Victoria was an evidence of the freedom of intercourse by all countries in the world, and those who opposed the undertaking simply because they were in a minority were the worst enemies of the country. The amount netted by the Austrian Band at Fiemington on Saturday, 9th, exclusive of railway deduction, was £IO2O. They give another performance in the same place next Saturday. At the annual meeting of the Congregational Union, the Bev. T. James was elected foreman, and delivered the opening address. The Lighthouse Commission have decided that some of the buoys in the channel shall be lighted with gas. Nineteen players have been selected from which a team will be chosen to play the Australian Elever. They will commence practice at once. All the race horses recently arrived from other colonies have been landed safely, and are now located at Flemington. Very fair entries have been received for the Amateur Turf Club races, which will take place at the end of the month. The Spring Handicap has filled well.

At the meeting of the education department of the Social Science Congress on Tuesday, the Bishop of Melbourne, in his address referring to religious instruction, said that no system was complete without religion, and the only effective text book of such instruction was the Bible. Beligious instruction, he believed, had been banished from our schools in a moment of haste, to get rid of a pressing difficulty, and without any adequate ap ■ preciation of the far more terrible and enduring difficulties which the measure was sure to entail upon us. It must not be forgotten that so long as education was a purely secular act, the ohild was not taught religion, and became of necessity a secularist. As to the claim of the Catholics, he proposed that reasonable payments should be made to them for such similar results as those tested by the Government Inspectors ; or if this were objected to, that facilities bo afforded them for maintaining separate schools similar to the plan followed in Canada.

John de Silva, once a leading merchant in Melbourne, was prosecuted in the police court to-day for defrauding Walsh Brothers of £l5O worth of jewellery. Others are implicated, it is alleged, in the fraud. The contraband jewellery seized from the the passengers by the ship Benown was found to consist of brass plated articles on being sent to the Mint to be tested.