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Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1156, 12 April 1872, Page 2

Judge Harvey rode up from Hokitika yesterday, and to-day he holds a District Court for the hearing of criminal, civil, and bankruptcy cases. The compliment paid to the Fire Brigade by the Amateur Dramatic Club, and the desire of the latter body to supplement the funds of the Brigade, deserve recognition and support on the part of the public, and there will, no doubt, be a large attendance at the Volunteer HaU this evening- The Volunteer Band, it will be noticed, are to contribute to the entertainment, and during the evening there is to be a torchlight procession by the Brigade. By the coach from Hokitika last evening, mails from all parts "of the Colony were received — North Island, Nelson, and Westport mails ex Charles Edward, and Canterbury and Otago mails by the overland mail from Christchurch. The Commissioner of Customs has promoted Mr David Day from the fifth to the fourth class, and he has been appointed Clerk and Landing Waiter in the Customs Department at Westport. The nomination of an eligible candidate to succeed Mr James Wilkie in the Provincial Council of Nelson as member for the Grey Valley will take place at Cobden, on Friday, 19th mat. Should a poll be demanded, it will be taken in the several sub-districts, on Friday, 26th inst. The following extract from "The Amended Electoral Act, 12th September, 1870," defines the qualification of candidates for seats in the Provincial Council :— " Clause 9. Any person qualified to vote, as a holder of a miner's right or rights, or business license or licenses, shall be qualified to be elected and to sit as a member of the House of Representatives, or as a member of Provincial Councils, but in either case for an electoral district situated wholly or partly within a gold field proclaimed within the Province in which such miner's rioht or busines license shall have been issued." Clause 6, of the the same Act, defines the qualification for a voter, which is the holding of a miner's right or business license for six consecutive months, in the district in which he records his vote. In the Eesident Magistrate's Court, yesterday, before Mr Revell, Henry Price was charged with stealing 3s 6d, the property of F. C. Smith, of Cobden. From the evidence it appeared that the accused abused the hospitality of the informant by robbing his till while he was being accommodated at his house. The stolen money was found on. him by Constable Keating, and Inspector Hickson stated that there were two previous convictions of a similar character against the accused, who was sentenced to four "months' imprisonment and hard labor. — The same person was charged under the Vagrant Act with obtaining board by false pretences from James Booth, and, the charge beint» clearly proved, he was sentenced te six months' imprisonment and hard labor, the sentence to commence on the expiry of his sentence for the other offence. — For permitting a bull to wander at large in the streets, Samuel Hill dairyman, was fined ss, with costs.— There was a cross-summons for assault between two miners named James Grant and Michael Scanlon, living at German Gully. A dispute had arisen between the parties, as to the working of some ground, and it culminated in some recriminatory language and a tussle. Tn the case of Grant V. Scanlon, the Magistrate said the weight of evidence was against Scanlon. He had taken the law in his own hands, and had been the aggressor in any violence that had occurred. He was fined ss, with 14s costs, and LI as professional costs. The case of Scanlon against Grant was dismissed, as was an information by Scanlon v. Brown, another miner, for abusive language. Mr Newton appeared for Grant, and for the defence in the case against Brown. The annual meeting of the Church members of Trinity Church was held last evening, " for the purpose of appointing churchwardens and vestrymen, and for the receiving and passing of the accounts for the year last past, &c." The Rev. G. T. N. Watkins, the incumbent, was in the chair. The meeting having been opened with prayer, the Chairman, in a short addres, returned his sincere thanks to the Churchwardens, the Vestry, and the congregation, for their efforts in connection with the bazaar, which, he said, had put them in possession of as fine a church as there was pn the Gold Fields. The minutes of the previous meeting having been read and confirmed, Mr Revell read the parish accounts for the part year, which showed the following results :— Offertory and Sittings, L 431 16s j Building Fund, L 561 6s Id ; Loan account, L3OO ; Total, L 1293 2s Id. By building account, L 376 11s ; Loan and interest, L 324 ; Stipend and general 'expenses. LSBO 15s 3d ; Balance, Lll 15s 10d-L1293 2s Id. Tbe Chairman subsequently stated that it had been resolved by the Synod that the general meeting should for the future take place on the first Monday in Juiy, so that the election of Churchwardens and Vestry would only be for three months. On the motion of Mr Hardy, seconded by Mr Fox, it was resolved that the present Churchwardens and Vestry should retain office until the general meeting in July. The motion was agreed to, and the meeting proceeded with some routine business. Among other resolutions, it was agreed that the Churchwardens and Vestry be empowered to have the church lit with gas. Mr Greenfield, Provincial Secretary, and Mr Dobson, Provincial Engineer, paid a visit to the Nokawa coal mine on Friday and Saturday last. Both these gentlemen, sajs the Westport Times, testify to the value of the discovery of the coal seam, which shows an outcrop of 12ft to 14ft in thickness. They also speak highly of the navigability of the river and the accessibility of the mine. Any of the coasting steameis can go alongside the present seam and be loaded without difficulty with what quantity of coal they may require. It is the intention of the applicants for the lease, Messrs Field, Brown, Chambers, and M'Nairn, to set about erecting a wharf which will carry 100 tons of coal. The New Zealand bar is constantly being recruited. The Auckland Cross, of the 23rd ult., says : — "Four candidates represented themselves yesterday, and the two preceding days, for the final examinations requisite to qualify themselves for practising at the New Zealand bar. Four candidates for legal honors also placed themselves for first examinations. .. ; . .. At Reef ton, on Monday last, a man was arrested by the police, apparently suffering from mental aberration produced by prolonged indulgence in spirituous liquors. His first appearance in Reefton while in a disordered state of mind was certainly most startling, he having divested himself of all clothing, swum from Rosstown,to the Reefton side, at imminent risk of being swepi away by the fresh, and in that condition marched solemnly up the Strand, The police were quickly communicated with, and went in pursuit of the lunatic, who was secured after an exciting chase over logs and through the township. At the Resident Magistrate's Court, at

Ahaura, on Thursday, 11th insfc., Margaret Dewson was fined L2O, with L 5 5s costs, or two months' imprisonment, for sly-grog-selling at Napoleon.— ln the Warden's Court, James Anderson and party applied for a gold mining lease of 164 acres, at the Big River, in the Little Grey District. The hearing of the application will take place, when the Government Suiveyor visits the ground and reports. A 1 public meeting for the purpose of organising a Sick and Destitute Belief Fund, was held at Ryan and Davin's Hotel, Reefton! .on .Saturday evening ; Mr Broad, the "Warden, was in the chair. Mr W. Pitt movod'the first resolution— " That it is desirable that a Sick and Destitute Relief Fund Committee be appointed in Reef ton. " Mr Hankin seconded, the resolution, which, on being put to the meeting, was carried unanimously. Mr G. Donne moved the next resolution : — " That this meeting proceeds to the election of a temporary committee for the purpose of obtaining subscriptions, and that a meeting of subscribers be called for this day three weeks, for the purpose of electing a. permanent committee." Mr Donovan seconded the resolution, and the following gentlemen were then elected a temporary commit bee : — Messrs M'Lean, Barker, H. Mace, Pitt, Ivess, Nevin, Crampton, Ramsay, Donovan, Sinnamon, Nelson (Cement Town), John Deehan, Franklyn, H. G. Hankin, M'Phee, George Walsh, John M'Laren, Williams (Fern Flat), Robert Doherty, Jonathan Hall, James Clinton, Monahan, Oxley, D. Ryan, Dalton, R. Cox, Caple, Gardiner, D. Ross. A special correspondent of ours arrived in town last evening from the Inangahua. He reports that Mace's machinery is working as every one - expected it to work — that is, well. Mr Coates has given his attention to the Inangahua reefs, and has arranged with certain claims to put on strong and powerful machinery to reduce the quartz up in the Inangahua into solid ingots of gold, such as the Energetic Company lately sent down. From what we hear, the quartz although very rich, requires a large number of stampers, in order to get through a lot of stone. Quartz miners from Bendigo will easily understand this, and so will those from Inglewood. The only thing wanted to make Reefton a place is good roads, and it must be our effort to do our " level best " to get them. News has reached Westport of the discovery of a leader or reef about five miles behind Mount Rochfort, ah a distance of twenty miles from the town. A party of five have started from German Terrace for the locality with the intention of further testing the ground before making any application for protection. The specfmens sent in to MJr David Barrie, at German Terrace, and forwarded by him to the Times office bespeak the unmistakeable ditcovery of goldbearing quartz. The specimens are small, but gold is visibly distributed throughout the stone. A day or two, it is hoped, will further develop the outcrop, when, if satisfactory, the prospectors will take the necessary steps to secure the desired quantity of ground. All that is. reported as being discernible at present is a thin leader, from which the three small specimens were taken. Referring to the Firebrace divorce case, a London correspondent says : — " Firebrace has again been cast. He applied for a new trial and failed. He has lost all the costs of the trial, except those arising out of the charges made against him. These charges the Judge said were totally without foundatinn, yet Mrs Firebrace swore to them herself, saying that he had struck her with his fist frequently. The jury were misled by her tears against the direction of the Judge. Firebrace will poihaps go to the Lords ; but they have never yet reversed a decision of Penzance's." The Auckland Weekly Herald says : — "There is a rather a good story going the rounds, about a certain needy political writer who is very anxious to obtain an appointment under the General Government, and who is endeavoring to scribble himself into one. He thinks he would make a good immigration commissioner, and they say that the only objection the Government have to his appointment is that he spells emigration with an H, and commissioner with aK. This worthy has read the parable of the unjust judge, and he mades a practice of dispatching the papers containing the leaders to the Minister in Wellington, with the marginal note — ' this was written by ' ! ! Not a bad notion, is it ? Only if many fellows took to doing it, it would be bad times for Ministers." The suggestions we recently made as to the probable position of the Brogden contracts is sustained by a statement of the Wellington correspondent of the Otago Daily Times, who says : -Mr Brogden and his engineers, or at least some of them, have been here for some time, but apparently doing nothing, for we have not even heard of any contract, not even the Blenheim and . Picton one, being signed. Mr Brogden openly expresses his dissatisfaction at the state of forced inactivity in which he is kept, and lays the whole blame on the Government. He also says that the Government is now trying to force him into general conditions in the contracts, which were unheard of when terms were agreed to between Mr Yogel and himself, and which would materially alter those terms. So matters are at a dead lock for the present, and nothing can apparently be done until Mr Yogel returns from Australia. A case of genuine distress appears to have occurred in the Halfway Bush district, Otago, where an unhappy farmer is so hardly pressed by the badness of the times, that, according to his own statement in the Resident Magistrate's Court, he can't afford even to get drunk. A local writer of "Casual Notes," referring to the circumstance, says : — The poor unfortunate, moreover, is a Scotchman — a fact which is at once the best proof of the genuineness of his distress, and an aggravation of the hardship of his case; A Scotchman who cannot afford to buy whisky must indeed be hard up ; and a Scotchman who is thus deprived of his chief solace is an object that cannot fail to excite the pity of the most nrnty-hearted of men. The tortures of Tantalus were. nothing to those which such a luckless individual must suffer when Saturday night comes round, and he is compelled by "chill penury" to go to bed toddyless and sober. With reference to the Chinese labor question, to which we referred the other day, the Wellington Independent says :— Just as we expected, the indiscreet circular issued by Mr Ormond on the subject of Chinese labor has raised a hornet's nest about the ears. of , the Government; The Canterbury papers teem with letters upon the subject, and wherever the circular has been/read it has formed the text' for an attack upon. the. Government. ■ When we took occasion" to characterise Mr Ormond's circular as foolish and unnecessary we mentioned that we had full authority for stating that the Government had never contemplated the introduction of Chinese laborers, and our statement is confirmed by an official denial by the Resident Minister for the Middle Island that ever the Government entertained such an idea. The facts of the case appear to be that the question of employing Chinese labor in the event of the local supply being insufficient was incidentally raised by Mr Brogder, and the Minister of Public Works consulted the various Superintendents on the question, although the Government had already expressed an opinion unfavorable to the proposition. The matter is hardly worth sny further discussion, but it is; to be hoped that in future official communications tho Minister

of Public Works will exerbise a little more discretion in the composition of his sentences, so that his language will not be open to misinterpretation as - it has been in the present case. The following accidents are related by the Lyttelton Times of the 3rd instant :— As the Artillery were returning from the firing for district prizes yesterday evening, some persons riding at a furious pace came into collision with Lieutenant Craig and Corporal Triggs, unhorsing them. Several mounted members of the battery were despatched after the offenders as they galloped away, but on overtaking them a tussle took. -place, during which Bombardier Richardson /was thrown off his horse and had his collar-bone dislocated. He was removed home and is now doing well. — An accident occurred to MrF. Pavitt's eldest «on, A. E. Pavitt, on Friday last. ; He was out shooting with a double-barrelled gun at the Irwell, and had just knocked a rabbit over when in the act of reloading the empty barrel the undischarged one accidentally went off. Both thumbs were split open byithe explosion, and the front portion of Mr Pavitt's hat was blown off, though by wonderful good fortune his head escaped injury. — An accident happened at Kaiapoi yesterday, to. a man named George Kilgour. He was on the sports' ground and had made a match with a friend of his named William Mellor to run a hundred yards race. When coming in to the winning post he was a short distance in advance of his opponent, but the latter made a spurt and caught him with the idea of holding him back. In the struggle Kilgour fell heavily on the ground, and broke his collar-bone in several places. -. - -