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Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1623, 27 October 1874, Page 406

The latest telegraphic advices from the Palmer River goldfields report the miners there are starving, and that hundreds are leaving. A famine is feared during the winter months unless the Government open communication. We cut the following from the New Zealand Herald ;—" An enormous increase in the revenue of Otago for the past quarter, as compared with the same period of last year, is reported by telegram from Dunedin. It amounts in round numbers to £23,833 ! This is a fact (says the New Zealand Times) which is worth the attention of those who are still doubtful of the success of the policy of the Government —• immigration and public works." For the jubilation of our contemporary, we may inform him that a hurdy-gurdy man, a recent Featherstonian importation, has been getting £lO per week in Auckland. Are we to presume that" this is a fact which is worth the attention of those who are still doubtful of the success of the policy of the Govern-ment—-immigration and public works." ? The following incident, says the Auckland Star, serves to illustrate the sagacity of dogs. On Saturday last a number of gentlemen visited Onehunga in a buggy accompanied by a friend of ours, who is possessed of a dog named Sancho, and which animal also accompanied them by following them in the rear. On their return to town, owing to the tempestuous state of the weather, one of the occupants of the buggy had the misfortune to lose his hat by the influence of the wind. It being very dark at the time, and as it would have been next to an impossibility to discover it, they determined to keep on their course, When nearing the city the owner of the dog stepped out of the buggy to make tracks for his home (the others drove on), but to his great surprise the dog was jumping round him in a very excited state, and with the supposed lost hat in his mouth. Of course he hailed them and returned it, much to the astonishment of all, and especially the owner of the lost article.. It must be understood that the dog was not appealed to to recover the hat. We are informed he has saved many hats from a watery grave, and mention the above as we consider it very praiseworthy conduct, and that he is unexceptionably a very sagacious animal.

Stock-owners in the Tuapeka and Dun> stan districts sustained great losses during the late severe weather. Messrs Sutherland and Poison lost 2,000 lambs. A Wanganui paper records an instance of prompt decision. A couple were recently married at Masterton after, an acquaintance of 35 hours. They hardly knew each others' names before the Registrar., • !,.• Two youths at Birmingham have been commited for trial on a charge of wilful murder, they heaving induced a companion, who could not swim, to accompany them into deep water, and there left him to drown. An " Intelligent Vagrant" who now writes funny things for the Bruce Herald has perpetrated the following:—They are collecting subscriptions to provide a betf for a church in Milton. I asked a friend who had been asked to subesribe what he had given. He made answer, "They wrung a note out of me." Alfred Roberts and Mary Roberts, man and wife, have been sentenced to seven years' penal servitude by Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, at the Wiltshire Assies, for the manslaughter of a sister, aged 25, of weak intellect, who lived with them, and was allowed to perish of starvation and neglect. At the Hotham Police Court, Victoria lately, two boys, aged 10: and 12 years, were sent to a reformatory for six years, for having followed a newspaper runner and stolen several papers which he had inserted under the door of subscribers' houses. Their father, who was very insolent to the magistrates, was fined £°\ with the alternative of 48 hours' imprisonment. This is a good precedent, and ought to act as a caution to newspaperstealers. The New Zealand Herald regrets to learn that quite a third of the young cattle in the Province of Auckland, have died during the year. One fanner at Mangarei lost over a hundred, and another has lost thirteen head, ,the whole of his young cattle. A disease something like, if not influenza, we are informed, has been very prevalent among them, and has proved fatal in many cases. Feed has been very scarce during the winter, and the spring season is proving a very unfavorable one. A Denver (Colorado) paper notes the return to that city of Miss Mattie Gaylord, of Boston, " the great tourist of the NorthWest and the Pacific Coast," and says: " Five years ago she and her sister made this city their initial point of departure for a wonderful journey of 13,000 miles, which they accomplished with their own carriage, visiting every camp, settlement village, and city in the Territories and on the Pacific Coast. Miss Gaylord is now en route to Australia, where she will spend the next two years in a similar journey." A case of great importance to newspaper proprietors was decided by ViceChancellor Little, at Liverpool. Mr John Vaughan, editor of the Liverpool Leader, had been summoned before the registrar to answer questions as to the sources from which he obtained information appearing in the Leader on the Civil Service Association. Mr Vaughan refused steadily to disclose his>formant's name, taking the responsibility of the articles upon himself ; and after many adjournments, the ViceChancellor finally decided that he was not bound to answer the questions. Altogether there are three hundred and seventy-three newspapers and magazines published throughout India, exclusive of all publications of a commercial nature. Of this number Bengal has sixty-three, twenty4hree of which are in English. Madras has forty-five, more than half being in the vernacular. Bombay has most of all, or a hundred and seven, the North West coming next with sixty-five. The Punjab has thirty-five, the Central provinces eight, Rajpootana two, British Burma twelve, Oudh nine, and Sind six. A characteristic example of the splendid uncertainty of law is given in a Melbourne paper. A gentleman who had been induced to take up some shares in the Tumbling Waters Co. successfuly resisted a suit for calls on the ground of the articles of association not being in accordance with the prospectus. He then tried to get his name taken off the register, but another judge decided that he was late in objecting to the discrepancy, and couldn't have his name removed. So that, according to the two judicial decisions, he is a Tumbling Waters shareholder with a perpetual immunity from calls. A strange discovery of treasure is reported by the Shoalhaven News, New South Wales. A few days ago, some workman were removing a portion of Mr David Berry's premises at Coolangetta, for the purpose of effecting some improvements, and while in the act of lowering a wall-plate they were somewhat startled by a shower of loose sovereigns, which came down " furious and fast" for some minutes. The sovereigns, which are all of the old English stamp, when picked up were found to greatly exceed 1,000 in number; and it is conjectured that they must, years ago, have been put in their hiding-place by one or other of the late members of Mr Berry's family and were probably forgotten. A Coromandel contemporary records the following distressing occurrence ;—Considerable sensation has existed in this neighborhood for the last day or two, owing to the sad death of a poor deaf and dumb Maori. It appears that the deceased, whose name was Peni, and who was wellknown and liked by both Maoris and pakehas,lef t Whangapoua with several other Maoris a few days ago to go to Kennedy's Bay. It is rumored that they obtained drink on the way, and that the deceased being helplessly drunk, the others left him and proceeded on their way. How long he lay. on the road is not known, but he appears to have made a fire,'and was found after a day or two, and brought in with his legs swollen and unable to use them. He died on Wednesday morning, the 30th September.

NEW ZEALAND'S FIRST ATTEMPT AT PROTECTION, AND ITS RESULT. MELBOURNE ARGUS. ; There is one item in our last letter from our New Zealand correspondent, which illustrates in a very remarkable manner the mischievous effect of protective duties. In 1867, he tells us, the Wellington Government passed a law to encourage distillation by admitting home-made spirits to consumption on payment of a duty of 6s a gallon, foreign spirits being charged 12s. On the strength of this, distilleries were established at Auckland and at Dunedin. At first the differential duty did not seriously affect the revenue, inasmuch as the native-made whisky did not hit the popular taste. But recently it has improved in quality, and this year the Commissioner of Customs, in order to protect the revenue, came down with proposals to raise the excise duty a shilling a year until it reached 9s a gallon, leaving 3s per gallon only in favor of the Colonial manufacturer. To this the latter very naturally aud very properly objected. He had invested his money in whisky pots at the direct invitation of the Legislature, and if the Legislature had made a mistake, why should the loss fall upon him ? A committee which was appointed to consider the case found that the distillers had a good claim for compensation, and after a good deal of negociation the compensation was fixed at £20,000 to the Dunedin distillery, and £7,500 to that at Auckland, the differential duty to cease. This is a sharp little lesson for the New Zealand protectionists. Add to the £27,500 of compensation money the amount lost to the revenue of the colony through the differential . spirits duty during the seven years that it was in operation, and the sum will represent the cost of one attempt to establish new industries through the agency of legislation. It may be replied that money is not necessarily lost, since the distilleries may be able to carry on without the aid of protection. That remains to be seen. If they are able to carry on, then their proprietors must have been making enormous profits while they had the differential duties in their favor. A bushel of barley, which would cost them, say, 3s 6d, yielded them two gallons of proof spirits, on which they obtained 12s of state bounty! And if they are able to carry on their business without state aid, all this must have been found money—something in addition to the legitimate trade profit they will realize, when left to their own resources. Again ( if they are now able to do without the differential duty, they were able to do so before, and if the Legislature of the colony had only had the sense to leave the matter alone, distilleries would have been established by private enterprise at exactly the right time, that is, when the country was ripe for them—when. their was capital and labor to spare with which to build them and carry them on. On the other hand, if the New Zealand distilleries are not now able to carry on without state aid, then the compensation money, plus the amount lost to the revenue by means of the differential duty during the years in which it was received, is just so mnch money thrown into the sea. But then, the protectionist may say, "there are the indirect advantages." What indirect advantages ? Not a higher price to the barley-grower, because Dunedin and Auckland, where the distilleries are situated, are ports of shipment, and the price of produce at such ports is determined by its value to the exporter. We cannot see how the New Zealand differential spirits duty can ever have put a penny into the pocket of the New iZealand farmer Or the protectionist may say that the distilleries gave employment to the people. Probably they employed 25 or 30 hands between them, but if they had employed a hundred, or a thousand times as many, it would have been all the worse for the country, if the Legislature is not committing a dreadful blunder in importing population at an enormous cost, as it is now doing. If there were any other indirect advantages, we cannot imagine what they could be, unless it is an advantage to a community to consume bad spirits instead of good. In thus giving prominence to the economical blunder that New Zealand committed seven years ago, we of course entertain ulterior views. Our object is to point out, to our own protectionists, the most egregious error which this colony has committed in the same direction. So long since as 1862, we passed our precious distillery law, under which home-made whisky is admitted to consumption on payment of a tax of 6s per gallon, while imported spirits pay 10s. How much the revenue has lost by this differential duty during the 14 years that it has been in force, we cannot say just at present, but it must have been a very large sum. The amount set down in the estimate of revenue for the year ending 30th June, 1875, under the heading " Excise duty on spirits distilled in Victoria," is £32,500, which represents a loss to the country of £21,000 for the year. If the Treasurey has been defrauded to the same tune all previous years during which the differential duty has been in operation, a pretty penny has been lost to the country. And it can scarcely be said that we have driven the foreign distiller out of the market. If the Treasurer's estimates of excise and customs duties are correct, 255,000 gallons of foreign spirits will come in during the year, while the quantity manufactured in the colony will fall short of 109,000 gallons. Native industry, therefore, has not gained much by our distillery law, while the revenue has suffered much. And in regard to " indirect advantages," the same may be said as in the New Zealand case. There are no. indirect advantages here any more than there. Differential spirits duties in Australia area gross imposition, and the sooner the Legislature and the public recognize this truth the better it will be, not only for the colonial revenue, but for the colonial farmer as well, and for the colonial whiskey drinker. Everybody suffers, while nobody gains, by this

ridiculous differential spirit duty. In Victoria it has already ruined more than one private speculator, and lured more than one public company into devious and perilous commercial paths, while nobody has ever profited by the ruin. Let as hope that the Legislature will lay the lesson to heart.