Untitled

Kumara Times, Issue 1471, 15 June 1881, Page 2

The mail coach from Christchurch left the Bealey this morning at the usual time, and arrived here at 3.30 p.m. We observe that supplementary mails via San Francisco are being made up at the Hokitika and Greymouth post - offices (overland to Christchurch) to-morrow. It will be seen by our Parliamentary telegrams that three very urgent measures—Hospital and Charitable Aid, Licensing, and Chinese Immigration—have been read a first time. Elder Ferris, a Latter-day Saint, has been lecturing at Gisborne, and the local evening paper has come to the conclusion that lie does not quite understand hi s business. He opened and concluded the meeting with a prayer for the welfare of the district, and expatiated considerably on its future in the matter of soil, and then asked them all to abandon it and go to the new Zion. In his speech at Marton, Sir William Fox put rather neatly the relation between the cost of public education and the necessity for a property tax or its equivalent. He said:—" With almost manhood suffrage, and a pure democracy, tempered only by responsible Government, they would never be safe for a day if their institutions were not worked by educated men. Uneducated men would be the tools of every political adventurer who had his little newspaper, or every person who had the gift of the gab. The people must be educated ; but the question was to what extent out of the pockets of the State. The £300,000 which education at present costs, really came out of the property tax, which was paid by a comparatively small number of people, because without the cost of education there would have been no need for a property tax. As to Lhe cost of education it was hypocrisy to say that they could not afford £300,000 a year, when every man who drank a glass of beer per clay threw away his share of the tax ten times over into the pockets of the publican or the merchant. New Zealand was quite rich enough to educate the children." Good Templary, according to the latest reports, is now making rapid progress in New South Wales. There are now 174 working lodges, with a total roll of 9176 members—an increase of 22 per cent, for the year. The juvenile lodges have been

greatly Augmented, and a very successful lodge was formed on the Blairgowrie immigrant ship while en route to New South Wales.

Bismarck has a salary of £&066 as Chancellor of the German Empire-. The British States Minister in the German capital receives £7OOO, and the United States Minister £3500. A stroke of luck has fallen on a lad who until a short time ago was employed as a cash and errand boy at the establishment of Messrs T. B. and W. Cockayne, Sheffield. Altogether unexpected by him, he suddenly became aware that he was the recipient of a fortune of £IO,OOO, which had been left him by an uncle at Manchester, after whom he had been christened. The boy has been sent to school, in order that he may receive an education befitting the possessor of a fortune. His mother, who is a widow, has also been remembered in the will.