TOPICS OF TALK.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 218, 2 May 1873, Page 6

TOPICS OF TALK.

The accepted tenders for forage at the different police stations invite comparison. At Clyde we see £6 10s. per ton the price for eaten chaff; at Blacks, for the same, £3 10s.; and at Naseby, £6 —the price of oats being, at Blacks and Clyde, 3s. 4d., and at Naseby 3a. 6d., or a difference of only 2d. At Switzers and the Arrow, again, the farmers are able to supply oats at 3s. At River ton we find oats cheapest, being supplied at the low rate of Is. 9d., and at Cardrona they appear dearest, being 4s. 9d.; while straw fetches at the latter place the excessive rate of £7 per ton. All through we may observe a brisk demand for oats ; and again we are obliged to ask—Can nothing be done to enable farmers to grow oats at a reasonable rate in the Mount Ida district, and yet, at the same time, m'ake a living themselves ? No doubt scratch spring farming will not do. Land, in a locality subject to severe droughts, must be autumn deep ploughed. The plan, so commonly adopted, of breaking up in the spring and immediately sowing down an oat crop, is sure to result in disappointment and loss. Messrs. Turnbull Bros., of. Hill's Creek, have shown clearly enough that the land, with fair treatment, will do its share—they having repeatedly raised profitable crops on the same ground. Oats, to succeed, must be in in time to get a start with the first spring rain : the ground once covered, the crop will take care of itself in spite of the drought. Till this is better understood we must go on paying high prices for feed for our cattle.

The somewhat small meeting held at the Athenaeum Hall last Friday took a high hand with absent folk. A precedent was established that it is to be hoped will not be followed in the election of future Committees, holding important public trusts—viz., to pass a decree that no man shall be eligible for election unless he is present at the election meeting. In this ca3e, many excellent members, who had expressed their willingness - and had already proved it—to do all they could for the Athenaeum, were ruthlessly barred by the action of a few gentlemen who had only a hundred yards or so to come. The excessive severity of the evening might have had weight, one would have thought; but no, it only served to make the meeting more dogged in their determination : The feeling being, We have come and faced the wet—why should not they ? (By the bye, the prime-movers were nomadic bachelors.) Probably the new Committee will prove equal to the task they have undertaken somewhat in the dark. They will have, at any rate, the continued good services of Messrs. Busch, W. J. Cooper, and George, who have done good work for the Institution.

Nothing in tlie papers! says young Addlebrains, whose only idea of something is a divorce case or a comic song. Nothing in the papers ! says old Two-to-one, whose only picquant sauce is a rattling horse match, a good mill, or even, dull times, a cock-fight. Nothing in the papers ! says Ploughacre, when accounts of fat pigs are scarce, and commonage squabbles are worn threadbare. Nothing in the papers! says Bob Go-to-law, when there is no account forthcoming of a ten thousand pound dispute over a foot or two of ground. Nothing in the papers! echoes Hopewell Live-by-works, when clerical scandals are absent, and offending deacons are forgiven. And " Nothing in the papers!" it will be so long as the world lasts. The local paper that fights for a district that has more often to apportion blame than praise—or, rather, that praise may be deserved—is always, and will be always, considered fair game for unmitigated abuse. No doubt this acts as a safety-valve, whereby excitable individuals . are able to let off superfluous steam innocuously to anyone, instead of having to inflict it on someone or other who might not take it so quietly. It was Dr. John Erown, famous if for nothing else than for being the author of a 6d. pamphlet called ' Rab and his Mends,' . who advises every family to keep a dog. He says:

—" I think every family should have a dog ; it is like having a perpetual baby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young. All unite upon Dick. And then he tells no tales, betrays no secrets; never sulks, nor gets into debt; never coming down late for breakfast, or coming in by his Chubb too early to bed —is always ready for a bit of fun; lies in wait for it; and you may, if choleric, to your relief, kick him instead of someone who would certainly not, as he does, ask your pardon for being kicked." Whenever we come across this paragraph we always think of the excited correspondence column, and the servile tagged-on amenities of the unfortunate editors.

Mr. Reid either exhibited a sad want of logical deduction or honesty in his speech at Mosgiel. • Amongst other things, referring to his own personal Provincial administration, he said that, "on entering the Treasurership, he found, after a period of great prosperity, that the Province was largely indebted to the bank. Shortly afterwards there was a period of great depression in produce of . all sorts —wool was at its lowest—and there were a number of persons unemployed, for whom it was necessary to find work. Further, the land was locked up under illegal covenants, and that was his grand point of attack. How did he leave office P The Province was not pne shilling in debt. He found the Corporations and Municipalities throughout the Province depending upon the votes of the Council, and he secured them their local revenues, and probably by that measure he had paved the way for extension of local self-go-vernment, and the gradual extinction of Provincial Councils." He takes care to say that the depression "was caused in part by the great fall in wool, but he says nothing of the great rise that again set in shortly before he left office, causing a renewal of elasticity—especially in money—all through the Province. He says nothing of the large amount of foreign and General Government capital floated in public works—not, by any means, through any action taken by Mr. Eeid and his Government—besides which, he entirely misleads as to the removal of the debt at the bank. His remarks would imply that the increased prosperity of the Province resulting from his (Mr. Reid's) administration, had enabled this debt to be paid. What is the truth ? Merely that so much capital that the bank held as securitynamely/ the land—has been realised upon, and the debt, of course, redeemed at the cost of the loss of the land. The sale, of the big blocks paid this debt—the sale of land, that would have fetched, with a little patience, £2 per acre, at a little over 16s. It will occur to many, Would it not be better to be in debt again, when the securities were so good and were so badly realised upon. If Mr. Reid's negotiations with Mr. Campbell for his Maerevvhenua block had been carried out, no doubt the audience at Mosgiel would have been treated to the announcement of a large Provincial balance, all owing to the energy of the speaker; and no doubt they would have still more applauded their eloquent, if not modest, member.

HVTahriage with a deceased wife's sister is now law in Victoria and South Australia. At the same time, th e children could not inherit landed property in a country where such unions would be illegal. The inconvenience of this, and the change of opinion so general on the question, will, at no long date, extend this alteration of the marriage law throughout the Empire. The House of Commons has now passed such a Bill for Great Britain, but the Lords will hardly endorse their action at present. The Assembly in Welling, ton last year considered the matter favorably, and if it crops up again in the ensuing session, will no doubt pass it through both Houses. While there is nothing to prevent such marriages in nearness of blood, and very little on the score of convenience, it is almost a pity that the point should be so fought over. It seems one of those selected subjects of debate, chosen more for the sharp technical arguments

they afford, than for the grandeur of the results attainable. "We have received a communication from 'Pro Bono Publico,' which we refuse to insert, as it contains nothing in the shape of suggestion in the much vexed question of Commonage, but only a string of personal inuendoes and scurrilous imputations against some person who seems to have incurred his displeasure, and who he will, in spite of two distinct denials, attempt to identify with a correspondent in our columns signing himself ' Miner.' We do not choose to prostitute our pages to the insertion of vindictive anonymous attacks against individuals. If, however, ' Pro Bono Publico ' calls at our office and gives' his real name for publication, we will insert his libellous attack—grammar, spelling and all.