MISCELLANEOUS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 236, 12 September 1873, Page 7

MISCELLANEOUS.

Our Wellington telegrams t are full of interest. The G-oldfields Bill, which was struck off the list in a thin House, has been restored to its place, after a division, and there is no reason to doubt that it will become law. Whether,-*is stated in our special telegram, Mr. Shepherd's connection with the Bill induced other members from Otago to oppose it, be the fact or not, we certainly regret that anything should have occurred to retard its progress through the House. Our G-old-fields laws are exceeding faulty, and the Bill before the Assembly is, in several important features, a great improvement on them. —' Guardian.'

The recognition of tlie fact that the opinions expressed in any paper are the opinions of that paper, and not of some gentlemen with whom this or that politician of the street post may choose to identify thera, can alone preserve a free and independent school of journalists, Not to recognise the fact is to debase a paper from an organ of public opinion into a mere private record of individual thought. •—' Guardian.'

Mr. Trollope's visit to Maketu was marked by an incident which lie describes with a great deal of good humor. He says : —"At Maketu I walked up among their settlements, and shook hands with men and women, and svriled at them, and was smiled upon. At the inn they came and sat alongside of me, —so near that the contiguity sometimes almost amounted to an etnbrace. The children were noisy,

jovial, and familiar. As far as one judge, they all seemed to be very itap:<y. There was a European schoolmaster there, devoted to the Maori children,— who spoke to me much of their present and future condition. He had great faith in their secular learning, but had fears as to their religious condition. He was most anxious that I should see them in school before I departed on the next morning, and I promised that I would do S'\ Though I was riiuclx hurried,Tcould not refuse such a request to a man so urgent in so good _a cause. But in the ••.•morning,' when I was pre pari nrr to he as good as my word, I was told that the master had got ■■very drunk nfiv.T J ■had gone to bed, imd smashed the l ine!lord's windows, aud had been carried away to his house by scholars. After this little affair, it was not expedient that I should trouble him at an early hour on the following morning."