NOTES ON CURRENT EVENTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 33, 9 January 1885, Page 2

NOTES ON CURRENT EVENTS.

The Minister of Lands will shortly issue a set of regulations under which .piriUU runs may be itakeu . up, so as to ?give ,people with a limited capital^ a chance to go into oaatorial pursuits on a small scale. Mr Ballauce is determined, if he remains 1h office long enough, tp get the waste lauds brought into early ari&: profitable 'occupation. May he snu- 1 ceed, as nothing more benificial to the whole'colony' could be devised, a,nd' ex+ : eduted at this stage of its existence. \ \

. , Commenting on Mr Fawcett's, ;death, the Sheffield. Daily Telegragft. says :-j- --'? Perhaps the only part ( of the. British Dominions iti which the late Postmaster General was at all unpopular was in' the Colony of New Zeataufi, where his firm'riess, or, as the colonists prefer to call it, his obstinacy iv the matter of tile ißxiri- ( disi. mails procured for him.! rquch hostile criticism. New Zealand, jointly witjh , New ( S,outh Wales,, pay,s ,a hqavy snbsidy'jio steamship companies 1, for,' conveying Vrnails.via' 1 San 'Francisco. 'THiey^ there-* ' foie: wished that" all 'ratal 1 matter 1 should 'go by this route:' To this Mr Fawxtett would never give: hiecpnsisot^'ff ;•< j

Corroborative of bur (Herald)- remarks on the lite Civil '■ Perviee examinations, and the present system of boy's educai.tion,' a localj Bank manager informs.. us that it is the rarest experience to .get a ! jnnior clerk fresh. from school with all his succesfnl examination honors thick I upon him, who can correctly add up the lpiig money columns they are given to total up, and it is only after months of (■Shard practice these, youths succeed ; m doing so with any degree of celerity and accnracy, while there are cases of conj tinued failure to acquire the faculty and ! consequent retirements after an unsuccessful period of -probation. This does not speak well for the present system of epucation. Schoolmasters, as a rule, know little or nothing of commercial requirenjents, and their pupils less.- It -is time an improvement took place, and that more attention should be devoted <to fitting-boy 8 for every day pursuits.

: Having succeeded m obtaining £10, <000 from the Government to. carry pu the Haibour works at the Heads, on the security of £12,000 worth of unsold debetures, the Harb'our'Board finds itself with £28,000. worth of the same kind of property still to the good, which may be -turned into account shortly, and the work 8 at the Heads, kept going untill the reqpisitejegislatipn for a new loan can be passed next -session. There is every prospect therefore (saya the Herald), of the bar being improved sufficiently to allow of steamers of the Hawea and Penguin type calling here within the next two or three years. If Wanganui were once included m the Union S. S. Company's Northern route, a great stride m its advancement would have been made, as strangers travelling; wquld see a town sand .district .whiph every visitor asserts to be most inviting to the eye of those who have not seen our picturesque town, and its JJrich .and pastorial and. agricultural surroundings. Ho long as we are not a link m the main chain of passenger traffic by sea, we suf- , fer from our isolation, but what with early improvement. p£ the bar and river, and the opening of the Ceutral Railway, ] we think tlie time' ia r riot far distant when property of a}l kinds will once more be saleable at remunerative fates pn this coast.