SUPREME COURT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 58, 9 March 1871, Page 2

SUPREME COURT.

o CIVIL SITTINGS. [Before his Honor Mr. Justice Eicomond, and a Special Jury.] This Day. John Leary versus Beimel Sf Symons. This was an action to recover the sum of £162 Bs., said to be clue by defendants to the plaintiffs, on the ground that certain wheat hail been shipped oq board the barque Hera, which the defendants were alleged to have undertaken to insure at the rate of 7s. 6d. per bushel, but whjch was only insured by thorn at 4s. per bushel. The plaintiff therefore sued for tho balance, the wheat having beeu burnt in the ship. Defendants paid £29 9s. Id. into Court. John Leary said : I am a farmer living in the Wairau. About a year ago, having some wheat for sale, I went to Mr. Connal, the defendant's manager at Blenheim, and asked him to advauce me some money on it. I then got £30 from him. He agreed to advance 3s. 6d. per bushel, and said he would send it home, where, after all deductions, it would f'eich 7s. 6d. I told him to insure it for the home price. He made no objection, but said the wheat would be insured against everything but ship leaking. I delivered the wheat, in all 81 2 bushels. I had 1000 bushels altogether ; part of the balance I sold to Mr. Conual tif 4s. As soon as I heard of the ship Joeing burnt I went to Mr. Conual, an<Lflsked him if the wheat was insured alright. He said he thought it would be afl right, as he had written to Nelsou about it, but told me not to make a noise about it, but to keep quiet. Since then I have asked him several times about it, but could get no satisfactory answer. He paid me money at different times, and wanted me to sL»n a receipt in full for all that was due on the wheat. This I ire used to do. Cross-examined: When first I weut to Mr. Connal I offered to sell the wheat at the market price. He would not buy, but offered to advance 3s 6d upon it. Mr. Conual agreed to insure at 7s 6d when I spoke to him in his office. No one else was present. I sold some of the wheat T had left at 3s 6d, but I did not consider that to be its full value. Mr. Connal never" intimated to me that the wheat might not net 3s 6d at home. Re-examined: I only sold a small quantity of the wheat at 3s 6d. Dennis Leary: I am a farm servant and brother of plaintiff. I bagged the wheat for the Hera. The best sample was shipped. ~ Henry Redwood : I have a mill iv the Wairau, and occasionally make large purchases of wheat. I saw plaintiff's wheat last year, and offered to buy the best sample at 4s. He refused to sell the wheat at that price, but wanted to sell the whole at the same. I offered to purchase on a three months' bill, and, as this sample was so good, I was willing to strain a point and pay the discount. For the red wheat I would not have given more than 3s. 6d. Cross-examined: I don't think plaintiff would have sold his wheat better anywhere else. Charles Redwood : I shipped about 700 bushels of wheat on board the Hera last year. I insured it at 6s. 6d., which amount I received. Mine was red wheat, of not a particularly good class. The white wheat shipped by plaiutiff was far superior to mine, and the red wheat much the same. I have insured wool before this, and I think it is generally looked upon by the insurers as rather a godsend if it never gets home. His Honor here interposed, and said that he could uot take down such an answer. He was shocked to hear it stated in a Court of law that the loss of the indemnities should, be looked upon as the profit of the insurer. Examination continued: Plaintiff' swhite wheat was worth from 6d to 8d a bushel more than mine. James Hooper : I am a dealer in grain. I was in England from July to November last. I paid some attention to the price of New Zealand wheat, and remember its being quoted in the Gloucester market at 8s per bushel. It realised more than English wheat. This was shortly after war had been declared. Cross-examined : I don't know what the price was when I first arrived in England. I have never exported wheat out of the colony. H. E. Curtis : I am a merchant and commission agent, and agent for Lloyds,' and agent for the New Zealand Insurance Company. I have had some small experience in shipping produce for England. As agent for an Insurance Company I would insure up to the full value of the export in England. As agent for an insurer I should insure the full net value of the produce in England, unless advised

to the contrary. I should not be guided by the value here. If grain were 4s. here and Ss. in England, I should insure for what it was likely to realise at home. If tho advance given were uot only half the net value in England, that would not affect tlie^insurapce to the amount that would probably be^realised at home. Cross-examined: Most of the marine policies effected here are open policies taken out in England. Until lately wool has been almost the only export from Nelson and Marlborough. This closed the case for the plaiutiff. /Mr. Acton Adams having opened the case for the defendants, called John Conual, who said that in February, 1870, the plaintiff came to him about some wheat he wished to get rid of, and he finally agreed to give an advance of 3s. 6d. per bushel. I had never before advanced on wheat, but on wool I have always advanced to the same amount at which I should purchase. The only recollection I have of anything being said about insurance was when the wheat was being shipped on board the Osprey for conveyance to the Hera, when Leary asked me if it would be insured. No price was tnentioued. Our firm generally insures produce by an open policy on London. I advised the firm in Nelson that I was shipping about 1500 bushels of wheat in the Hera, upon which I was advancing 3s. 6d. per bushel, and I added, " Please note the above for insurance." Plaintiff shipped 812 bushels, principally white wheat. In order to accommodate Leary I purchased some wheat he had left. I could have purchased at that time wheat quite as good as Leary's at 3s. 6d. for cash. Our policies usually cover the amount advanced on produce plus ten per cent, which covers the incidental expenses. Cross-examined : I had some conversation with Leary previous to the wheat being shipped, when I told him it would take from 7s. to 7s. 6d. in England to cover the 3s. 6J. advance. I have no recollection of anything having been said with reference to insurance at the lime I agreed to make the advance. John Aiken : lam manager of the defendants' business in Nelson. In shipping produce we generally insure to the amount of the advance taken, that is, to the amount of its colonial value, with ten per cent, addition to cover charges. Cross-examined : If an advance of only 20 per cent was granted on produce we should in accordance with our usual custom only insure to that amount. As agents for an Insurance Company, we should, if required by the owner, insure to the full amount of the English value. Some further evidence having been taken as to the custom usually pursued in insuring produce, Mr. Acton Adams proceeded to address the jury, and had not concluded when our reporter left the Court.

Taxation — Direct or Indirect. — A correspondent of the Auckland Herald says: — Mr. Gillies, during the address which he delivered at the Mechanics' Institute, stated that he would not consent to any further taxation by indirect means; but, should further taxation be necessary, he would vote for its being put upon property and income, which would throw its whole burden upon the European population, to the exclusion of the natives; for it is by indirect taxation alone that the native race can be reached. Was it not for their presence in the island, direct taxation wold undoubtedly be beneficial, as it would be the means of producing a " public spirit " among the population similar to that produced by the poll-tax. Situated as we are in this island, direct taxation should, if possible, be avoided"; but, if we must have it, let it be a polltax for the support of the army of Civil Service Pensioners, and then the reader can imagine tho result. The question is asked by a contemporary : — " How long shall we keep up the solemn farce of compelling a coroner's jury to pronounce upon the mental condition of the suicide in the moment of selfdestruction ? A man takes poison with all the evidence of careful deliberation about the act ; there is nothing whatever to show that he did not know the consequences of what he was doing, and he leaves behind him no visible record of madness beyond the deed itself, and yet the law requires that a certain number of his fellow-citizens should step in and gravely give a verdict on the state of his mind. It makes no difference that they are utterly ignorant of the law of evidence generally, and of mental pathology in particular. That the act of suicide itself is not sufficient in the eyes of the law to justify the presumption of mental unsoundness in a legal sense is made plain by the fact that the law allows the alternative of a verdict of felo-de-se. Had the victim of self-destruction destroyed anybody but himself, the inquiry into his mental condition would be a very different affair. Instead of his case being remitted to the hands of anybody but experts, half-a-

-dozeu mad doctors would have been called in to hold a psychological dispute over him, and to prove to demonstration that he was ir.ad, and that he was not mad. But we English are an anomaly-loving people. We go in for purity of elections, and elect Jones. And we pride ourselves upon our jury system, and make a mockery of jury procedure. And all in the cause of sanity and sound reasoniug ! " Starvation Salaries."— Under this heading the following communication has been addressed by a correspondent to the Ballarat Star: — Judge Pohlman, in recently sentencing a prisoner convicted at the General Sessions at Melbourne for embezzling the moneys of his employers, remarked that the salary (£225 per annum) paid by that firm was very inadequate to the prisoner's responsibilities. What would he say if he knew the munificent salaries paid at some of the banking institutions here, where it is a fact that tellers (through whose hands thousands of pounds pass daily) receive £120, and ledgerkeepers, who are presumed to detect, and are responsible for all forgeries, have £80 per annum? It may perhaps comfort protectionists that these "liberal screws" are not paid by the English (or foreign) banks, but by those specially started for developing the colony's resources. Infanticide in Vitctoria. — Child murder^ in Melbourne has of late assumed alarmiug proportions, and the press is calling aloud for the strong arm of the law to interfere, and, by making some striking example to put down this terrible crime. The Australasian alludes to the subject as follows : — Dry-nursing has now become a synonym for infanticide. It is not so very long agosince we believed in the comparative rarity of child murder in Victoria, but now it is clear that the crime has been common enough, although perpetrated in a mild form, secretly, and screeued under a harmless appellation. Dr. Avent, by steadily refusing to give false certificates, attributing to natural causes the deaths of infants who had been deliberately denied a chance of living, has exposed the evil in all its hideous deformity. Women — generally young, poor, and unmarried — are delivered of children whom they are unable to maintain; they have to obtain employment as wet nurses, leaving their own offspring to be brought up by hand; and the almost inevitable result is the death of the deserted child from the lack of its natural nutriment. With such a safe and easy mode of extinguishing surplus infants who can wonder that some females become callous to the mere immorality of the thing, odious as it is, and eventually indifferent to the crime in its more serious aspect ? A Large Wheat Growing Country. — The Adelaide Register of the 3rd Feb. gives the following figures relative to the wheat crop of South Australia : — Last year the area was 532,000 acres, and minute calculation leads to the conclusion that for a like quantity of laud under crop this year at least 7,100,000 bushels may be allowed. But large tracts of new territory have been brought under the plough, and there is every reason to believe that the area of 1867-8 will be equalled. ' If that is so, there will be 18,000 acres more to take to account, and as the other returns are low, 20 bushels per acre may be roughly set down against it. This will enlarge the total to 7,460,000 bushels, or a general average of 13£ bushels. This estimate, if it errs at all, will, according to present appearances, be found to err very materially on the side of defect rather than of success ; but a few thousand bushels more or less are not, under the circumstances, worth considering. The requirements of a population of 180,000 souls for home consumpsion, will not go beyond 1,080,000 bushels ; seed for 600,000 acres in 1871 will not absorb more than 900,000 bushels ; and thus 5,480,000 bushels (685,000 quarters), or a fair margin over 120,000 tons of flour, will be left to represent the exportable surplus. The probability, judging from later accounts, is that some thousands of tons may be added to this aggregate, large as it is. In 1866-7, the quantity available for shipment was set down at 104,000 tons, so that the advantage of the comparison is on the side of 1870-71 to the extent of 16,000 tons. There cannot be much old stock to dispose of now, but the new will entail an average weekly export of 2300 tons. Our merchants and market finders never before had such a responsibility cast upon, them, and it is peculiarly fortunate that an opening for our surplus is likely to be found in the old country. In calling attention to the absence of any properly-constituted court of law iv Fiji, the Times observes : — " Every week we have instances of the crying want of some means of settling business disputes, except by an appeal to arms, and that is doing a great injury to Fiji, and will materially mar our progress. It is simply the absence of all protection that hinders

some of the colonial banks from establishing a branch in Levuka, and the want of a bank is crippling trade to a fearful extent. A merchant is naturally a man of peace. He does not see the force of earning his money by speculation, or gettiug a fair return for capital invested, and fighting for it afterwards. As long as Levuka, which is to a certain extent Fiji, is the scene of action where might is right, there will always be an objection to sending down capital to be expended in forwarding the interests of the group." To Ascertain this Weight or' Hay Stacks. — We would recommend our farmer friends to paste the following in their scrap book as they may some day find it useful : — " For oblong stacks of English grass hay the following rule is reliable : — To the height from the. ground to the eaves add oue-half of the height of the top above tho enves for the meau height, then multiply the mean height by the breadth, and multiply their products by the length. Divide the gross product by 27, and the dividend will give the number of cubic yards in the stack, and that number of yards multiplied by the number of stones of hay in a cubic yard will give the weight of the stack in stones imperial, i.e., of 141 b. each. The weight of hay differs according to the amount of compression, occasioned by the size and age of the stack and the condition of the hay when put together. The weight varies from -skt. fo 9st. per cubic yard, but perhaps 6st. (841 b.) would be a fair estimate for a new stack of large size, 7st. for a stack six months, old, and Sst. for one over a year old. Coarse oaten hay, put together dry, would probably weigh much lessT" The Press in the Kingdom op Italy. ■ — On the 19th of October the G-overnmeut issued a decree which has produced deep regret in the minds of all friends of true liberty. According to that decree, whoever does anything in Rome to offend the religion of the State, or to excite the people to despise it, may be fined £80 and imprisoned for one year. It also prohibits the introduction into that city of any books or journals published in cttfer provinces of Italy which may offend the Roman Catholic religion or insult the person of the Pope. According to this decree therefore books which have been published with the sanction of the Procuratore Reggio, and can be freely sold in any other part of Italy, may be sequestered in Rome, and the vendor fined and imprisoned. Since the Romans have almost unanimously voted for the union of their pity to the kingdom of Italy, and the king has accepted this vote and published the statute in Rome, it is certainly a very anomalous mode of procedure that there should be one kind of laws for Rome and another for the rest of Italy. According to this -decree there is to be only one printing-office ia' Rome, or even in Italy, that shall have the power of printing whatever its directors choose, without being under any control, and that is the printing-office of the Pope. So that, while on the one hand extraordinary and unjust restrictions are placed by Government on the circulation of books in what has long been considered the capital of Italy, on the other hand the Pope may, if he chooses, print and circulate books advocating revolution and the overthrow of the kingdom of Italy. — London Paper. An English nobleman was deeply in love with a " ladye faire." He met her one evening at a crowded ball, and as he could not get an opportunity of talking to her, he contrived to slip into her hand a piece of paper with the two words, " Will you ? " written upon it. The reply was equally brief—" Won't I."