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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 213, 8 September 1871, Page 2

The following, which we clip from an exchange, might be said to apply to other bodies, besides the Otago Provincial Council : — " A laudable apirit of economy actuated members of the Otago Provincial Council at the commencement of the last session. All salaries, from the Superintendent downwards, were rednced twenty to forty per cent., and the honorarium paid to country members was reduced twentyfive per cent. But, sad to relate, members quickly swerved from their virtuous intentions, and before the session closed, the country members' honorarium was restored to its original amount, and the payment of town members increased ten shillings per day ! " Among the papers laid on the table of the House of Representatives, is a memorandum on the subject of convicts coming from the different penal settlements. The Ministry suggest as a remedy to prevent convicts introducing themselves on any free portion of the Empire, that a condition attached to the pardon of any convict sent to Western Australia should expressly require him to reside in the settlement, and that his Excellency Governor Weld, should be instructed that in future he is not to permit any conditionally pardoned convict to leave the penal settlement there. It would also strengthen the defence of free colonies, if, by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, they could return stray convicts and charge the penal settlewith the expense. The Government had been informed that several hundred pounds have been subscribed by sympathisers with the Fenian prisoners, and handed to them. Government cannot help thinking an injury is inflicted on the colony by such sympathies being evoked bj the presence of such political offenders. To this is appended a report of- the action taken by the Government in re-shipping them to whence they came, or rather to Sydney, a course they express themselves averse to, as they would have preferred, sending them to Western Australia. Mr. Gisborne very truly adds, that "in addition to the resentment which must naturally arise in a colony turned against its will into what would practically be a convict Alsatia, with all the evils of congregated crime, and without the restraints necessarily imposed on it in a regular convict station, there are special circumstances affecting the Maori race in the country which would render such a course exceptionally disastrous." ' " A Mistress," writing to the Argus on "The 111-used Servant girl" question, gives a description of " the class of domestic servants the most objectionable to masters and mistresses, viz, 'the reader.'" She say a : "I had one once. My bitterest enemy could not wish me a worse punishment than to see me with another. Her mania — like your correspondent's—for literature was astounding, and she mixed it with the duties she should have done at every opportunity. Over and over and over again have I set her to do some work, the most trifling thing, and returned in about half an hour, hoping to find it done. Vain hope? There would my lady be snivelling over the love stories in a hastily-concealed and

very greasy London Journal. At her trashing she generally preferred the Weekly Times (sent by her friends in England) propped up in front of her ; and I have often traced the very blue appearance of the clothes to the all-absorbing and prurient columns of that journal. When at last I broke the news to her that she mast leave, she treated me to some of the choicest extracts from her favourite novelists." The Argus relates that a rather peculiar charge of lunacy came before the Sandridge police court on Thursday, evidently resulting from excessive drinking. The case was that of an intelligent looking man, of about 40 years of age, named John Glass. This man had been a workiny overseer on a station, and had taken his passage in the Somersetshire for England ; but it being discovered that he was not quite right in his head, his passagemoney was returned to him. His principal craze seemed to be that the persons living 1 in the same house were endeavoring to take bis life by means of poison. On Tuesday evening he was so confident that he had taken poison that, to use his own expression, he resolved to take active measures to get rid of it. He went to a chemist's shop and bought six small bottles of castor oil, and knocking the heads off with his knife, swallowed the contents, and thereby, as he considered, saved his life, though at considerable inconvenience.

A Cannibal Feast is rather an uncommon sight to be witnessed by a white man. A correspondent writes of one, in the Fiji Gazette of the 19th July as follows : — "On hearing that a cannibal feast was coming off a couple of miles from where I was, we three whites, after debating the advisability, of proceeding to the scene pf the cuisine, started, and arrived at the town just jlntime to jSee two really fine fellows expire, after being clubbed in the' most brutal manner, amid the meat diabolical yells. • They were carried closetp two .great fires (Fiji ovens), cut up, and placed to copk. One of our fellows almost fainted, away with horror and disgust, and my feelings were, I assure you, anything but pleasant; 1 I was most anxious to get away at once, notwithstanding a very warm mvitatibn to remain ! a r ud partake of ,'|he '■ repoflti;, .which 1 it is scarcely necessary Jo, say we as politely as. possibly declined, and Retired from the banquet as il 'qaip^iy/aß.^e,po.nl.d«,l4>B^ I *c^7 hearing as we passed along, the "Buccoli Tali " ringing through yjshe lovely, still, evening air, awaiseniog awfully peculiar 'Ben'Bationß."-'--^^""'^-'^ 1 "' .