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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 22, 25 January 1872, Page 4

Benefit Derived prom Protection in Victoria.— The Argus, of the 4th inst., says: — "An instance of the stimulating effect of our protective duties on native industry is afforded by the contract for the supply of cast-iron pipes for the Geelong Water Supply. By the ex- ' isting tariff the duty on this class of imports is 20 psr cent., which from the way in which it is levied amounts in practice to 22A per cent. This ought to leave a good margin for local production to work upon. Well, the production of all this beavy handicapping, as tested by the tenders sent in for the supply of the pipes referred to, is absolutely nil. All of them, with one exception, which moreover is only an apparent one, was given not by ironfou'bders but importers. The imposition of the duty, thus entirely failed to achieve that great object of the protectionists of ' keeping the work iv the colony,' All the machinery of protection in this case fails to attain any beneficial effect whatever. But it may be that at any rate there is no harm done, that all the extra price charged for the contract is received by the Government as duty. This, if it were true, would only show that for all this legislative and administrative toil there is do result at all. But the fact is, there is a result, not altogether of the kind contemplated. The issue of all these kind provisions is, that the obnoxious importer, whom our protective legislation was intended to suppress, is enabled to charge commission, not only on the price of pipes, but also ou the sum paid for duty, and the revenue of tbe colony is additionally burdened to that amount. And thus is local manufacture encouraged." The Paris Gaulois is responsible for the folio wing: — "An eccentric person has just died', in London upon a miserable pallet in the wretched quarter of Saint Giles. He had his hour of celebrity thirty years ago, at which time he was a chimneysweep. He fell in love with Queen Victoria, and as he was constantly introducing himself by the chimneys into the Palace of St. James,- it was found necessary to take him into custody, aud he was shut up in the prison at Tothill street. It was. believed that his confinement had cured him of his hopeless passion, and he was released; but he had been at liberty hardly a single day when he was discovered in the Park, watching the Queen as she took her walks. The police, after consulting his father, took him . down to Gravesend, and embarked him on- board the Diament, for Sydney. They were not a moment too soony for he had hardly left his home when the manager of a small theatre came to offer him £4^ a week to permit himself only to be exhibited on the stage. The Diament set sail for Australia, and the Queen's! adorer -lived for a long time at Sydney. Five years ago he returned to England;; very miserable, aud still faithful. He took up his residence! in one of those narrow streets that the English vcall,,,' lanes.' He selected ouo

named Queen's lave, nnd there he died. His death happened in this manner. The other evening it was rumored that Queen Victoria was dead, nnd this gave him such a shock that he died almost suddenly. His name was Edward Jones. Poor man !" The Melbourne Telegraph of a recent date says: — "Another skeleton in the closet — another danger iv the boudoir — . another terror for husbands. For their wives .are in possession of a new and insidious means of muddling their brains aud obscuring their faculties of household aud parlor work. Some time ago the secret got abroad that an enormous .quantity of the new sedative called chloral was being manufactured in chemical laboratories, far too enoimous for mere medical consumption. Baron Liebig published a letter in which he said the German chemists alone manufactured aud sold as much as half a-ton every week. It ' was thought that the brewers might be using it instead jof tobacco, but its true destintion is discovered at last. It finds its way not into the vat, but into the lady's dressingcase. , The ladies are using it instead of alchol, over which it has many obvious advantages. It is comparatively less expensive, it is more easily indulged in without the chances of detection, aud it is just as stupefying and nice. What more cau a woman want? It kills the doldrums. It's not part of her policy to remember that it kills her along with them. And so vive la chloral, and exeunt chloroform aod alcohol. How the oue poison came to be substituted for the other is a feminine mystery that we don't desire to penetrate. Possibly it. is one of the effects of the system of stimulation which has crept into medical practice of bite years, and about which Aye have heard so many complaints. If it is, let the doctor look to bis prescriptions. That is all the warning we have to give in the matter." The Quarterly Review, iv the course of a long aud able article devoted to spiritism and its recent converts, boldly asserts that somo of the so-called "phenomena of the spiritists rest upon no proof. The celebrated abduction of Mr.s. Guppy from her own house, nnd her introduction to a party of eleven persons at Mr. Holme's, took place while they were sitting in the dark, and were in that state of expectant attention which is known to physiologists to be productive of subjective sensations as well as movements. Tho room was dark, giving every facility for deception ; and one of the auditory having declared. that Mrs. Guppy was in the room — how while in utter darkness they could see her and detect that she was in a state of habille is not stated — the others followed suit. Just as Theodore Hook in his famous experiment upon popular credulity persuaded a London crowd that not-only he but they could see the lion ou the top of Northumberland House wag his tail. The reviewer pertinently remarks : — "ls it more likely, that these marvels actually occurred to them as narrated, or that the, witnesses to them were deceived by their own imaginings ? " One remarkable extract, and we have done : — "lt is among purely literary men whose minds have been seldom exercised upon anything but abstractions that we have witnessed : most ready surrender to the seductions of Spiritualism; the •-'distraction between objective realities and the creations- .of their A o'\vp imaginations 1 being often' ektremely ill-defined, and the testimony borne by science to'-the want of trustworthiness of what they assume to be the evidence of their own-senses "scornfully repudiated."