ADELAIDE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 58, 7 March 1872, Page 2

ADELAIDE.

The Eoraan Catholic Bishop Shiels is reported to be sinking fast, and prayers for his recovery are offered up in all the Catholic churches.

From the Wanganui Herald we learn that "loyal natives on whom the Government lately made a friendly demand for the return of their arms, have discovered that Sir George Grey made them a present of 600 stand as a recognition of distinguished services rendered at Wereroa." If the Government want these arms we suppose it will have to pay for them out of the loan, which solves every difficulty. Mr. Brogden has made an offer to the Corporation of Auckland to construct the Works for the supply of water to that city. The Southern Cross informs us that Mr. Brogden proposes to construct the works, to retain them or dispose of them after construction to the Council, according to the option of the Council itself. He is willing to accept a guaranteed interest on the outlay required, or that the Council should purchase them at a price, or per arrangement, at the end of seven, ten, fourteen, or twenty-one years. With so varied and so satisfactory proposals, we are warranted in expecting that arrangements will be definitely concluded between the Council and Mr. Brogden; at least we do not think it possible that any proposal will emanate from any private company, or any other source, being at all comparable to those at present the subject of negotiation. A Rosstown Visitor to the Reefs thus speaks of the doings at the Inangahua. The country is a fine quartz district, but at present there is little mining; men rush about the country, find quartz, and then wait for a buyer at some ridiculous price. No one appears to work, and alluvial ground, of which there is some that would pay, is quite neglected. A great amount of litigation is carried on, and the lavyers are making a harvest At Anders' n's, Mr. Findlay is putting up machinery, to be worked by water power; the reef is about three feet thick, and he expects to crush in three months. At Shiels', Mf . Mace and Mr. S. James have

four feet of stone, of which 500 tons are to grass; they exppct to crush in a month's time. At Rody Ryan's, Mr M'Lean is getting steam machinery, but will be five months probably before he crushes. To get the boiler to its site has cost fully £2000, but there is abundance of coal about, which will be of value as fuel. CartiDg from Westport is £15 a ton, and 2s. 6d. is demanded for the use of a blanket and the floor.

I F . /•y (From the Queen.) As the smallest causes oftentimes lead to the most important results, so the poteatialitiesof little wordsaresometimes incalculable. Can there be a more insignificant, a more inglorious, a shabbier little word than If ? Two letters only, and no variations of mood, tense, or declension — no root, even, of respectable antiquity and doubtful origin, over which philosophers can quarrel — just a mean, pert, absurd little biliteral, which changes the whole current of history and the action of every man's life. There are many of us who pride ourselves on an orderly and far-seeing kind of lite. We lay out our plans and abide by them, working up to a point that we have distinctly set before us, and for the attainment of which we bend all our energies and regulate our actions. Yet not the most carefully- planned existence that can be named but owes something to chance, and the changeful power of If. It lies at the root of all organisation ; is itself the For remainder of news see fourth page.

toot from which springs up the goodly tree of accomplished facts. There is not one human being that breathes the breath of heaven who does not every day pass along that little word as across the bridge finer than hair, which the souls of the Musselrnen faithful traverse on their way to Paradise. If Csesar had remained within doors on the Ides of March ? if the bullet of that young assassin Blind had struck true, and Von Bismark had died at his feet ? They were possibilities that would have borne fruit in fact for centuries after — for all the world's future history ; but they were possibilities that touched primarily the mere life of aw individual. How many times men have had cause to say, "If I had gone by that train, I should have been in all probability killed ; " and "If that untrustworthy man, whose sloth and want of business faculty so annoyed me, bad kept his word, I should have gone out by that ship, and should have gone to the bottom with the rest." There was an If of this kind known to the writer of these lines, which is none the less striking because founded on very homely details. A certain bedroom bad been scoured out, and the day being wet it was not dry by night. The occupants, man and wife, not liking to sleep in a damp room, moved into another. In the night a storm of wind arose; the stack of chimneys was blown down; they broke through the roof, and smashed to firewood the bed on which the couple would have been sleeping, if they had not had their room scoured out that day, and if, the day being wet, it had not remained damp up to bedtime. Here were two lives absolutely inclosed by an If. And not only their own lives, but the education, and social status, and happiness of their six children. The six little rivulets that run now side by side with the parent streams would have been diverted into quite other channels, and through quite different lines of country; and all that is, and all that will in the future spring from them and belong to them, was at one time dependent on the chance whether a maid would take to-day in which to do a certain piece of domestic work or leave it till tomorrow. It was a grave If ; and Heaven be thanked for the blindness with which it was met ! Another If, as important in its way to all concerned, hung on the mere loan of a book. A book lent, an expression of pleasure conveyed to the author, a letter of gratitude consequent ; as a further consequence a meeting, an acquaintance, a love affair, a marriage ; and a lifelong sorrow ! All that hang upon the If : if the doctor who lent the book had not brought it in his pocket that day ! In fact, the If incloses the whole theory of cause and effect, chances and results, which perplexes and governs human life. If is the embodient of all action, and expresses in one small word the great mystery of fate and free will, pre-ordai"-ment and chance, by which we are surrounded. If this had not been, then that would not have been ; and so through all the consequences — consequences ever increasing, ramifications ever extending, dropping new roots like the Indian banian tree, in their turn to become the central stems of future saplings. One grows bewildered and appalled when one thinks of all that depends on this little word ; and how it embraces, not only human action but human individuality aa well, and with individuality an immortal soul and a life that will not die ! And, turning to the side of religion, nothing is more strange than the history of the Ifs which have led men to sudden conversion and a change of life. The chance strolling into a church where a man , " going to scoff, remains to pray," has been struck by some word in the service that went right to his heart and conscience, and opened a new way to him for ever ; the chance opening of the Bible where a text has, as it were, leaped out from the rest and met the want of the hour, or diverted for ever the course of the life ; the chance meeting with some better man, of keener spiritual insight, of higher spiritual standing, who has made the dark things clear, and carried the wandering, weary soul straight to the long-sought-for haven : these are instances familiar to every reader of religious biography, and have occurred to most of us, in more or less important intensity, in our experience. But these solemn chances were only Ifs, which, however, made the fork at which, the two roads parted, the one leading to the right hand, the other to the left. But what if that chance itself was pre-ordained ? What if some unseen hand has led us steadily and gently to the unexpected fork, and has set our faces to the eaßt and the dawn ? Some say that the world is ordered so, and that our Ifs are only Ifs to us, to higher powers foreseen and fore-ordained decrees. Who can tell ? Creatures of the dark as we are, humbly feeling our way towards the light, or more boldly walking in densest obscurity and calling it mid-day, what do we know

— what can we say ? Life may be all a fixed and settled plan, a puzzle to us, but definite and clearly drawn as an algebraio equation to others: or it may be a mere lottery into which we plunge our hands, as it were, blindfold, knowing nothing of what we ars to bring forth, and no one knowing better than ourselves — a mere jumble of blanks and prizes, of good things and bad, of which the sum is the only certainty, and the division to each a mere matter of If all through ! No one knows better than another, and the only duty lying before us is to seek, if haply we may find, and utilise our Ifs to the best possible advantage.

The Wagga Express relates that n, man had been sturck by lightning on the Cocketgedong run and killed. The deceased was employed upou a dam now in course of conslruction for Messrs. Watt and Thompson, and had just turned out his horse, and was in the act of holding him during a violent thunderstorm, when he was suddenly struck by a flash of lightning and instantaneously killed, the iron of the hobble-chain with which bis hand was in contact having, no doubt, acted as a conductor, and been the immediate cause of the fatal catastrophe. The body was frightfully injured, particularly about the face and eyes, and from its appearance after death it seems clear that the flash must have struck the poor fellow on the head, and in so doing put an instantaneous end to his existence. Our Democratic Constitution. — Those who attack the British Monarchy with their tongues, babble and rave about the privileges of the aristocracy and the monopoly of the capitalist class. At all events, there is no such thing as caste in England, for every career and every class is open to all comers. Belgravia is full of men who began the world with a shilling. Three-fourths of the English nobility caunot claim a noble descent of four generations. The late Premier, Mr. Disraeli, is the son of a Jew, who had a very moderate fortune, and became known as the author of a very curious book. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the son of a minister who was never known to fame, and who was never anything like rich. The present Premier is the son of a Liverpool merchant. The Lord Chancellor is the son of a London shopkeeper. Mr. Lowe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been an Oxford tutor and an Australian emigrant. Mr. G-oscben, the First Lord of the Admiralty, was, six years ago, a city merchant. The Right Hon. J. Stansfield, a Cabinet Minister, was, three years ago, a brewer — not a big brewer, but a family brewer. Is it not surprising how demagogues can be so stupid as to talk about talent beingr kept down by monarchical institutions ? Mr. Jessel, Q.C., who has just been made Solicitor-General, is a Jew, the son of a Jewish dealer in diamonds, and is married to the daughter of Mr. Moses, the noted clothier. Mr. Jessel is a man of rare ability, and of the highest character. Some day he will be Lord Chancellor, the keeper of the Sovereign's conscience, and the patron of Church livings. We are sure that Mr. Jessei will be as discreet and as just in the distribution of his Church patronage as any Christian Lord Chancellor. — London Figaro. John Peerybincle says: — A teetotaller of thirty years standing wants to know whether a man can get drunk on colonial wine ! Let him try it, and I won't answer for his standing any more for the present. Instead of writing to the papers to ask the question, he can get a bottle of this kind of teetotal drink from the grocers and drink it. If he doesn't feel " mixed " after it you can call me a Dutchman. Why I recollect going to see a man once that brewed colonial wine. A kindly, good sort of an old cock, he took me to his cellar behind a stable, and let me loose, as it were. " This," says he, holding up a glass, "I call the pure juice of the grape. There isn't as much as a whisper of brandy in it." We sat across a log in the cellar dreaming the happy hours away — and we drank that pure juice of the grape. We talked—and dranked the pure juice of the ?rape. We argued; and drank the pure juice of the grape. We borrowed money of one another, and we d-d-drank the pure juice o' the g-grapes. We sang, and we g-graped the poor juice o' the drank. We chirruped, and we drunkypurejuiceograpes ! There was a bundle of straw in the corner of the cellar, and I slumbered. There was a bundle of straw in the other corner, and there the other man slumbered. When he woke up I asked him how he felt. He said there wasn't a headache in a hogshead of it. It was the pure juice of the grape ! Still I thought we'd been drunk, and I think so still, otherwise why did that other man snore so, and what fetched him, as he called it, off the " propindicklar ? " My teetotal friends, and my friends that aren't teetotal, don't deceive yourselves. Take the very purest grape juice you like, and in fermentation, as I've read in

books, "the sugar is decomposed and the brandy formed." This is the stuff to make a teetotaller talk of his friends." Pawnbrokers. — There are five pawnbrokers in Auckland, six in Dunedin, three in Christchurch, and the same number in Wellington. There are none now on the West Coast of the Middle laland, from Westport north to Okarita south. All the pawnbrokers in New Zealand may be counted at under 20. Beferring more particularly to Auckland, we are told that two pawnbrokers would be able to do the business of the five now engaged in the occupation. Three out of every four persons who take articles to pawnbrokers, to obtain small advances of money on, are women. Invariably these women are neither drunken nor abandoned, but they are cursed. with drunken husbands. They pawn dresses and underclothing to obtain food and necessaries for tbe young families. It is seldom men take articles to pawn. They compel their wives or children to do it for them. From a known female drunkard, or an abandoned woman, pawnbrokers seldom or never receive pledges, because, should it be proved they have been stolen, the law insists that they shall be restored to the owner. The pledges of charwomen and washerwomen, for this reason, are never received ; but then this class, knowing what the rule is, send other persons. The most profitable customers some of tbe pawnbrokers have are fast young men — rollicking rams — and won't-go-home-till-morning gentlemen. They pawn their watches, scarf pins, rings, and personal bijouterie for a night's spree, which they redeem with their next week's wages. Pawnbrokers in Auckland say there is very much real distress among the respectable poor — among people who would almost die sooner than apply to the Relieving Officer for aid. A man's waistcoat or a woman's petticoat or boots, or some article of domestic use is frequently pledged for a meal for the children. Poverty, the pawnbrokers say, is not by any means always the consequence of drunkenness. It frequently arises from sickness, and from want of employment. There are men, such as watchmakers, mechanics, draughtsmen, printers, clerks, and the like, who are physically unable to labor. Paw abrokers say if rich men want to know the difference between absolute poverty fix a unavoidable causes, and poverty the results of vice, they should start in their line of business for three months, whc i thay would learn something they have li tie dreamt of in their past experiences. — Southern Cross.