WEBB'S MAIL SERVICE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 210, 3 September 1872, Page 2

WEBB'S MAIL SERVICE.

(Opinions Of^he Ayqricj&n Press.) The San Francisco^em JSetfer says: "We refer to "the perfectly irredeemable character of the present mail service. The steamers do not make good time, and cannot supply late news. Hitherto we have given our warmpst support to Webb's line. We have overlooked many shortcomings, believing they would be remedied in time. With that, belief we advocated the granting of the proposed Congressional subsidy, but our knowledge of the uselessness of the ancient type of wooden side-wheel steamers has driven us irresistibly to the conclusion that such vessels cannot make the service successful. San Francisco Chronicle :— " We have received files of Melbourne papers by way of England to 23rd April, the latest date previously to hand by Webb's line being 9th April. Thus by a circuitous route of 21,000 miles, we get later news than by our own route, which is only onethird of the distance." Commercial Herald : — " We are realising more seriously than ever the need of a regular first-class steam communication with Australia." Alta California :— " lfc is difficult to obliterate from the minds of the Australian, public the bad impression the line now running has caused them to form of American steamers. A new line, if well managed, will actually be assisted by the striking contrast it will present to the existing line." . Sacramento Record : — " Foreign screw steamers cost half the price of the wooden, side-wheel relics of ancient days; they use less than half the coal, save a proportionate stowage of cargo, and make, important gains in speed. To give subsidies to bolster up the private interests of speculators owning a few shaky Rip Van Winkle steamers would be to hold the ■National policy up to the derision of tha mercantile world." JSews Letter : — The last piece of tall talk is that Webb intends -to build two» new ' splendid ' wooden steamers for the Australian service. Bah ! nonsense I It is by just such big promises, followed by no performances, that the line is in its present position. Webb's ship building * yards are let to tenants for'other purposes > besides he has too much trouble with his> present wooden steamers to dream of adding new ones." For remainder of news see fourth page*

The /Wellington f ,Pos|, says :— " Fire; brigade/appliances, suitable for use with the high pressure water supply for this city, have been ordered from Great Britain, the lasaran.se Companies' Agents having commissioned the City Surveyor to order^ on their behalf, in connection ■with the water works plant, fire brigade necessaries to the amount of £600. This liberality on the part of the insurance agents is well timed, and deserving of every praise." It would afford us considerable pleasure to have the material for a paragraph of a similar nature placed at our disposal. The. Government and the " Press." —In concluding his speech on the "Public Works and Immigration Policy " debate, as it ia styled in Hansard, Mr. Collins said :-r-".I want to make one other grievance known, and it is one of those things that irritate the minds of a large majority of the people against Ministers, and that is, the favoritism that has been shown to r certain newspapers. The Press is a most important organ in guiding public opinion, and in communicating intelligence to the people, and nothing could bo more disastrous than that the source of that instruction and information should be polluted or corrupted in any way. Ido not give any case of the Press being influenced by the Government, because I am not in a position to prove one, but I assure honorable members I will not shrink from doing so when I can. I have bad a paper handed to me which shows the relative amount of money paid to certain papers for advertisements. Of course members will thoroughly understand that the distribution of advertisements gives the Government the power of materially assisting a paper by giving them, and on the other hand of injuring a paper by not giving them, for if a paper did not have the Government advertisements it would not be so widely read as it would be if it had them. The following sums were paid to the papers mentioned :- Thames Advertiser, £89 3s 6d ; Guardian, £7 17s 6d; Wellington Indem&ndent, £731 9s 6d; Evening Post, £408; Wmawke's Bay Herald, £89; Daily TeleBfipk,£2B; Nelson Colonist, £4821 5s 8d; mfßcaminer, £68; Lyttelton Times, £415; ptm, £284; Ross News, £61; Guardian, W&&s$ re y River Argus, £332; and Star, The Thames Advertiser, Weip^K Independent, Hawke"s Bay Wmß&d, Nelson Colonist, Lyttelton WJ7~Sk R° ss News, and Grey River Srajra are Ministerial journals. I will B||j&p§§ anything more in the matter, but nDHKkiie facts to speak for themselves." will we. Sea Bubbles." — At a late SaWMffll' of the Australasian Wesleyan ||Hmgffip r y Society, held in Melbourne, gHpPISv. Lorimer Fison, during his readdressed himself to the charges against the missionaries in a book called " South Sea Bubbles," written by the Earl of Pembroke. He said that he should not have noticed the matter at all had it not been for a letter published in one of the morning papers, in which stress was laid upon th« charges. He protested against the notice the work had attracted simply because it had been written by an earl, and looked upon it as a species of fiunkeyism. He dismissed the idea that Dr. Kingsley had lent any assistance towards writing the book, believing that the internal evidence— its faults of style, its extravagancies, inaccuracies, indecencies, and extreme boyishness— stamped the production as the earl's own. He thought the missionaries had a right to complain of the scandalous treatment they had received at his hands. He had listened to a lot of yarns, believed them, and published them without making any inquiries respecting their truth. The young man should have consulted himself, or some other missionary, as he might have done at Fiji, and if he had a single grain of common sense or honesty in his composition, a few minutes' conversation , would have been sufficient to burst these South Sea bubbles for ever. He would dismiss this unlordly lord, saying, in the words of a well-known quotation, "Having condescended for a moment to hold this man up to public contempt, let us now let him descend into his own native obscurity." In the letter he had referred to, the missionaries were accused of trading with the natives and making a gain out of them. This same absurd charge had been made against all missionaries,, including Williams and the late Bishqp.Patteson. These charges have arisen from the oral tradition handed down from the white men; chiefly convicts, who were on the islands when the first missionaries landed, and with whom they had to contend tooth and nail. It ;w6uld be' found that this charge; • was alwajs vaguely made r against that implacable abstraction " the missionaries;" : generally/ and <never against;! any particular ;, man, ;•/ >Bpeakidg/fbr'bimßeif^'he: could solemnly state that he had never made one single farthing all the time he Earl of:?embrjte had called the mission- 1 ftries " '(B^tin^iilwla^'sßtß^iiiglit retort:

iipon tha! k early^wi|^ v %raMe? : fWKi the accusation #bmnffa cowardly slanderer. . The Bendigo Evening News writes:-— "We are informed, on good authority, that a miner at Sebastian has received a letter from hie brother, also a gold miner, who is in the Northen Territory. The writer says — " No such alluvial diggings have been found in Victoria as there are here., I sunk. a hole 14 feet, and got 158 ounces of gold off the bottom. The Loves of the Cats. — If a cat doth meet a cat upon a garden wall, and if a cat doth greet a cat, oh ! need they both to squall? Every Tommy has his Tabby waiting on the wall; and yet she welcomes his approach with an unearthly yawl. And if a kitten wish to court upon the garden, wall, why don't he sit and sweetly smile, and not stand up and bawl; and lift his precious back up high, and show his teeth and moan, as if 'twere colic more than love that made the " feller" groan. To judge by the following paragraph, taken from the Bockharnpton Argus, the 4 tropical climate of Queensland seems highly suitable for the propagation of goaU. It says — " Our Inspector of Nuisances, who may be said to have a. perfect ' down upon the. goats,' made a , raid a night or two since, assisted by 15 men and two constables, arid succeeded in sweeping off about 150, which were duly killed and burnt, in compliance with municipal regulations. We undei stand that the Inspector has destroyed, during the fifteen months he had been in oifice, about 2200 goats, and he calculates there are still 2000 left in the town.