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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 226, 15 November 1880, Page 2

The Rev. S. Savage, Chairman of the Congregational Union of New South, Wales was strongly political in a part of his address : — " Many had begun to fear that the character of England for open, straightforward, honest speech and action had sadly deteriorated, and that the moral and political tone of the nation was softening and rotting under the miasmatic influence fbf a policy lpf ' unrighteousness, extravagance, falsehood and deceit. Arid from many circumstances thera appeared but too much reason for the existence of such fears. But when the day of battle came, when the cause of honesty, truth and righteousness, headed by that model Englishmap, that representative of English integrity, principle, and honor, that greatest of all living statesmen—Mr Gladstone—the People's William, came into conflict with political necromancy, and a bastard Imperialism — the victory. for righteousness was like Cromwell's Bt Marston Moor and Naseby, uumistakeable and complete. The strength of EDgland rose tip, and entering i*B protest against genius without principle, indignantly discarded Beaconsfield, and flung him from power for ever. When the conflict wbb over, good men lifted up their heads again, and began to breathe more freely ; they thanked God and toot courage. The flatterer of monarchs may receive such honors as monarcbs can bestow; his brow may be decked with glittering coronets, but the name of William Ewart Gladstone will go down to the remotest generations, embalmed with the admiration, reverence, and affection of a grateful and honest people." The Queenslander of October 23rd has the following: — Mr James Edward Fitzgerald, formerly Premier of New Zealand, but at present the Controller and Auditor-General of the Public Accounts of that colony, left for the South on Tuesday in the Elamang for a fortnight's stay in Brisbane. Mr Fitzgerald, it appears, has been commissioned by the New Zealand Government to visit the several colonies, in order .to enquire into and report upon the different systems of receiving and accounting for public moneys and railway and other stores and material, in force in those colonies respectively; and, as he has the reputation of being an extremely able and ' intelligent man of business, and evidently applies himself diligently to the jnro'rk entrusted to him,. his report will doubtless prove a valuable State document. We gather that both our Auditor-General and Treasury .authorities believe the Queensland systemf especially with- regard to' payments, to be in almost all respects r superior to that of New Zealand, which is, in-faot, centra: audit before payment, and. payment of all accounts from the Treasury direct. It is contended that the New Zealand plan ,of making all payments from, one central office, and of sending innumerable vouchers to another central office for examination, is dilatory and cumbrous, and must sooner or later breakdown; whereas that of this colony —namely, local payments, and local audit after payment— is more business-like, more effective, and capable of expansion as the colony advances and transactions multiply. The Swansea correspondent of :the H. T. Mercury relates that the other' day a young .man residing not far from Cole's Bay saw an unusual number of largo animals. floundering in the water, and not knowing to what tribe they belonged, immediately started for Swansea to obtain assistance in their capture. Messrs Glover and Quinn manned a boat, and at once left for the scene, and killed in the shallow water and on the beach the incredible number of 86 whales, of the kind commonly known as finbacks or humpers. The men, waded close up to them. and stabbed them with long knives behind the fin, the animals being entirely helpless in the shallow water. The bay was dyed with blood, and their dying struggles caused quite an agitation' of the, water for some distance. 'They are now all on the sand at low tide, and in very shallow water when the tide is in. ! The smallest of them measures from 25 feet to i3O feet. Those who have been to ,view the animals declare that the immense Dumber would not .be credited exceptlpy eye : wi tneases . ., jThe . fortunate possessors are. now exceedingly busy cutting "up and 'foiling; dqwri ; ihe blubber, and put«ng.:tnX6il 6 iritd;all^ho spare casks and ' otfteir Vessels th>^ can-pro-; cure, ;

... Two men in. a boat on the Mary River (Q), 'commenced .fighting. The boat capsized, and the.battle was fought out in the. river, : \ The pay-sheets : of the Gympie mining companies have been greatly reduced by illness (to which the use. of bad lithofracteur contributes) among the miners. • . \ , It -is said that a man . named Maunder, shore 207 sheep in 1872 in one day at Myall Creek, near Binrera. Defaulting newspaper subscribers were known in Australia as early as 1810. In that year their names were published. Times are changed now, for the worse. r v ; .. \ The hew Commissioner of Police,^Melbourne, it is said, is going seriously to set himself to the extinction of larrikinism. Mr Balfour, a Victorian M.L.A., is founding a teetotal town on his estate contiguous to the Albury railway extension. The first prize fat bullocks at the Toowoomba, N.S W., Show weighed, when dressed, 1070lbs and 10761b5, and the second prize 11921ba and 10241b5. It is said that the Leichhardt copper mine :(said ;to be the richest in the world) will shortly be oppened, worked by a Melbourne company. , I An amusing cricket contest batween eleven player's possessing only one arm eacb and a like number of one-legged men is recorded in Bell's Life. The. former won on the first innings by 143 runs, scoring, 199 against 56 made by their opponents. For the winners Shary made the fine score. of 92, and Ben Neal came next with 57. T&e one-legged team, however, did better in their second ■"'essay,' and had reached 56 with only two .wickets down when timeswas called. Miss de Manuel, the daughter of a Darling Point publican, was recently found 40s at the Naranderat police court, for supplying Minnie Melon, a Warangesda mission aboriginal, with spirits. The rev. superintendent, when he found Minnie had been tippling, promptly administered sage advice aud a severe emetic. The average earnings of miners on the Palmer goldfields for 1879 were £330 per man. However, the Palmer returns for this year show a decrease of 30,2330zs ; those for Charters Towers, an increase of 11,0860z5. Mr George Rouse, of Biraganbil recently sold eleven paddock fed bullocks, weighing as follows:— 1520 1416, 1272, 1260, 1216, 1200, 1160, 1116. 1052, 1048, and 10471b5. Dr Madden, M.P. (Victoria), suggest as a cure for deadlocks the suspension of payment of members pending the resumption of business. Sheer necessity compelled a man to steal a pair of boots in Melbourne. He did it openly, and made no attempt to escape, for gaol-was his only refuge from starvation. - He got three months. A large kangaroo, alive, but with its two hind legs broken, was found fixed in the cowcatcher of a locomotive, in Victoria, recently. New York paoers state that on the 1 lth of August Dr Swift, of Rochester, discovered a new comet in Ursa Major, but./a cloud intervening, he was unable to calculate the direction. It is said, that he has discovered six comets in all, four during the last four years. The Ashburton Guardian says {—Messrs Saunders Bros, despatched from tbeir mill,, in execution of a shipping order for. the Cape, 21,000 bushels of oata. . This large line was loaded in a little less than 15 working hours, and: practically proves the material benefit of our railway ..system, to a large establishment |like the Ash burton mills, where every advantage is taken of situation and close proximity to the main line. .Fifteen years ago Mr. J Hunt carted his produce to Cbristchurcb, three days.being occupied by the trip down Allowing another day to reach Lyttelton, it would have taken our genial friend about three years and a half with a dray and three horses to remove the oats we have referred to, or a month with thirty drays and ninety , horses. Another marvel recently brought to light in the Yellowstone Park of North America is nothing less tbaD a mountain of obsidian or volcanic glass. Near the foot of the Beaver Lake a band of explorers came upon this remarkable mountain, which rises in columnar cliffs and rounded bosses to many hundreds of feet in altitude from the margin of the lake. As it was desirable to pass that way the party had to cut a road through the steep glassy barricade. This was effected by making fires on the glass to thoroughly heat and expand it, and then dashing the cold water of the lake against the heated surface so as to suddenly cool and break it up. Large fragments were in this way detached from the solid side of the mountain, then broken up small by sledge hammers and picks, not, however, without severe larcera- ( tioDS of the hands and faces of the men from flying splinters. In the Grand Canon of th c Gibson river the explorers also found- precipic- • of yellow, black, and banded obsidian hundreds of feet high. The natural glass of these localities has from time immemorial been dressed by the Indians to tip their •pears and arrows. . A correspondent of the Gv R. Argus writing of the Melbourne Exhibition, says .— "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ;" the "classic" nudities in the French gallery are. equally eD joyed by the lovers of " high art," and the " provincials " from "up conntrv." One old lady, after i contemplating " Cblbe " critically for seme time, was heard to whisper to her elderly companion, " just like our Hemtria 1 " As an instance of the rapidity of travel between England and Australia now-a-days, the West Coast Times mentions the case of an old Westland resident who is returning there after a visit to .France. This gentleman visited a theaire in London the night before he left by the s.s. Orient, and exactly thirty-eight days afterwards he paid a visit to the Melbourne Exhibition. t The Melbourne correspondent of the N.Z. Times writes :— -The amount of money which has changed hands over the Cup must have been very large. The number of bookmakers present on the course, in the ring, and on the hill,, would have been sufficient to populate a good sized town, and as each represented the transfer of a certain amount, in some cases probably thousands of pounds, the aggregate must have been something enormous. The exchange of money over sweeps must have been equally large, if not larger. Besides a host of smaller fry, Miller alone put through eighteen sweeps of £2000 each, consequently this gentleman, on the morning of the eventful day had £36,000 Cup money in his hands, in addition to commissions and sweeps on other events, amounting altogether probably to some £50,000 of other people's c'a.Bh, and. if he had chosen to walk on board the Ortent steamer with this valueV in hia . pbckeV anid take a trip Home, I question if anyone could legally have stopped'him. Mr Miller- by the . way, must be rather a pet client: with, his banker. ; The horse race is not by any means the only attractive feature of the Cup "day, its claims to pre-eminence being fairly -rivalled, if not distanced by another sort of race altogether, , I aUude of course to the fair race of womankind. The glories of female loveliness and its surroundings to be seen on. the lawn, is a sight worth crossing the line to see, and indeed is almost as great r" draw," to use a theatrical phrase, as the racing itself. The. newspapers next day devote more space to, its description than.Jo.tUe.performances of; the horses, and their best word painters exhaust all the resources of their art in the attempt to lay before their readers a vivid picture of the beauties of the scene. There was no band anywhere on the course on the. Cup day. The absence of music waa re-i marked, but not regretted, the great number of other attractions being more than suffice ent to pleasurably occupy the whole of one'sattention. A noticeable novelty in the day's; doings on the hill was the number of cages; containing canary and other birds engagedr there on special duty. The owners utilised; — if such an expression ".may be used-^r-the, services. of these little feathered servants toj decide the winning numbers of sweeps. For, instance, a dozen eager speculators- from thej surrounding" ctowd ' would " each invest a shilling and receive a numbe^ed.ticketan ex-j change. .■> The ;rmxn, m : 3jhOTgeJbfJttie|cag^ would then open a little door, arid iii atwinkj ling one of the littie'bmls would hop down ,| pop its head?though.;the,opening, from a" row of folded papers pick .upjbne^w.bjjch disj closed the winning number which entitled the lucky holder tb^halfTa-spyereigriJ.^The^holdb proceeding occupied but a minute or twoYanoy th« game seemed. to beVvery popular* jrdging from the numbeVof bird capes arid the r6^r| ing trade which, wok being done by t^e prof prietori, -.- •". , : ;■.,.-- ; ". 7 ; '-; /; ■■" ■ •; "£

The.jPrm tbussuwsjip Mr Mpssi ; M,H.R.>/ .for Parnell •— He;is;in?presßed with tjbe}b|iief ; that he' has been born; to put the aflairßof this coiopy in ordibr. The conßequenc¥iß^hat he is cotitintially ; making flnanical stitements; to which no one ever, listens, and. .in 'gpro-' ' no one comprehend^. He occupies the House by the hour with bis monotonous utterances,' and, with the assistanceof' Mr Seddon and others, helps to enormously swell the cost of Hansard.