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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue XV, 25 November 1880, Page 2

Bishop Moorhouse, in bis inaugural address at the opening of the Church of EDglaad Assembly of Victoria, recently, thus refers to the "educated larrikin.":-—" I hear, on the testimony of a public officer, that already in Victoria we are developing a new type of criminal. In the Old Country, he says, and in the early days of the Co'ony, he had no difficulty in getting information about crime. Now, however, the educated larrikin ia driving the police to their wits' end. This modem Victorian criminal is intelligent enough to know the advantages of combination. He keeps his own counsel and baffles the police. Now observe, that of this class of crime (the mostdangerouß of all) there will be absolutely no records in the returns of our Police Courts and Assizes. For the most part of it is com mitted with impunity. It goes to swell th it enormous mass of sensual sin of which the law takes no notice ; of which its returns exhibit no trace, although they are so oftou fallaciously quoted as a reliable test of our moral condition. You know what ordinarj criminals are. You bare yet to learn what intelligent criminals can be — what a scourge lo society, what a terrible peril to the commonwealth." This is wh:t happened on the Wellington wharf when tlta steamer that brought the celebrated astronamor, Mr Procter, aa4 his bslengiags .amvea". Among the latter are astrological maps, &c, duly labelled. A U.S.B. sailar was banding out these to an Occidental Hotel runner, whs acknowledged receipt after the vainer of this kind — " Tfe« sHß—right 1 " " the planets— right ! " " one carpet bag— -right 1" A pause. "Bill, wkere's the bloomin' mooa ? " To which Bill replied, "Oh, we sh»ved her in the far'ard hold." And the runner went off contentedly with the bug, and th« planets, a»d the -carpet bag. However, the moon turned up before the lecture was delivered. An Auckland paper saya :—M.v James Pemberton, the winner of the first prize in Abbott's £5000 sweep on the Melbourne Cup, is a gum digger at Whangarei. He spout his last £5 in tickets, and then bartered the winning number to Mr Davis, of ths Kamo Hotel for tw» drinks. Whether Mr Davis intends to stick to it has not as yet transpired. I Southern contemporary has the following:— "It is not often that we have to comment on ridiculous verdicts returned by New Zealand juries. Now and then a case for criticism of the jocular kind crops up, but not frequently. Of all the instances of absurd findings, however, commend us to that of the Auckland jury who eat upon the body of a son of Mr Peter Barthow, whose death was caused by eating the heads off matches. Tbic son was an infant — a baby — and he had got to a box of wax matches and eaten them. The jury did not say that he died of his own act while in a state of temporary insanity, j neither was it a case of ftlo dt te The vert diet recorded was that of 'accidental death,' with adder 'urging parents and guardians to sse patent safety matches 1 ' Now, we all know that safety matches strike only on the box; and we know also that their heads are as large again as those of wax matches, and thit the stuff of which they are made is much more poisonous! Therefore the remedy of the Auckland jury is worse than the disease, by fan"