Talk of the Week.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 233, 26 February 1876, Page 13

Talk of the Week.

It was the Otago Daily Times that not long ago evoked from its innate ignorance the idea that New Zealand could absorb no more immigrants. It is Otago itself that furnishes the earliest contradiction of this idea. A telegram from Dunedin says, “ All the immigration depots in the province are now empty.” This is not the first time that the province has practically proved its Daily Times to have been in the wrong. A circumstance in connection with the general advance of this colony continually being made apparent, and to Wellington particularly, is the increase and extent of the passenger traffic along the coast of the North and Middle Islands. Wellington being the central part of the colony, we that reside here have a better opportunity of appreciating the fact alluded to ; and when we look back a few years and compare that period with the present, we surely 1 have cause for special wonder. Each steamer entering the harbor brings a number of passengers destined either to rem tin here or proceed North or South, as the case maybe ; whilst there is a considerable passenger trade between this and the neighboring colonies, a trade in which to a small degree the sailing vessels on that line contribute. Yesterday afternoon the Ladybird carried away a large number of men, women, and children ; and the steamers which left the Queen’s Wharf the day before took many passengers for different ports. The increase in the shipping trade to Wellington is one of many causes for congratulation.

It would have been much better if the assault case, Anderson v. Williamson, on Friday decided at the Resident Magistrate’s Court, had never been allowed to get so far as the Court. Neither of the parties came out of it with credit. Clearly the defendant deserved punishment, for newspaper writers must be protected from personal violence ; yet complainant showed himself to be one of those newspaper writers so ready and so well prepared to take their protection into their own hands that he came badly before a Court where redress is not obtained by violence. The paragraph which was the primary cause of the disturbance, the conduct of complainant on Wednesday evening, the article which appeared from his pen on Thursday evening, the gentlemanly manners and refined language of complainant in the witness box, go to prove that he is not a Chesterfield. A printed copy of the evidence would be an invaluable testimonial to an applicant for the editorship of a paper connected with the noble art as illustrated by “ The Game Chicken.”

In the course of the enquiry at Hokitika into the circumstances which induced the German immigrants to return from Jackson Bay, Ferdinand Schwann, a farm laborer, from the province of Brandenburg, said “he had been engaged by the year, at seventy thalers per year —equal to ten guineas—and his food. Nothing was said to him as to where he should come in New Zealand. He was told in Wellington that there was not much work there, but there was much work in Hokitika. The doctor of the ship said so. He heard nothing about Jackson Bay. He asked where they were to land. They said Hokitika. When he got here, they said ‘ This is Hokitika.’ So he landed. They were told to get on another steamer, but nothing was said about Jackson Bay. He had heard so much in Hokitika that he would not go there now. He had been told that those in Jackson Bay were so much in debt that he wouldn’t go.” There is something curious an out Schwann's statement that he and his fellow immigrants had, on their arrival in Wellington, been told by the doctor of the Shakspere that there was no work here but that there was plenty in Hokitika. The truth is the exact reverse of such an allegation, if such an allegation was made. Perhaps the doctor of the Shakspere can throw a little light upon this question ?

A paragraph in our telegraphic news by cable mentions the despatch of the Hon. Stephen Cave to Egypt. The object of his mission will be explained by the following passage from the Spectator, of December 11 : —“The Government last week selected the Right Hon. Stephen Cave, lately Judge-Advocate-General, as Commissioner to Egypt, to assist the Khedive in reforming his Treasury, and on Tuesday the names of his staff were announced. The chief is Colonel Stokes, for many years British Commissioner for the arrongement of the dues payable at the mouths of the Danube, and recently employed to settle the tariffs of the Suez Canal. He retains his appointment at

Chatham during his absence, which will only, it is imagined, last three months. Mr. V. Buckley, of the Foreign Office, is appointed General Secretary to the Mission ; and Mr. W. 11. White, Deputy-Accountant-General at the War Office, Financial Secretary. This latter officer will have the most difficult post of all. It is understood that Mr. Cave’s recommendations are to be attended to, and we do trust we shall not hear when Parliament meets that the whole Mission is unofficial. There is a disposition just now to explain away the importance of our Egyptian policy, which can only end in depriving it of the national support indispensable to its success.”

Some days since we published, on the authority of a correspondent of the Daily Neios, an instance of clerical intolerance in France. Since then, we have been assured by correspondents that the writer in the Daily Neivs was altogether mistaken, and that the Clerical party in France is composed of meek and mild mannered men. Now, on this subject, we would just like to let the Spectator tell a tale. It says in one of its recent issues : “ There is still probably more bitterness in France than in any other country under the sun on the subject of religious differences. A curious illustration of this occurred the other day, when Madame de Gasparin sent to a popular library in Boussenois, in the Cote d’Or, a copy of her late husband’s work on ‘ The Schools of Doubt and the Schools of Faith.’ M. de Gasparin was a distinguished Protestant, and the directors of the library of Boussenois appear to be rigid Roman Catholics. They burned the volume, and thanked Madame de Gasparin, in a letter meant to be one of severe irony, for her goodness in warming them at a fire made on the' fuel of her husband’s pages. In England a genuine Catholic would probably have welcomed, and certainly accepted courteously, any book written on the side of faith and against the sceptics. But in France the old internecine war prevails. No doubt the director of the Boussenois library, M. de Geroal, thinks that M. de Gasparin must have been wicked, if only because he was a Protestant, or he would never have sent such a letter as he did to a widow making a present of her late husband’s work. The capacity of doema to bewitch the mind which it gets full hold of, into absolutely fictitious imaginings as to the relation between truth and goodness, is one of the strangest of its many strange powers.”

An item in the Suez mail summary, which deserves explanation, notices the resignation of Mr. Read, a subsidiary member of Mr. Disraeli’s government. The necessary explanation will be found in the remarks of an English journal, which says : —“ Mr. C. S. Read’s resignation illustrates at once the merits and defects of his character as a politician, and one of the permanent difficulties with which every British Government has to contend. It is very hard under our system for a Premier to obtain the full assistance of a representative man.*. A member of Parliament may obtain such a mastery of one particular subject, be it municipal government, or liquor-legislation, or county administration, or factory improvement, or recruiting, or naval construction, that a whole class interested in his question cries for him as its representative, and the whole country wonders why the Premier seems reluctant to select for office ‘ a source of strength to his Administration.’ The Premier usually excuses himself by a platitude about * old claims’ and ‘party difficulties,’ and the small amount of freewill left to any British ruler, but his inner reason all the while very often is that he wants a Minister, a man who can serve the State, and not a representative—a man who only serves a class. It was thought, when Mr. Disraeli, breaking through some traditions and many prejudices, placed the nominee of the tenantry of South Norfolk in his Ministry as Secretary to the Local Government Board, that he had made a great success. A tenant-farmer himself, Mr. Read was the chosen representative of tenantfarmers ; he thoroughly understood their grievances, he could explain their inarticulate wants, and he had, in an unusual degree for his position, the ear of the House of Commons. It was supposed that he would do any business entrusted to him unusually well, and that he would supply a link, often wanted, between the great body of county electors and a Cabinet too exclusively composed of county squires. ‘We do not know that any of these popular expectations were falsified by the event. Mr. Read has not lost in any degree the confidence of the farmers. He has, as is evident from his speech to the Farmers’ Club on Tuesday, represented their views. at head-quarters with only two much pertinacity and straightforwardness. He has not been accused of any mismanagement in his departmental affairs. But still he has failed, and no one who reads his explanatory speech to a sympathising audience can doubt that Mr. Disraeli was right in reluctantly accepting his resignation.”

In reference to the decision of the English Court of Appeal regarding crossed cheques, the Economist of a late date has the following remalcs :—“The Court of Appeal seem to have been puzzled by the difficulty that if they had decided differently from what they did the cheque would have been payable to nobody, as it had come into the hands of a bona fide holder, and if he was not to be paid, neither could any one else. They also thought that such holder might have evaded the crossing in two ways—either by going to the drawer and getting a fresh cheque, or by opening an account with the banker named and getting payment through him. But this reasoning is most refined, and contrary to the common sense of the matter. If crossing is to be good for anything at all, no crossed cheque can come into the hands of a bona fide holder for value other than the lawful owner. Any one offered a cheque so crossed, the meaning of which is that it was only to be paid to the holder’s banker, would at once know that at some stage or other the cheque had

got into the hands of its lawful owner by improper means. As it is, considering the established usage about cheques, we are surprised that any banker took a cheque from a customer crossed to another bank, and that the cheque was paid without demur, unless, as we believe, it all occurred through inadvertence. The crossing, as commonly understood, is, in fact, a restriction of the bank endorsement to the banker named, converting the endorsement in blank into an endorsement by name, and if this is not understood the security intended by the crossing is not given. We hope, therefore, a short Actwill be speedily introduced into Parliament, removing the difficulty which has now been made. Nothing will be simpler than to declare that the crossing of a cheque to a particular banker shall be imperative, and a warning to all that such a cheque is not negotiable like any other—that whoever takes it, unless the particular banker named, does so at his peril. We should have thought that this resulted from the former enactments, but as the Court of Appeal has thought differently, there is no remedy but a fresh enactment.”

A decision of the utmost importance to mercantile men has been given in the English Court of Appeal. The decision is regarded by the Economist as “ most unfortunate,” and will do much, in the opinion of that paper, unless the law is altered by Act of Parliament, to destroy the utility of. the system known as “ crossing cheques.” The decision was given in a case Smith v. the Union Bank, the facts of which were that the plaintiff had received a cheque on the Union Bank from Mills and Co., and endorsed it, and crossed it “London and County Bank”; but the cheque was stolen, and coming into the hands of a bona fide holder for value, a customer of the London and Westminster Bank, was presented through that company to the Union Bank, and paid, notwithstanding the crossing. The plaintiff, as holder, sued the Union Bank for paying the cheque, contrary to the statutes 19th and 20th Viet., cap. 25, and 21st and 22nd Viet., cap. 79, on the subject of crossed cheques. The Coui’t, however, have held that the holder is not entitled to sue. The crossing, they say, was intended for the drawer’s benefit, and as he was not damnified, his payment of the cheque having been a good payment, he cannot sue, nor can any other person. The Legislature had not said that any one taking the cheque was to take it at his peril, and as the cheque was finally in the hands of a lawful holder whom the Union Bank had paid, they could not be sued for doing so. It follows from this that any holder of a cheque endorsing it ceases to be protected by the crossing. If it has been stolen from him and gets into the hands of a bona fide holder for value, and is presented through any bank, the paying bank is justified, and he has no redress. Now this judgment, however well founded legally and technically, is entirely contrary to mercantile usage and the common sense of the matter. The understanding is that the crossing is imperative —that the cheque is not to be paid except to the particular banker named upon it, and pace the Court of Appeal, this is intended for the benefit of all concerned, and not merely for the drawer. Indeed, as the crossing is necessarily to the banker of the holder who receives the cheque, it is primarily as much for his benefit, and not merely for the benefit of the drawer, that the crossing is made.

The meat question now occupies some serious attention at Home, and the alarming prospect is shadowed forth that before winter is over beef and mutton will be 2s. per lb in the London market. At such a pilce, what will many a poor family do for even a Christmas dinner? It seems by agricultural statistics given in that all classes of live stock have diminished in England especially during 1875. The decrease in cattle in comparison to the previous year was I*B per cent.; sheep, 3‘B per cent.; and pigs, 8 per cent. This does look alarming, but it will be the means, perhaps, of forcing the importation of stock, and methods are being tried for the introduction of meat preserved in various ways. Already Philadelphia has sent to London a shipment of dressed beeves, sheep, and poultry, preserved in tanks supplied by air forced by steam power in currents through ice chests. Mr Riddle, C.E., states he is prepared to ship from India 1000 tons, at 2d. per lb.; and Dr. Herzen, of Florence, has invented a new method of preserving raw meat without tins or air-tight vessels; and after being kept for twelve months the meat was reported as being succulent and nutritious; but by far the largest and seemingly the best invention is that of Mr. Mort, of Sydney, and no wonder that the completion of his experiments for introducing fresh meat into London at 3d. or 4d. per lb., are looked forward to with the greatest interest and anxiety. In explanation of Mr. Mort’s process, we cannot do better than reprint some extracts from a letter by Mr. Charles O’Neill, which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald of October 14th, 1874. He writes :—“What really struck me most of all in Sydney were the meat-freezing woidcs of Mr. Mort. There you see going on by a single individual an experiment, which, if it fails, will sink absolutely (£100,000) one hundred thousand pounds. There has been a noble boldness in the conception, while the scientific mind of Mr. Nicholle invented and planned the whole, machinery and all, and gave the modus operandi; the huge refrigerator—whereby over one hundred tons of ice can be produced per day, for reducing* tlie temperature of tlie cold-rooms twenty degrees below zero the walls of the cold rooms are peculiarly constructed, four or five feet thick, with interior walls and spaces ; there are also the outer rooms—or rather halls, from their great areas —whose ceilings from end to end have pipes placed close together; then there are the trap-doors —the long wooden, boxes with transverse perforated zinc plates, about six inches apart, through which the air passes —the railway and railway carriages, &c., &c., &c.—all amaze one ; and still more astonishing is it ' when we are informed that the carriages are specially constructed with sliding tops to receive whole

bullocks, which will be slaughtered on the Blue Mountains at a point over 3000 feet above the sea, and 100 miles from Sydney,and conveyed to the freezing wot 'S, w eie they will be taken out, skinned, and cleaned, and placed in the cold-room—all done with the least possible manual labor. The cold-room is a wonderful place. Whole carcases frozen, stark and stiff, intended to be kept fresh for years. The same process freezes ducks, fowls, butter, and years may roll by, seasons may grow warm, but the beef, mutton, poultry, and butter will remain untouched by time, preserved as fresh as when placed in the cold-room. The next object to be effected is how to transmit this frozen meat to another country, such as England, 16,000 miles off. The difficulty is overcome thus:—The hold of the ship for the conveyance of the 'frozen meat is specially arranged thus—A wooden wall or framework of ■ boards ten inches apart, is formed, and placed on top, bottom, and sides of bold , tbe inside of this wall is filled up with tallow, so that the twisting of the ship may not affect its airtight qualities. An instrument is fixed to ascertain at all times the state of the temperature, and another of Mr. Nicholle’s inventions, a smaller refrigerator, is placed close by, where by a little attention the cold temperature can be easily kept up through any climate. Should this colossal experiment of Mr. Mort s be attended with success, then humcimty will le benefited. The price of beef in London three months ago was 16d. per pound, and mutton 14d. per pound, at which prices how often could the poor laboring man, at English wa°"es, eat either beef or mutton ? Scarcely one day in the week. I believe that by Mr. Mort’s process fresh beef can be delivered in London at about 4d. per lb.; therefore the laboring classes there who were only accustomed to meat once a week could have beef four times a week ; and if the principle be extended, how unbounded will be the boon. Town after town, country after country, nation after nation, over the whole globe, may. be benefited, for the country, having plentiful cheap meat can export it to where the meat is dear ; thorefore it is a noble undertaking, and one worthy of placing Mr. Morfc on a pedestal of fame, high above that of the warrior or statesman; in fact, liis work reminds me of giant undertakings in the good old times fifty centuries ago, when Kings Menes and Moeris did ponderous works to benefit their people, turned the course of the mighty Kile for the better irrigation of the country, and built the city of Memphis, formed a huge artificial lake (fed by the Kile at its overflow) 450 miles in circumference and 300 feet deep, with its floodgates, dams, and locks, and thus prolong the time of refreshing and extending the fertilising influence to land that without the aid of art would have been absolutely barren, made stalks of corn grow where nothing grew before ; made once dry Egypt have corn enough and to spare, when Syria and Arabia fainted from lack of sustenance. The world then felt it could not starve so long as there was com in Egypt. May it not yet be said, the world need not want beef so long as meat freezing works are scattered over those countries which have abundance of cattle. Mr. Mort, like a modern King Menes, has attempted to turn the stream of plenty on such a useful course as to place upon the table of thousands of poor families abundant food where none appeared before. May he succeed is my most earnest wish.” We heartily join in earnestly wishing Mr. Mort’s experiment the greatest success. It will be gratifying to the many friends of the Lev. J. E. Herring, formerly of the Hutt, to learn of his advancement in the pi-esent sphere of his labors. His appointment as official secretary to the Bishop of Ballarat and chief registrar of the diocese speaks well for the estimation he is gaining, and of the future prospects that such may lead to. The following from “Notes and Comments” in a Ballarat paper has reference to this appointment : “The congregation of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church are about to lose their pastor, the Rev. J. E. Herring, who has been appointed official secretary to the Bishop of Ballarat and chief registrar of the diocese. Whiilst unfeignedly rejoicing at the promotion of Mr. Herring, the members of St. Paul’s deeply regret losing the services of so able, and faithful a minister. And not only to his own flock, but to the town at large, will Mi-. Herring’s removal be severely felt. During his residence amongst us he has taken a leading part in our local institutions, and in any movement having for its object the elevation and amelioration of. his fellow creatures ; he is just the. man, in fact, whom a small community can ill afford to lose. Mts. Herring will also be greatly missed, as, independently of the active discharge of the duties ordinarily devolving on a clei-gyman’s wife, her great musical talents have been cosnstantly exerted for the benefit of public institutions and private sufferings, and that without distinction of class or creed. We understand Mi*. Herring will -leave in about three weeks from this.” The true history of the purchase of the Khedive’s shares in the Suez Canal is given by a correspondent of the Glasgow Herald, and is most interesting as an instance of high journalistic influence and honoi’. Writing on November 29th, the correspondent says “ At the very commencement of the present month, infonhation from a private source x-eached the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette that . the Khedive’s shares were about to be placed upon the market. The value of their acquisition by this country at once fastened itself upon the editor’s mind, and on the 3rd November appeared the remarkable article which attracted so much attention at home and abroad, urging upon public attention the stake this country had in Egypt and its independence of any other Power but our om Not satisfied with this, the editor, next sought an interview with Lord Derby, m which he placed before the Eoreign Secretary more clearly than any of his paid agents had done the real financial condition and necessities of

the Viceroy, the opportunities offered by a bold stroke of policy, and the readiness, of the Viceroy to accept the money of Britain whilst awaiting her tutelage. Lord Der J T? ®-« up and down his room as the editor adduced reason and evidence in support of his views. His Lordship pointed out the difficulties of such a course, and strongly leant upon the opposition which the scheme would probably meet with in the Cabinet In exclusion, however, he requested the cditorof the Pall Mall to draw up a memorandum embodying the facts and views he had verbally expressed, and promised to lay the same before the Cabinet at its meeting on the morrow. When the matter came to be discussed, Mr. Disraeli at once discovered the importance of the suggestion, and cordially adopted the views expressed in the memorandum; and, after some obstacles raised by other members were overcome, the course of conduct recommended by the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette was adopted, with what results the world now knows. A letter was addressed to him- by Lord Dm by, thanking him most warmly for Ins suggestions. It is rffint to add onfe striking and significant fact in these days of mammon worship and speculation. Although a depository of the important State secret for days, if not weeks, before it was announced to the world, and though consequently in a position to make thousands of pounds m a way which most people look upon, if not as honorable, at least as permissible, I am in a position to say that the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette never made the slightest use of his knowledge, nor either directly or indirectly was tempted, to dabble in Egyptian stock. It is with a just pride that journalists will speak and think oi conduct such as this.”