MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 302, 21 June 1848, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Ireland and the Ministerial Measures. — The appalling catalogue laid before Parliament gives but a faint idea of the fearful state of society in Ireland. It is but a list of the " j 'aits accomplis ,•" and cannot depict the condition of those unhappy raeu who " live in death," who know their doom has been sealed, whose execution is openly spoken of as a thing likely to occur, who have no protection but God's mercy to rely on, and who are so circumstanced, in many instances, as not to have the means of fleeing from a country which has become the charnel-house of their class. And who can paint the feelings of the wives and families of those unfortunates ? We ourselves know instances of their sufferings which would harrow the soul of any person possessed of the smallest portion of humanity. But the other day, the wife of a clergyman, as amiable and charitable a man as lives, drove into a neighbouring town, and in the shop of a tradesman heard an expression of regret that some gentlemen in the neighbourhood were so soon to l)e murdered, and amongst others, her own husband, whose charities and attention to the poor she vainly hoped would have secured his safety. Hurrying home, she found he had gone to attend one of his congregation, to whose sick bed he had been summoned. Distracted by her apprehensions, she went to an adjacent police station, and sent two of the men in the direction her husband had taken. He returned alive — her precaution had saved him — but when she learned from his lips that the call was but a snare to bring him within the reach of his assassins, the shock overpowered a weak constitution ; she fell in a fit, and died entreating with her last breath mercy for the father of her children from the assassins, by whom in her delirium she fancied him to be surrounded. She left a large and helpless family, whose only protection is a broken-hearted and doomed man ; and yet there are to be found in the Senate those who protect the system to whicfi this amiable woman has fallen a victim, by refusing to support even the paltry measure introduced by the Government for its suppression. — Blacf food's Magazine.

■A Conservative Picture of our Military Resources. — In former seasons of distress and difficulty, when the revenue exhibited tokens of a falling away, or it was judged expedient to lighten the people's burdens, the Government was not ouly in a condition to try experiments on the course of trade, but it had opportunities more or less favourable, of economising the public resources by reducing to their lowest working points most of our public establishments. Thus, immediately, after the panic of 1819, the strength

of the regiTar army was diminished by more than ten thousand men ; and the nayy J the dockyards, the arsenals, and even the public offices, were cut down in an equal proportion. Circumstances, it is true, compelled (he administration of the day gradually to retrace its steps iv regard to these bodies. But the activity of enlistment was not resumed, neither were fresh hands taken on in other quarters till public confidence had been restored, and the state of the revenue once more justified 'he arrangement. How stands the case now? With a failing revenue, a growing public debt, stagnation in business, and a want of coufidence every where, the Government is not only unable to reduce the public establishments of the country, but it must increase them. It is universally acknowledged that our army cannot do the work which is assigned to it, even in peace. Let war come, or seriously threaten, and we shall be found quite unprepared for the crisis. Look, for example, to that particular branch of the service which, for defensive purposes, is the most important of all, and which cannot be made effective under two years' training at least. To work. the guns of our home and colonial fortresses, to defend a thousand different posts scattered over the whole surface of the globe, we have on foot some nine thousand artillery, — that is to say, an average of nine gunners for each post, and not a single man left to carry a single battery into the field. Can such a state of things be permitted to continue ? What w the use of the fortifications which we are throwing up, at an immense outlay, not in England only, but at Gibraltar, Malta, Corfu, and in Canada, if we have no artillery to put into them ? And what is to become of us if, after detaching our last gunner, we find ourselves suddenly called upon to equip an army for active operations in the field ? — Frascr's Magazine

Colonial Self-Government. — There is one other problem in policy which is suggested by a view of the progress and institutions of our modern colonial empire. Whichever character the state means ultimately to impose on her offspring — that of subjection, or that which Mr. Lewis calls virtual independence — should the choice be made tt once, or should an experimental, temporary scheme be first adopted ? The latter has become the modern plan among ourselves. Many of our existing colonies have only had constitutions granted them at a pretty advanced period in their settlement, and some have been subjected at their foundation to absolute government, with an understanding that they will by-and-by receive one ; one (South Australia^, with a promise, guaranteed by act of Parliament, that the boon should be given when the number of its inhabitants amounts to 50,000. Certainly, to observers imbued with the notions of these times, such a course is apt, at first sight, to appear the most advisable. We rather shrink from the idea of saddling the first laborious settlers in the wilderness with the duties of self-government : plain, practical institutions we know to be the best adapted for them ; and these we are apt to identify with absolute rule. Yet it is worth while to pause, and consider in how different a light our ancestors regarded this matter. They never dreamt (that is, in by far the majority of instances) that the colonist was not fully fitted to enjoy at first whatever measure of liberty was to be ultimately his portion. We have seen that the people of Massachusetts Bay made their own constitution almost as soon as they arrrived there ; it was ratified at home, its provisions were transferred not many years afterwards to a royal charter, and continued to exist during the' whole period of its dependence. When the enthusiast Roger Williams settled Rhode Island with a few people escaped from the persecution of their Puritan brethren in Massachusetts, he framed in the very next year a republican policy for his dozen or two of families. It was confirmed by charter in 1662, and continues at this very day to be the constituent law of that flourishing little commonwealth. According to our present ideas, Rhode Island would not have been "entitled" to a constitution until a century and a half after its first settlement. It cannot be questioned that this as well as other political problems are much complicated by the prevalence of high political theories at the present day. The settlers of New England were republican in habits, not in sentiment (which only grew up at a later era), and valued their free institutions just at their practical worth. In our times, we must always expect that a community possessed of a policial power will be influenced more or less by exaggerated views and feelings in the exercise of them. But the question remains substantially the same — whether 500 men of ordinary British habits and notions, and not too much scattered over the soil, cannot administer themselves municipally as well as 50,000 ; whether the size of a community, supposing it protected from external violence, has anything to do with its capacity for self-government. And it is to be observed, that the more dangerous influences of the democratic spirit do not easily

grow to a head in a very small community ; every man is known, every man is responsible ; and free institutions, formed during this period of comparative simplicity, are perhaps more likely to endure safely the expansion of the commonwealth, than to be received safely by a people already adolescent. Whatever may be the vantage ground secured by the central government during the period of delay, it is certain that when the expected boon arrives it will find the colony divided into two classes — those who are its masters now, and those who expect to be its masters hereafter ; and that it will find the minds of a large number possessed with a prejudiced hatred toward those elements of good society which may have been introduced during the period of minority. I can only refer you, in passing, to the recent history of Newfoundland, as affording perhaps the most striking example of events which have taken place, more or less, in nearly all our present colonies soon after their passage from a state of pupilage to freedom. — Merivale's Lectures on Colonies and Colonization.

Pigeon Flying. — In no part of Europe is the breeding and training of carrier pigeons carried on to such an extent as in Belgium. A new society has been formed in the capital, called the Columbarian Society, who lately flew a sweepstakes for 1000 francs, with 20 pigeons, against the railroad conveyance between Brussels and Antwerp. The weather being extremely unfavourable, was much against the pigeons which lost the wager, a dun-carrier and a blue dragon having alone arrived five-and-twenty minutes beyond the train's arrival.

A Counaught Ranger. — General Picton was riding out one day, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, near the river Coa, when he saw, at the opposite bank of the river, a man of the Connaught Rangers with a huge goat on his back. We had received but scanty rations for some days previously, and such a windfall as the old goat was not to he neglected. lam not prepared to say whether it was the cries of the animal, or the stench of his hide — for the wind was from that pomt — that attracted Ficton to the spot ; howbeit, there he was. It would be difficult to say, with truth, whether the general was most angry or hungry, but he seemed, in either case, resolved not only to capture the goat, but also the " boy." That he would have done the one or the other perhaps both, there can be little doubt, had it not been that a stream, whose banks had been the theatre of other scenes of contest, separated the parties. This stream was the Coa, and although its different fordable points were well known to Picton, his vis-a-vis neighbour ~was by no means ignorant of sonce of the passes ; and as the general had not time to consult his chart, and find out the nearest " ford," nor inclination to plunge into the river, he made a furious, but quite ineffectual attack of words against the " Connaught boy." " Pray, sir," said, or rather roared, Picton, addressing the soldier, " what have you got there ?" Sol. " A thieving puckawn, sir." Pic. "A what V Sol. *' A goat, sir. In Ireland we call a buck-goat a puckawn. I found the poor baste starving, and he looks as if he was as hiingry as myself." Pic. " What are you going to do with him, sir." Sol. "Do with him, is it? To bring him with me, to be sure ! Do you think I'd lave him here to starve 1" Pic. " Ah ! you villain, you are at your old tricks, are you ? I know you, though you don't think it !" Sol. *'And I know you, sir, and the 'boys of Connaught' know you too, and I'd be sorry to do anything that would be displeasing to your honour ; and, sure, iv you'd only let me, I'd send your sarvant a leg iv him to dhress for your dinner, for by my soul your honour looks cowld and angry — hungry, I mane." He then held up the goat by the beard, and shook it at Captain Tyler, the general's aidde camp, and taking it for granted that he had made a peace-offering to the General, or probably, not caring one straw whether he had or not, went away with his burden, and was soon lost sight of amongst a grove of chestnut trees. " Well," said Ptcton, turning to Tyler, who was nearly convulsed with laughter, " that fellow has some merit. What tact and what humour! He would make a good out-post soldier, for he knows not only how to forage, but to take up a position that is unavailable." " Why yes, sir," said Tyler, " when he held up the goat's head, he seemed to. beard us to our faces ; and his promise of sending you a leg was a, capital ruse." " It was, faith," replied Picton, "and if the fellow is found out, he will, I suppose, endeavour to makeme the ' scape goat !" — History of the Connaught Rangers.

The Influenza and the Guards. — We are sorry to bear that our gallant guardsmen stationed at Windsor have sustained an attack of influenza, under which, however, we

have the satisfaction of adding, they have behaved with their accustomed bravery, having suffered the slightest possible loss. Still, the number of those disabled is considerable ; amounting to forty privates in the Blues, and between fifty and sixty in the Ist battalion of Grenadiers. In this engagement, the cotton nightcap was substituted for the helmet and shako usually worn by these troops in action, as furnishing a more efficient defence against this peculiar foe. The enemy met with a warm reception, his onslaught being opposed at all points by a steady fire, and plenty of hot water. The centre was judiciously fortified with a supply of gruel ; and the men were draughted in companies under surgeon's orders. We trust that the repulse which the invader has experienced will lender him more cautious in future of coming in contact with the British soldier. — Punch.