OUR FEMALE SUPERNUMERARIES. IN A SERIES OF VIEWS. [From Punch.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 514, 6 July 1850, Page 4

OUR FEMALE SUPERNUMERARIES. IN A SERIES OF VIEWS. [From Punch.]

The Commercial View. — The muslin home-market is in a state of extreme depression. The supply greatly exceeds the demand, and the article is a mere drug. Hands can scarcely command a purchaser, and the enquirers for hearts are very few. Sempstresses are quoted at lamentably reduced figures, and domestic servants, at no time particularly brisk, are now duller than ever. 'The colonial trade in this description of goods, however, is still lively, they being especially in request in Australia, whither some shipments of them have already been consigned ; and it is to be hoped that every facility will be given to their continued exportation.

The Cynical View. — Wherever there is mischief, women are sure to be at the bottom of it. The state of the country bears out this old sayiug. All our difficulties arise from a superabundance of females. The only remedy for this evil is to pack up bag and baggage, and start them away.

The Alarmist 'View. — If the surplus female population with which we ate overrun increases much more, we shall be eaten up with women. What used to be our - better half will soon become our worse nineteenths; a numerical majority which it will Lbe vain to contend with, and which will reduce our 'free and glorious constitution to that most degrading of all despotisms, a petticoat government.

The Domestic View. — The daughters of England are too numerous, and if their mother cannot otherwise gel them off her hands, she must send them abroad into the world.

The Scholastic View. —On the Cockney Sportsman's game-list there is a little bird called commonly the chaffinch; by Hampshire youth, the chink ; and ' by ' Linnaeus, Fringilla Calebs. Linnaeus was a Swede, and called the chaffinch Calebs, because in Sweden and other northern countries, in winter, the' females migrate, and leave the males bachelors. It is to be wished that our own redundant females were far enough north' to take wing, like the hen-chaffinch.

Our own View. —lt is lamentable that thousands of poor girls should starve *here upon slops, working for slopsellers, and >only not dying old maids because dying young, when stalwart mates and solid meals might be found for all in Australia. Doubtlesi, they would fly as fast as- the-ben-chaffinches —if only they had the means of flying. It remains with' the 1 government and the country to find them' wings.