SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 666, 20 December 1851, Page 3

SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

(From (lie Launceston Examiner, Nov. 26.) By the Totnor we have papers to the 14th instant. Coal was again reported to have been found in the vicinity of Adelaide, and it was said the discoverer had received a reward of £5OO. The sum of £45,000 had been placed on the estimates for the construction of a railway between Adelaide and the port. On the 31st October a debate took place in the council on the second reading of the convicts’ employment bill, the object of which was to provi 'e punishment for pnsoners!convicted in the colony. All the members concurred in the principle that every colony and every country should provide in itself for the punishment of its own crime. Honorable members differed as to the expediency of employing convicts on the public roads or establishing a penal settlement on Kangaroo Island. The revenue for the quarter ending 30th September was £62,467 9s. lid.; and the expenditure £42,910 16s, 9d. A section of land on the Emu Flats has been purchased by the Royal Mining Company fcr £7OO. On this land is a copper mine, which is expected to prove second only io the Burra.

The Adelaide races came off on the 4th instant, when the Town Plate was won by Swordsman, beating four other horses. Swordsman was afterwards led in triumph over the course, and his rider was carried on the shoulders of several men. The new tariff was to have come into effect on 31st December, but the Governor has

reserved the Customs’ Amendment Bill for her Majesty’s assent.

To prevent debtors leaving the colony for •he diggings, an act has passed the council which empowers any special magistrate to issue a warrant for the apprehension of any party about to leave ths colony on the application of any plaintiff having a good cause of action against htm for any sum within the jurisdiction of the present local courts. The magistrate may at once proceed to hear and adjudicate in the case, and no warrant can issue against any person who has given notice of his intention to leave the colony by not less than two advertisements in consecutive days of publication in two or more newspapers published in Adelaide, stating the time and manner of such intended departure.