NEWS BY THE MAIL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5018, 24 April 1877, Page 3

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

A provincial chemist has recently been applying to Mrs. Bravo for the payment of the £SOO reward which she offered to any one who would prove the sale of the antimony by which her husband was poisoned. The chemist in question positively states that he supplied Mr. Bravo with the exact poison, and on that ground claims the money. Mrs. Bravo's solicitor has recommended her not to pay it, as the chemist cannot show any entry in his book of any such sale. The negro man-servant Bogle, so well known in connection with the Tichborne case, died a few days ago. rKOTECTION OF BRITISH COMMERCE. The Pall Mall Gazette writing on this subject says :—The whole matter is purely one of insurance, though the amount at stake is so large that the cost of adequate insurance cannot be trifling under any circumstances. More than 7,200,000 tons of shipping sails under tho British flag, and the exports and imports of the mother country alone average£6so,ooo,ooo. The los3 which we should sustaiu, even in the first two or three months of war witli a great maritime Power, if we were unprepared, would far exceed the cost of reasonable preparation. In the present uneasy state of feeling throughout the world we cannot afford to neglect such precautions altogether. . . . The time has now arrived for a wider discussion of the subject, and so good an opportunity for obtaining a general agreement between the different portions of the empire may not occur again. The Australian colonies have at length awakened to their defenceless condition, and New South Wales has now joined Victoria iu an application to the Home Government for a qualified engineer officer to advise with the different colonial Governments as to the best means of protection. There is no difficulty, as we remarked the other day, in rendering Port Philip and Melbourne absolutely secure, and Port Jackson and Sydney can be even more easily protected against attack from the sea at very moderate cost. -But neither of these great harbors or cities 13 in a satisfactory! condition at present, while Ade-' laide, Brisbane, &c, lie open *te a raid fas well as the New Zealand ports, and ..Newcastle, New South Wales—the great coaling port of the Pacific—is entirely undefended. Under these circumstances the Imperial Government might very well call upon all the colonies to confer with the Home authorities as to the best means of availing ourselves of the endless resources of the whole empire in time of war. There now exists no general organisation whatever ; and if war were to break out within the next few weeks we should, considering the interests which we have to protect, be as unready as at any period in our history. Our colonies and dependencies are not called upon to contribute a shilling to the support of the Imperial navy, although Canada has the fourth commercial marine in the world, and the Australasian shipping is growing rapidly. They ought, therefore, at least to provide adequately fortified ports in which our fleets could coal and refit, and we believe that they would be perfeclty ready not only to do this, but to take any other steps which might be recommended after consideration with tho Imperial Government. Canada, in particular, has declared herself ready enough to provide for her own defence. Sir John Lubbock lias done good service in showing the liberal manner in which we have always treated our colonies since our great lesson of the last century; and in spite of occasional grumbling, the colonists are perfectly well aware that they derive very considerable advantage from belonging to the most powerful empire in the world. The disinclination to guarantee any portion of the expense of annexing Fiji, which has certainly left the stigma of extraordinary meanness upon the colonies which declined Lord Carnarvon's proposition, may well have arisen from other causes than that to which it was naturally attributed, and we must not forget that until within the last few years a noisy and influential party was continually clamoring for the dismemberment of the empire. A great change has taken place since in the attitude of even Liberal statesmen towards our colonies ; and the view now taken by all Englishmen of imperial duties will certainly lead colonial Governments to evince more interest in the preservation of the imperial connection, whether in peace or war.

THE COLONIAL MABRIAGE3 BILL. On Wednesday, February 28 (says the Home News) after a sharp and interesting debate, the Colonial Marriages Bill was read a second time in the House of Commons by the decisive majority of 192 to 141. That the Bill will become law this session is extremely unlikely, seeing that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has notified hia intention of opposing it in committee, and that even after this ordeal has been passed there probably awaits it in the House of Lords the same reception as has been repeatedly accorded to the measure now identified with the name of Sir Thomas Chambers. The Becond reading of the Bill last week was moved by Mr. Knatnh-bull-Hugessen, and tho chief opposition which it had to encounter proceeded from ecclesiastical fanatics or lay bishops of the type of Mr. Beresford Hope, and fossilised High Anglicans like Mr. Hubbard.

. The arguments which can bo adduced on behalf of Sir Thomas Chambers' Bill and Mr. Knatchbull-llugcssen's Bill aro to a great extent interchangeable;—mutually supplement, and reciprocally fortify each other. The prejudice against a man's marrying his sister-in-law, whether at Home or in the colonies, is comparatively of modern date, and is of ecclesiastical rather than civil origin. For very many years the doctrino of Lord Stowoll that "a marriage legal whero solemnised was legal the world over," was considered not only good law but to rule all cases. In 1835 tho late Dulce of Buccleuch married his docoased wife's sister, and in September 1 of that year an Act took effect providing that all such marriages should thereafter bo void and not voidable. Prior to this, if the union was not voided by the Ecclesiastical Court during tho lifetime of the parents, the children, upon tho death of either parent, were declared to be legitimate. Since that date, from the time of Lord Lyndhurst to that of Sir Thomas Chambers, efforts have been made, not only to repeal tho Act of 1836, but to render theso marriages legal; prejudice has fought foot by foot the question, and now the religions objection has almost vanished, and the social objections are almost exclusively dwelt upon. As a matter of fact, theso social objections aro products not of experience, but of prejudice. It is noticeable that there exists at the present time no statute explicitly forbidding these marriages in tho mother country. The Act of 1835 did, as wo have said, declare that certain marriages hitherto voidable by the eccletia#tica! law were henceforth to be

I void.;, 'bnt-it did not specifically mention marriage with a deceased wife's sister. In conclusion,so far as Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen's measure is concerned, we need only further say. that the several Ministers who have advised her Majesty to sanction the Colonial Bills must have foreseen the difficulties which would arise in consequence, and they should either have vetoed the Bills until tho Act of 1835 was repealed, or have been prepared to give the full benefit of the concession to colonists throughout the Empire. Of course, the question must eventually be decided in the affirmative, but, meantime, many cases of individual hardship will occur, and our colonies should rouse themselves energetically f o secure Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen's success next year. But before Mr. Kuatchbull-Hugessen's measure can be considered satisfactory, it will be absolutely indispensable, as we have already hinted, that some clause should be inserted in it—as a principle of the Bill, and not a detail to be altered in committee—explaining beyond the possibility of confusion or mistake what constitutes a domiciled resident of the cohmies, and what are the circumstances under which colonial domicile is terminated.