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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5538, 27 December 1878, Page 2

A meeting of the Anti-Chinese Immigration Committee will be held to-day. The numerous friends of Lieutenant Oosmar Gordon, of H.M.S. Nymph, will be glad to hear that he has resumed his duties as senior lieutenant on board that vessel.

The Postal Department insists that plans of surveys in connection with auction sales form no part of a newspaper, and want to charge extra postage on newspapers containing them. Captain John Crawford Wilsen, lately in command of H.M. armor-plated turret ship Thunderer, who has been appointed to succeed Commodore Hoskins on the Australian station, hoisted his broad ’ pennant on board H.M.S. Wolverine yesterday at Sydney. Yesterday while the 6.30 train from the Hutt was passing an accident occurred on the Huttroad, which looked alarming to those who were in the train. The horse fell and some of: the occupants were thrown out. The train passed quickly, and it could not be seen by those in it what injuries had been sustained. H.M.S. Sappho, which arrived hero on Christmas night, left Sydney on the 18th, having made the passage tinder sail alone in less than seven days. Her commission has expired, as may be seen by the fact that the farewell pennant has been hoisted. It is a most remarkably long pennant, dne to the fact that the vessel has been a long time in commission, the pennant being lengthened with each year of service. She leaves for England early on Saturday morning, and carries with her the good wishes of a host of friends.

No less than five wrecked vehicles were to be seen in passing along tho Hutt-road on the evening of Christmas Day. A pair of handsome grey ponies passed' the Petoni station at full speed abant 6.35 p.m., and a very short time after the runaways were to be seen being led away, • without the trap, pearly down at Ngahauranga. A four-wheeled buggy, in which there were a pair of dark brown ponies, had lost a wheel, also a heavy ’bus, and although no particulars of any accident to life or limb have yet come to hand, it is unlikely that all those concerned came off. harmless. • Yesterday a buggy and pair came into collision with the tram-car, the pole was broken and the lady inmate seriously alarmed. We were informed that the vehicle belonged to Mrs. Crawford. It is said that even if tho defalcations from tho Bank of Now Zealand at the Upper Hutt, for which Mr. Mackay, the manager, has been arrested, prove to be as heavy as was anticipated,' the bank will not suffer more than about £3QO loss. The bank had taken tho opportunity afforded by tho Guaranty Assurance Company of insuring against loss through any act of dishonesty on the part of persons engaged in situations of trust, by the payment of a small annual premium. In this instance the amount of the sum recouped will probably recover the payment of a large number of premiums, both in the past and for the future. The following letter appears in the Manawatu Herald of the. 20th inst.:—“Public Works Office, Wellington, December 10, 1878. Sir, —ln reply to your letter of the 2nd inst., lam directed by the Hon. the Minister for Public Works to inform you that instructions have been given to Mr. J. T. Stewart to lay off a part of the line at Foxton, and tho survey, if not actually now begun, will be so in a few days, with a view to the work of construction being pnt in hand.” We believe says the Manawatu, Herald, that the work of survey has already begun, and that an addition to tho survey staff has arrived from Taranaki, for the purpose of expediting tho work. It is Very probable a “ trial line” will also ho run out from theiPnlmerstdh“end. -

The Waiujannl Chronicle of December 23 aays I The last train was fully half an hour behind its time in arriving at tho Wanganui station on Saturday evening. The delay was partly owing to a stoppage between Matarawa and Olcoia. Arrived at, this point, tho engineer heard what appeared to him . to be ia woman's loud and shill screams. He at once stopped the train, and a vigorous search was instituted, but nothing was found to give any due to tho mastery.

Detective Farrell left this city for Wanganui yesterday. The object of his journey has not transpired. We understand that Signor Ferrari will not be in Wellington for soma weeks to come, and that in consequence the entertainment adyertised/will be postponed until further notice. . y-y ' y ..

; As there was likely ; tq, bo a very high'tide last night bn tho West Coast, au attempt was to be ; inacle toVfloat off the stranded : ship Hyderabad. Ttys undertaking ! was expected to be made about 11.30 p.m,, and we hope sinceridy.that it proved' successful, though owing to the strong westerly winds the probability is that it would not be attempted. There was an exceedingly large attendance at tlio’ At! Tiicum ’on the occasion of Mr. Vaijey’s lecture on,“ Billy Bray, the. Cornish Miner,’’ in fact, the haliwas crowded to excess in every part, so that many persons had to be ' accommodated with'seats in tho lobby outside the door. As a lecturer, Mr. Yarley is very entertaining. He has an easy flow of language, and his illustrations are so appropriate, forcible, and humorous that his audience cannot fail to give him. their whole attention. Last evening he was especially happy, and though the proceedings lasted over two hours, and the hall was suffocatingly hot, yet Mr. Varley had no difficulty in keeping his audience in a good humor. A correspondent, assuming the rather melancholy sobriquet of “ Linger and Die,” writes to the Standard, re the Wairarapa Valley railway, as follows :—“ Sir,—The above contract has been in the contractors’’hands now nearly nine months, and I may say. they have done next to nothing. As to completing the works in contract time, it is a matter of impossibility with thenumber of hands they are at present employing. In fact, all they have done is to try their hand on working men to get them to take sub-contracts. According to the specifications, they have no power to sub-let the works. There is’ nothing to prevent them from completing the work in. contract time, but not at the present linger and die manner of proceeding. lam confident the parties in charge are not well posted up in railway works, or they would avail themselves of the ’little fine’ weather that comes; for how will it be in winter 1 The. men are not making more than half time now, and there are riot more than fifty men employed in all, when there is nothing to prevent the contractor from placing 300 men on to work profitably. I am. informed the contractors are depending on; their influence with the Government for extension of contract time. It will be seen whether the Government grant it. lam of opinion that, it will not be long before Government place men to work on their own account; if they do not, it will be March, 1835, instead of March, 1880, before the railway whistle is heard in Hastertou. It is, time the Government began to stir the lazy people up,” Some Hawke’s Bay people have started a new racing club, and from what has taken place there can bo no doubt of the energy of the proprietors and their evident purpose to deserve success if, they canuot demand it. The moment the project was mooted the enterprising individual telegraphed to Sir Hercules Robinson, asking him to become patron. The reply came soon :—“ His Excellency is much gratified by your congratulations and offer of presidency, and begs the matter may bo allowed to stand over till his arrival in Wellington.” ‘ At a meeting held a day or two ago this freezingly polite reply was read, and the meeting solemnly passed a resolution to telegraph to Sir Hercules thanks for his courtesy. '■■■"■ ' : A Nelson visitor to Wellington thus discourses in the Colonist-.- —“ They continue there to erect buildings of stone and brick that one cannot see without thinking back to the same place in 47 and 58, and picturing the enormous loss of life and property should the earthquakes .of those periods be repeated. Bents are at fabulous prices, £SOO a year being obtained for places that in Nelson would not bring much more than a fifth of that sum. But these high rents must come to an end. They are telling as yet most seriously only upon the-artisans , and clerks ; men whose earnings are some £3 or £4 a week have to pay at least £1 for rent, consequently strikes for-higher pay are threatened in some trades, and where paper businesses are not the exception, coming grief may, safely be predicted. The trouble at present is with the presumably less wealthy classes, but it must leaven the whole.”

The Star has the following re Kimbal Beat, the deserter:—“We have received information from Mr, McCornish, formerly bandmaster of the 27th Regiment, which is corroborated by Short, who also served in the band. Both of these gentlemen were well acquainted with Kimbal Bent. He deserted in 1861 from a military post called Ma'nawapou, in. the Wanganui District, after having been flogged for some flagrant breach of discipline. He was a recruit of English extraction, but had travelled in America. Bent had been repeatedly punished for acts of petty thieving and drunkenness, and at the time of his desertion was a defaulter undergoing ‘pack drill.’ He walked coolly out of camp with his accoutrements and arms, crossed the ground, intervening between the camp and the Maoris by going up a gully, and was soon lost to sight. One day a party of three men of the 57th went out to look for him, when they were, suddenly pounced upon by a party of natives, amongst whom was the deserter Kimbal Bent. Two of the soldiers escaped, but the third man was taken and kept prisoner for three months. When he subsequently effected his escape he informed his comrades that Bent had frequently endeavored to induce the Maoris to kill him, which would have been done but for the intervention.of - another deserter named O’Connori Kimbal Bent lived exactly in Maori style, having taken a solemn oath to abandon every remnant of European habits. Bent was the best shot in the regiment, having learnt the trade of a gunsmith. This will account for some of the excellent shooting at long ranges which the Maoris Sometimes made with Enfield rifles taken from parties by surprises and ambuscades.” In New South Wales during the last financial year eighty-nine miles were added to the length of railways in the colony, viz., sixtyfive miles to the Great Southern and Western lines, and twenty-four miles to the Northern line. The actual amount of expenditure on the finished lines of the colony, was £8,739,177 ; and on unfinished lines, £575,323, making a total of £9,314,500. The total expenditure on all public works for the year amounted to £1,618,768. Major Smith, the Victorian Minister of Education, hopes before next session to be able to give practical effect to the idea of establishing penny saving banks in connection with State schools. An American paper says :—We had occasion, about a year ago, to refer to the decision of the Court of Chancery for Ontario, in the case of the Canada Eire and Marine Insurance Company versus the Northern Assurance Company. The case raised an interesting question, as to the right of a company to reinsure a risk at a rate differing from that of. the original insurance. Such a transaction was pronounced, nuder the circumstances of this particular case, illegal. Against this decision the Northern appealed, and tho Court of Appeal has reversed the judgment of the Court below, holding that the defendants had a right to re-insure on such terms as might be agreed upon, notwithstanding that their own rates were higher, so long as there was no misrepresentation proven,, which the Court of Appeal holds was hot* done hers. To this decision the plaintiffs have, we understand, submitted, so that here the matter ends. This may be good law, but it does not alter our opinion, from a business point of view, of reinsuring at lower rates. It is only fair, however, to state that the difficulty m this particular case appears to have arisen through misunderstanding between the sub-agents of the respective companies, and not from any settled or acknowledged practice on the part of the defendants.

The Spectator, of a lata elate says: —The Duke of Cambridge lately delivered -a speech to the Company of Haberdashers, at Gresham street, which must sound ominous to Sir Stafford Northcote. He maintained that as England would not submit to be anything but a great nation, she must keep up the efficiency of her army, and it could not bo kept up in face of "a damaging economy.” Undue economy in ordinary times must lead to large and exceptional expenditure in times of danger, which he evidently thought might bo near at hand, There is, perhaps, another hint of the same kind in the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s speech at Birmingham on linanoe. He intimated that if the taxes of 1856 wore reimposed, the revenue would be increased by £25,000,000 a year. Has anybody, perchance, been suggesting to him that heavy war loans would not hurt the people, as oven an expenditure of £500,000,000 at Jive per oout. would only replace us in the position of 1856 ? That is not his own view, of course—he is a sound financier at heart—but there are counsels of perfection as to national expenditure which attract Imperialist nfinds.

One of the greatest curiosities in the world has lately been exhibited in Sau Francisco. It is the section of the largest tree in the world, called “Old Moses.” It was 240 ft. in height, and at one time was much-higher. The section now on' exhibition measures 100 ft, in circumference. The ago of this tree is estimated at 4824 years, and oyer 200 persons can -he admitted within the interior. It will be exhibited in the Eastern States, and then taken to Europe. Such a curiosity as this should attract a ’crowd of visitors, for it is doubtful if its equal will ever be found again. The anti-Socialist Bill in Germany has become law, and has been immediately applied. The President of Police has already prohibited four associations, —the Association for the Protection of the Laboring Population of Berlin, the Association for the Communal Affairs of the North-East District, tho Association of Tobacco-Workers, and the- German Smiths’ Union; has suppressed the Berlin Free Press, and has prohibited the circulation of tbirtythree non-periodical pamphlets, some of them German, and some Swiss and American. The Free Press immediately reappeared, as the Tagespost, but was suppressed again, and it is evident that the , freedom of combining and printing is at au end for Socialists in Germany. There is fairly good news for lovers of claret from the Bordelais districts. Vanity Fair says :- It is admitted by the vignerons themselves—as good grumblers as Essex farmers—that it is a fairly good year, though nothing wonderful. This, being interpreted, means that it is, in fact, a very good year, and that we need not fear the price of olarot rising. On the other hand, the ravages of the phylloxera in the Gharente have been of the moat serious character, and there will be a falling off of at least one-half in the quantity of cognac made this year. But let no one listen too mnch to the complaints of their spirit merchants on this matter. There are enormous stocks of brandy kept in store, so that the price should not at present be sensibly affected.

There is a very, important matter affecting the “rights of women” to which we (Waka Maori) are desirous of drawing the attention of our native readers—the female sex: especially. Women, too frequently, through being manned to spendthrift or drunken husbands, lose the possessions inherited by them from their ancestors. ,Iu the “Interests of humanity” we maintain that their should be an alteration in the law with regard to the rights of native women owning laud who marry. The law in such oases should make the ceremony of marriage have the effect of conferring upon the .woman for her separate use such estate as she possessed prior to her marriage, or such estate as she might inherit after her marriage. Her property should be so protected by law that her husband could not in any way influence her to alienate it from herself and her children; and we think the safest way to attain this end would be to make her property inalienable during tho period of her coverture. This would effectually save her from, being despoiled of her property either by her husband or her husband’s creditors. We recommend the native women throughout New Zealand to unite in getting up a petition to the Hon. Mr. Sheehan praying him to use his influence in getting a law passed next session embodying the above principles. We think a gentleman possessing sentiments of gallantry so generous, and a devotion. to the interests of the fair sex so ohivalrio, as Mr. Sheehan is known to possess, could not possibly turn a deaf ear to the prayer of injured beauty and oppressed innocence.

Wo have been requested to call attention to Messrs. J. H. Bethume and Co.’s publio sale which will bo held at their rooms, corner of Feathorston and Brandon streets, this day at 2 o'clock, when they will dispose of the privileges in connection with tho Caledonian Society's annual gathering on New Year’s Day; also, shares in the New Zealand Steam Shipping Company, Colonial Bank of Now Zealand, and Thames Cold Mining Company.