The Oamaru Mail WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE NEW ZEALAND AGRICULTURIST. THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1879.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1029, 7 August 1879, Page 2

The Oamaru Mail WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE NEW ZEALAND AGRICULTURIST. THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1879.

I We have been favored with the perusal of a latter from one of the principal citizens of San Francisco to a gentleman in this district. It affords several interesting particulars concerning the condition ' of the wool market in America—a market which must influence the markets of the • world. These particulars should be gratifying to the wool growers of this colony, and, indeed, all of us, because they show that the rise in the price of wool i 3 not confined to Europe, and that there 13 good reason to think that the rate 3 at the opening of the next series will be substantially in advance of those that ruled at the close of the last scriej. The writer also comments upon the new state of matters political in California, and deplores the change a3 likely to have the disastrous etfects which we stated last evening would be the sequel of the operations £of too rabid Democrats. We publish his remarks upon both these matters because they are both intimately connected. A rise in the wage* of station hands, which will inevitably follow the action of the Kearney faction, will necessitate a rise in the price of wool and all woollen goods. Whenever extreme measures are resorted to in order to increase the rates of wages, the increase is always taken out of the pockets of employers and con- i Burners. Here are the extracts : " You write that the wool business is very much depressed. We have had low prices for wool in the United States for a long time, bat during the last three weeks there has I been an advance of 20 per cent in Boston, and a more exciting time than for many years. Our clip is now coming in here, and wool is 2o t*> ,30 per cent, dearer than two- months ago, when it first came in. AH who bought then have made immense profits. Woollen goods have advanced, and better times are anticipated. In the Eastern States there is a great improvement in trade, but it i 3 still very dull in California. We have adopted, by the aid of the Kearneyites, the Communist class, a new Radical Constitution, and will soon be excited with the election of a new Governor, iaeoiber3 of Congress, Judges for all the Courts, and, in fact, all State | officers. It is the poor against the rich—labor against capital. We must defeat what is called the 'working men's ! party,' for their principles are unjust and i infamous. Real estate has declined very mttch, and there is but little doing." There is a gTeat deal of common sense in the foregoing remarks. Unfortunately there are extremists amongst Democrats, who inflame their party with all kinds of absurd cries, and a country is cursed , quite as much by their conduct as it would be by the extreme action—the i jdown—of Conservatism. 1

We have much pleasure in directing the attention of our readers to an advertisement in another column, which states that Mdlle. Dubois, the eminent Russian pianiste, will perform at the Volunteer Hall instead of the Oddfellows' Hall, this evening. We are sure that the attendance will be increased by the alteration, and that the pleasure of the audience will be greatly enhanced. We can confidently assure the public that there is a great musical treat in ijtore for those who attend the Volunteer Hall to-night.

Messrs. Fleming and ilcilcy offered for sale to-day, Messrs. Honour Brothers' Landon and Fairfield farms. The first-mentioned, consisting of 134 acres, and including the homestead, was sold to Mr. John M'Lcan, at L 32 IDs per acre, the other, consisting of about 245 acres, was withdrawn.

During July last, eleven declarations of insolvency and four deeds of arrangement with creditors were filed in the Oamaru District Court.

We learn by telegraph from Y\ ellington that Mr. Reca complained that the remarks made by Mr. Hobbs in a speech recently delivcred by him in the House to the effect that he gloried in haviug been denounced as a rat in connection with the want of confidence motion did not appear in Hansard. Mr. Hobbs volunteered the statement that ite had not tampered with the report, and said that the omission was a reporter's slip. It would therefore appear that, if Mr. Hobba' testimony is worth anything, some reporter, out of consideration for Mr. Hobbs' reputation and that of the Parliament of the country, suppressed the idiotic remarks of the verdant Auckland member. ! Reporters do sometimes cover a multitude I of sin 3.

At yesterday's meeting of the Kakanui Ro.nl Hoard, a statement showing the amount of rates raised and money expended in the several sub-divisions from March, 1573, to July, 1579, was produced in compliance with a resolution passed at a previous meeting, on the motion of Mr. Gemmell. The results given by this are as follow : litcholme : receipts, 13,099 Cs 2d } expenditure, L3,G93 10s lOd. Totara : receipts, L"2,tiSl 1-13 3d; expenditure, LG,203 lis. Lanibonrne: receipts, L 1,531 103 Cd ; expenditure, LI ,450 16s sd. Lambton: receipts, L7S7 Ms 5.1 : expenditure, L7ll ISs hi. Awamoa : receipts, L 739 Cs lid ; expenditure, L 1,901 17s Sd. It will thus be seen that the only two sub-divisions in which the rotei have not been exceeded by the expenditure are Lwrtbourne and Lambton, balances on the side of i<»cc;pt.s being : Limbourne, LSO 14s Id ; Lambton, L 75 IJ3 lOtl. In the other sub-divisions the expenditure has exceeded the receipts as follow : Incholme, L 594 4s Sd; Totara, L 3,521 lGs 7d ; Awainoa, LI l'is 10s 3d. Another accident occurjrcd evening at the cutting in Itchen-street. It appears ttiat a squabble arose between several men in one of the small cottages above the cutting, and one of them, named Skimmey, a stronger in the town, and who was under the influence of drink, in attempting to get away, fcl! over the embankment, and lay on the street for * timo in an unconscious state. Information was givep to the police, and on the arrival of the constable tne man was removed to the Hospital, where he was promptly attended to. Blood was flowing J from his mouth and one of his cars, but owing to the state he was in the full extent of his injuries cjuid not be ascertained. ■Several accidents have already <» purred at tho place, and it seems extraordinary that the Municipal Council lias not had this dangerous place fencod, as was promised to be done on the occasion of tho fatal accident which happened at the same place recently. The Oamaru Companies of the Xo. 3 Battalion will meet for their monthly inspection '■ to-morrow evening, at So clock. At the Resident Magistrate's Court today, -John Morton and Charles Johnston, charged v/it!i having been drunk and disorderly, were diseharg'.-l with cautions. I The sitting of the Assessment Court under the Land Tax Act has been adjourned until Saturday next, at 10 o'clock. An onlooker writes from Livingstone as follows: —The quarterly meeting of the Good Templar Lodge was held on Saturday ; evening iast, when the following officers were duly installed :— W .C.T., Bro. T. | Smith (re-elected); \\ .\ ~ Bro. Oliver; W.S., Bro. Baxter; W.F.S., Bro. J. T. M'Quade; W.T., Bro. Pringle; W.C. J. M'Quade; W.M., Bro. James Botting; W.1.G., Bro., Fred. Botting ; W.0.G., Bro. James Kennedy; W.R.11.5., Sister Sutherland ; W.L.H.S., Sister Pringle; W.A.S., Sister M'Quade ; W.D.M., Bro. M'Grath. The monthly meeting of the Mechanics' Institute Committee will be held at half-past seven o'clock this evening.

A football match was played yesterday afternoon, at the North .School, between fifteen lads from tlje Windsor House School, and eighteen of those of the North School, and resulted in a victory for the former. The member for Wellington City has evidently made preparations to take his departure from New Zealand should it be rendered necessary, through his own actions or those of the judges. We learn that lie has purchased land in Kansas, and that he is greatly pleased with the United States. Mails for Sydney, -per Hero, close at 1 p.m. on Friday, the Sth inst., at Auckland.

The following from an English paper will doubtless be interesting to the advocates of coffee taverns in thi3 town:—The Right Hon, S. H, Walpole (Member for Cambridge University), opened, on Monday, the Royal Oak Coffee Tavern, High-street, Acton. There was, he said, a great evil in our country, and perhaps In most countries, which had to be cured, and there was a great want which bad to be supplied. It was said by many excellent persons that this evil might be met by Parliamentary coercion, by prohibitory restrictions. He was perfectly confident in his own mind that any attempt on the part of Parliament to restrict or prohibit would never succeed. What Parliament could do, Parliament had ic part done. It regulated drinking establishments by Parliamentary and police •regulations. K pnnished the outward offence as soon as it wa3 outwardly manifested, but if it attempted to go beyond that the consequence must be that the people of this conntTy would be put in opposition to the law, and that, in his mind, would be even worse than the evil they wished to put down. He would state only two reasons for the conclusion at which he had arrived. It was a mistake in any legislation to confound the use and abuse of a thing in the same category, and he thought it would be found that any such legislation as that which was sometimes suggested would only draw—whit he hoped would never be drawn—a line of distinction in the treatment to be given to the poorer classes oa compared to the treatment to be allowed to the richer. Now, what was the state of our social system ? It could be divided into three classes—the upper, middle, and lower.

In regard to the subject now in hand, the upper and middle classes had their onu clubs, their own associations, their own honses in which they can meet their friends in social intercoursebut in respect to the third of these classes they had neither the one nor the other. They had no resorts of innocent recreation, and, therefore, were drawn by bad temptations to places were they learned nothing excepting that which was likely to drive them to the criminal calendar. If that were the true state of affairs, the way to meet the contrast between the richer and the poorer classes must instantly suggest ;t S elf—we must try other means than Parliamentary legislation. How, then, was the. want felt by the poorer classes to be supplied ? In only one way—by enabling them to enjoy innocently that which they hardly could enjoy innocently in the only places hitherto open to their public resort. To his mind the coffee tavern movement 1 was one of the best means of doing this, inasmuch as opportunities were afforded the working classes of meeting together to enjoy social intercourse and innocent recreation without the temptation to indulge in excessive drinking.

The own Wellington correspondent of the Timaru Herald supplies the following to that paper :—From correspondence it appears that some time ago Sir Julius Vogel, foreseeing the necessity of the colony to raise a loan, wrote to a friend in the House, stating that the best thing New Zealand could do would be to go in for a L 10,000,000 loan at once, and advance railway works as far as possible ; adding that when that was accomplished they could easily dispose of their railways to companies formed in England, who would make them pay better than the Government. He expressed his belief that the proceeds of the sale of the railways would wipe off all the indebtedness of the colony and leave a surplus, The Norddeutsche Zeitung says that the Chinese Ambassador at Berlin, Li Fangpao, well-known in his own country as a great scholar, lias lately read as Chinese the in-i scriptiofi on fi vase found by Dr. Bchliemann in the lowest stratum of his excavations at Hisearlik, and figured op p, 50 of the introduction to his "Troy and its Remains," The learned Ambassador has thuß confirmed the identification of the language of the inscription made six years ago by the eminent Orientalist Emile Burnouf, which was greatly ridiculed at the time. Li Fangpao is quite confident that the unknown characters, which recur again and again on the Trojan antiquities, especially 2on the terra-cotta whorls, are those of his native tongue, and gives as the purport of the inscription, that about B.C. 1200 three pieces of linen gauze were packed in the vase for inspection. Burnoufs French version (1. c., p. 51) also contained the words "pifeces d'dtoffes." " Thiß vase,'' adds the Norddeutsche Zeitung, " seems consequently to furnish a fresh proof of the active commercial intercourse which the people of the 'Hyperboreans,' the Chinese, carried on with Greece and Asia Minor—a commercial intercourse as to whose route the Geographical Society here has just listened to a most interesting lecture."

The following letter appears in the London Times :—" S;r—A few facta respecting price? of agricultural produce in Ireland may help to moderate the panic which it is the interest of so many to promote. I aui a landowner and land occupier to a considerable extent. The prices at which I have sold the produce of a farm of yearly 1000 acres tWa seasoii in Ireland aro »3 follow :—Barley, Is 2£d per stone ; oats, Is per stone ; mutton, 93s 4d per cwt; beef, 70s to 75s per cTrt, The general valuation of Ireland was made by Act of Parliament under a schedule of prices as follows :—Barley, BJd per stone; oats, 6,-Jd per stone ; mutton, 41s par cwt ; beef, 35s Gd per cwt. Under this valuation nearly all the lands of Ireland are let, in many cases with the addition of 25 per cent. The public will judge whether the farmers of Ireland have a just cause of complaint against their landlords. An intimate acquaintance with the circumstances of the small farmois enables me to state that the diiiiculties thoy now find themselves in arise mainly from the action of the banks, who, after many years lending to every small occupier, say of five acres and upwards, and, as far as I have ascertained, charging 10 per cent, ill every case, now hold their hands and take proceedings against their debtors. These rates, not rents, have swamped the farniers. Your obedient servant, A."