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South Canterbury Times, Issue 2393, 17 November 1880, Page 2

Tun parcels delivery department of the Union Shipping Company has never been so perfect as it might be. We have had goods on (heir way from Melbourne delayed for weeks, and travelling all over New Zealand in the Union Company’s boats before they reached Timarn. Of course the carriers had nothing to do with the inconvenience, and their agents merely treated remonstrances with contempt. Jt is perhaps fortunate rather than otherwise for the general public that this persistent carelessness has at last been rewarded by a somewhat valuable parcel goingastray. Having ourselves suffered we can sj-nipathisc with the Bank of New Zealand in its perplexity at finding a box containing ÜbOOO worth of gold missing. The shippers and receivers appear to be in a slate of dense fog respecting the missing parcel. This, however, is nothing unusual. When parcels belonging to their customers go astray the agents and officers of the Union Company are invariably at sea. Perhaps the live ingots of gold will help to sharpen their intellects. We speak from experience when we say that they arc usually very dull; extremely careless. This mysterious disappearance of gold is in itself a good illustration. It has given birth to all kinds of surmises but nothing definite. First it was believed that the gold intended for transmission in the Tararua hud been left behind ; then that it was stolen ; and now it is believed to have been miscarried.

On Sunday it was in Dunedin, on Monday it was found to .have been safely located on board tbe steamer, and now it is somewhere between tbe Bluff and Hobart Town. A parcel with £SOOO is rather valuable to go tumbling about to any extent without finding an owner. If the gold was not abstracted it has probably by this time been “ adopted ” by some smart individual who is not over scrupulous as to his method of getting on in the world. Should the worst fears be realised,and the parcel permanently lost, the accident will not be without its good results, if it teaches the servants of the Ijnion Company to exercise, for the future, a little more care in the transmission of goods than they have been in the habit of doing.

Ai.riiotjun Russia is governed by somewhat despotic laws, it is impossible not to admire the manner in which justice is sometimes administered in that country. A few days ago it was stated that owing to the scarcity of breadstulls a famine was apprehended, and that the Government was bringing pressure to bear on the Russian grain merchants who had formed a speculative ring with the view of tinning the famine to practical though heartless account. Later accounts indicate that the adminstration in St. Petersburg!) have resolutely put then heel on the threatened calamity Inputting* the screw on the bakers, and reducing thereby the price of bread. This is a kind of interference which the bakers may deplore but which must recommend itself even to the disaffected Nihilists. It is a grave departure from the principles of free trade, but it is better than soup kitchens and starvation. The people of Ireland some months ago could have done very well with a little of this Russian tyranny. The authorities of Bt. I’etersburgh evidently act upon the principle that the end attained justified the means employed. They may have diminished the profits of the bakers ami corn merchants, but they have saved a great deal of privation and misery—perhaps loss of life. And no regard for the rights of property justifies the loss of the latter, seeing that unlike grain or money, it cannot be recalled or replaced. Another important item is that the Nihilists, who were sentenced to death for being connected in the Winter Palace explosion, have had their sentences commuted to penal servitude for life in the Siberian mines. Practically there is no such thing as capital punishment in Russia. There have been instances of executions for high treason, but they are extremely rare. The commutation of the sentences originally passed on the conspirators will have a tendency to allay the daily intensifying hatred that prevails between the Czar and his disaffected subjects, but the feeling of estrangement, it is to be feared, will only be effectually overcome b} r the death or abdication of this unfortunate Sovereign, The position of the Czar at this moment, with all bis wealth, skulking like a criminal in one of the Islesof Greece—the home of a newly found father-in-law—-while his slavish myrmidons, taking advantage of his absence, are wreaking their vengeance on the Nihilists, is so deplorable as to raise the question—to what arc the monarchies of Europe coming ?