Untitled

Southland Times, Issue 1166, 17 November 1869, Page 2

Mr Osborne will hold a sale of furniture, &c, also cottage and allotment, on the premises, Deveron-streefc, this day at noon. A meeting of the Invercargill Rifle Volunteers took place at the Exchange Hall, on Wednesday evening last, Lieutenant Giesow in the chair. Several matters of importance were brought forward, the members evincing a lively interes 1 challenge the Riverton Company to a shooting match, between ten or twelve of each corps j to repair the butts and ranges ; to apply to the General Government for a permanent drill instructor, &c. It was elicited, in the coir 36 of the discussion on the repair of the shooting ringe, that there might be some danger to parties boating from Puni Creek towards the Jtfttjr, when members were practising at the long distances, an account of wide or stray shots, and it was rasolved that the markers should bo cautioned to keep a good look out. We have to acknowledge the receipt from the Registrar- Q-eneral, Johu B. Bennett, Esq., ol the statistics of New Zealand for the year 1868. There was a fair attendauce at t'ae preliminary meeting held in the Prince of Wales Hotel OB Monday evening last, for the purpose of forming a Caledonian Society. After a resolution had been passed affirming the desirability of having a gathering on New Tear's Day, a sub-coramittae was appointed to prepare rules for guidance, ascertain probable amount of subscriptions, make arrangements as to place of gathering, and reporl next Monday evening. Mr D. Webster was appointed hon. treasurer, and .Mr N". Ferguson hon. secretary. The North and South (says the London Spec tator) are quarrelling about a new question. The Southern planters are anxious to fill up their estates with Chinese, who they think will take low wages, obey orders, and work hard, and they are employing a Californian contractor, a Dutchman, to bring 100.0 JO Chinese as a fint instalment. The Northerners do not like tae importation, as tending to reduce white wages, and quote the Coolie Act, which forbids it. Herr Koopmansohaap, however, says his people are not „. y — j** Lmi* -tfvo<f -txAMi±Migi. wutw, M-nct i\& snail bring them and run the risk. We suspect the planters will find themselves mistaken. The little yellow men are splendid laborers, can live anywhere and eat anything, but they will have the highest wages going. If they cannot get them, they either shoot their oppressors, as in Siam, or kill themselves, as in the guano islands off Callao. In neither case are they profitable to unjust employers. Mr Stevens met the electors of Selwyn, at Leeston, on the 18th ult. The report of the proceedings occupies nine columns of the Lyttelton Times of the 21st ultimo. As the district of | Selwyn is the chief agricultural district in Canter- | bury, the vote of Mr Stevens against the proposed import duty on cereals was particularly obnoxious to bis constituents, and the meeting passed the following resolution : — " That in the opinion of this meeting, Mr Stevens did not vote in the interests of his constituents by opposing the corn duty." The contributor from " Under the Verandah" to the Melbourne Leader says ; — " Some of the banks hare a rather clever way of keeping their clerks honest. They make the whole body of officials responsible for the rectitude of each. A fund is formed to which each clerk contributes instead of paying a similar sum to a guarantee society. From this fund defaults are made up. If tho fund be maintained intact, it, or as much of it as remains, becomes a benefit fund, conferring substantial advantages upon the contributors. The advantage of the mutual system of guarantee is that, if a clerk betrays undue extravagance or any other of those symptoms which are so frequently premonitory of deficient accounts, his fellow clerks (who have fifty times the opportunity of observation enjoyed by the manager) have a direct personal interest in his detection. If well administered, , this system ought to be the one most efficient in putting a stop to those bank-official frauds which are proverbially frequent." We take the following pertinent remarks from the home summary of the Wellington Independent : — " Adversity is a hard taskmaster, but it has taught the New Zealand people already the necessity of looking foe other modes of occupying their capital and labor fchan the rearing of stock and the growth of grain. General attention is being fast directed to the necessity of establishing manufactories for the working up our own raw material of wool and flax. Unfortunately we have more available labor than capital and skill at the present time ; and though flax-dressing and quartz-reefing are fast teaching us the advantages to be derived from the co- operation of capital with labor, where the two do not happen to be combined, yet so little special skill is available to start enfcerprkea of this kind, that it is not found practicable to supply to any extent the want which is so generally felt. It must be apparent to practical men at home that, with the raw material on the spot, ample available water power, and a market at hand for a large amount of the simple manufactures of sacking, wool bales, cloth, and woollen serge, there must be an opening for local manufactures. And if, with the English capital which finds its way out here, men skilled in this particular application of it were to come, we believe that a considerable field for profitable investment could be found,"

I The writer of sketches of " the collective wisdom of New South Wales," ia the Sydney Mail, narrates tae following episode which occurred durino- a financial debate in the House. An hon. member having charged supporters of the Ministry with making extravagant statements when under the influence of " vinous excitement," the Premier, Mr Robertson, replied as follows :— " The kon. member," said he, " accuses us of waxing war.n with wine ; but I may say that frequently as this charge his been made, I have never seen anything of the kind in this Chamber. If there has been such a thing, I have nevor seen it. There has certainly been far less of that sort of thing hero than there is in siniilpr Bodies elsewhere. I have not Been it. But I'll tell you what I have seen. 1 have seen an hon. member tuck a napkin under his chin, and sit himself down before a roast pig, and feed off it till he was nearly bursting, and he could hardly see out of his eyes. That I have seen. The hon. membar says he does not take wine ; but I have I seen him take wine, and I have s.^en him about 1 as comfortable afcer his wine as any man could 'desire; and I have seen him about as uncomfortable, after a feed of pig, as any one would wish not to be. Then there is another hon. member who cheered the member for West Sydney, who goes in for water and abuses those who take wine. Well, I have aeon that gentleman gorge himself with cabbage and greenstuff, and come into the House with his whole figure distended and his eyes bursting from his head, from a bout-out of cabbage. Now, whilst the hon. gentlemen are taking to task those who take a little wine or a little bhi "to, because they have not stomachs larce enough for gormandising upon pig or cabbage* or greenstuff, we never hear them say a word about their own propensities. Some men require to take their food and sustenance in smaller doses, and of a more sustaining kind than either pig or greenstuff, and so they took wine or brandy, because they have not the same capacity for gorging as hon. members opposite. They are compelled to condense what they take into smaller compass. Let me be understood. I am not angry with the hon. gentlemen beca use they prefer roast pig or green-stuff to wine or brandy, but, if I prefer a glass or two of wine, or half a tumbler of brandy, to a feed of pig or green-stuff, I don't see why I should not be permitted to take it." The writer above referred to, says that " the dignity of tae head of an administration can hardly gain anything from such an exhibition," and concludes by supposing " that this, like many another anomaly, may be accounted for by our antipodean position, which turns everything, social as well as physical, end for end, so that our terrestrial reversal brings to the top those whose t rue position should be at the bottom." The inhabitants of Westland must be living under " a mild form of despotism " if the following description by the Grey River Argus can be relied on : — " Much as we have always advocated the cause of local self-government, we nevertheless must coufess that uutil the system of administration in Westland is made more simple, until the County Council and chairman confine themselves to their legitimate spheres of action, and greater securities are established against incorapetency or worse, give us Provincialism. In the latter case one can at least turn out the Executive, but here the people are powerless against their administrators — or rather we should say administrator, for Mr Hoos is Superintendent and Executive all in his proper person. He is notoriously incompetent for Mb office ; and as notoriously negligent of its duties and obligations. In the most rampant days of the " King Sale " system, when there was twenty times the work to do and twenty times the pressure upon the departmental staff, matters were not so bad as they are now, whoa the whole business of the County could be done in "three Hours a-day. Correspondence on public business, applications from public bodies, letters and telegrams from Government servants, remain unanswered for weeks or months, and even unacknowledged, and old and respected officers of the Government are addressed in terms of such bombastic impertinence as to lead one to the idea that Mr Hoos is laboring under the hallucination that he is the autocrat of all the Ruasias." A meeting of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society took place on Monday evening last, at the Vestry Hall of the Presbyterian Church, Tay-Btreet. The president of the Society, the Eev. A. H. Stobo, occupied the chair. The minutes of the last meeting baring been read and confirmed, the business of the evening opened by Mr D. Bonthron reading an admirable and argumentative paper on the question, "Is the moderate use of alcoholic liquors conducive to the temporal and spiritual welfare of society." The essayist took the negative position, quoting largely from eminent medical authorities, of the injurious effects of alcoholic stimulants to the human body, and traced its detrimental influence through all classes of society ; dispersed, on the authority of the French chemists, Messrs Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy, the old-fashioned notions of alcoholic liquors being both food and drink, and finally proved by the analysis of the statistics of several Life Insurance Societies, with the statistics and results of the experience of the Temperance Provident Institution, that in the deaths, especially from 30 to 40, total abstainers died at the rate of 6to 1000, and those using intoxicating liquors, 11 to 1000 ; these were, said the reader, facts any person could verify by referring to the Journal of Health for 1868. At the conclusion of the paper, an animated discussion followed, the larger number of speakers taking 1 the opposite side. The Rev. Chairman summed ( up the debate, suggesting, which was at once agreed to, that the discussion should be continued next Monday evening, Mr Burns undertaking to re-open the question. In the course of the chairman's remarks, he stated that statistics had been recently compiled from customs returns, proving conclusively that during the year 1868 South' land, with a population of about 7000 persons, spent in intoxicating liquors the large sum of £55,000. These figures were appalling, and it became the duty of every intelligent person to carefully consider the misuse this large amount of money was being put to. There were several motions, notice of which had been previously given, considered, the most important, which was unanimously agreed to — " That the meetings of the Society be discontinued after the 29th inst., during the summer months, the Committee to have power to call the first meeting next year." There was an unusually large attendance, and great interest taken in the question throughout the debate,

A correspondent of the Greymouth Star says : " There is no one with me in the room ; and the landlord has turned down two of the three burners which are intended to illuminate the bottles anJ decanters, and to show customers their way into the door and up to the counter. I look out of the window. Opposite there are three shops to let, and one selling off. J flatten my nose against a pane of glass, and look as far to the right and left of me as my sight will extend, but there is not a living soul to see. I feel melancholy and depressed, and 1 say, Oh! Revell-street, how has thy former glory departed from thee ? Where, now, thy crowded hotels, and shops, and stores, well lined with customers ? Even the bell of the bellman is silent, and the sound of a billiard bali is no more to be heard in the saloons. Thy theatre, oh, Hokitika !is closed— thy dance-rooms no more resound with the strains of piano and fiddle, or are alive with the tripping of light fantastic toes! The girls have departed, and the light of other days has faded — But what is that I hear ? It ia the sound of a footstep in tbe bar— a man has entered, and called for brandy ; he helps himself out oi a decanter, drinks, then calmly, and with subdued voice, telk the landlord to put it down on the slate. He has departed, and the house is again solitary. I feel like unto what must be the feelings of the last man, or the ' last rose o( summer,' or the la3t forlorn aid deserted anything else." Westland has again been unlucky. The latest piece of misfortune is, according to the West Coast Times, that the amount of the late County Treasurer's embezzlements is, by the failure of Mb European Assurance Company, for ever lost to the County. Yesterday, 16th inst., we were shown two of the prettiest specimens of gold, from the Longwood, we have ever seen. One piece was about ljozs in weight, almost solid metal, and the other several penny weights, beautifully shaped, as if it had been designed for a scarf pin. The large* nugget had every appearance, at first sight, of a piece of amalgam, but closer inspection discovered several chips of the quartz embedded in the crevices. The gentleman in whose possession we saw it, Mr James Blacklock, also informed us that several other pieces were picked up at the same time, in the same spot, by Mr Surman and himself, at a depth of some five feet from the surface. The roughness of the specimens — the finest edges of the natural filagree work being unrounded— showed that they had not travelled any distance, while the unmistakeable evidences of their having been formed by the action of heat, confirms the idea that quartz reefs of extraordinary richness exist in these ranges. A large number of men are now at work there, and they will be pretty well prospected during the present summer. The Longwood appears to possess one great advantage over most quartz fields, -which is, that sufficient gold is generally found in the course of prospecting to provide at least "tucker," so that, while running a chance of making a lucky find, diggers do not need to work altogether for nothing. We (Grey River Argus) are informed by Mr Wylde, the Engineer and Manager of the Grey River Coal Co., that a fine Beam of coal haß been discovered on the Coal Reserve, which can be worked with the greatest ease, as it rises from the river, and can be drained without the aid of machinery. From his recent researches on the Nelson side of the river, Mr Wylde was led to believe that the run of the auriferous .juartz reefs would be through the Coal Reserve on the Westland side, and in the course of operations undertaken by him to prove this, he made the equally pleasing discovery that a hitherto undiscovered seam of coal exists in such a position as to enable an enormous supply to be obtained for many years at a very small cost. This ought to prove an incentive to the new company ~to push on their preliminaries, so as to get into working order as soon as possible. In an article on the necessity for returning a different stamp of members to the County Council, the West Coast Times says :r— " We hold that payment of members is a mistake altogether, and that where it prevails a chm of loafer is created whose creed consists in the expression, ' I cannot dig, to beg lam ashamed.' They don't beg, but they are ' compensated for loss of time ;' and the County councillors value their loss of time at £9 per week, for, say at least four months of the year on an average." During the past four or five weeks (ears the Wanganui Chronicle of the 26th ult.) the eyes of the colony have been directed, and the parti* cular interest of this district has largely centred, on the Taupo country. Hitherto difficult; of access, having no roads to it, and consequently an unknown region to the European population, it has become the last refuge of lawlessness, and there, it is to be hoped, the final embers of insurrection are now being stamped out. Not only so, but it is reported to be a country rich in gold ; and the EZaimanawa ranges, which form a spur of the Ruahine mountains of that locality, are at this moment eagerly searched for the precious metal. It would be but another illustration of those laws of compensation which seem to obtain throughout the world if the very country, which has hitherto been the means of giving impunity to native outrage, should most materially help to retrieve the commercial and agricultural prospects which for a eeason were sacrificed by the native war. _______________