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Southland Times, Issue 1248, 10 May 1870, Page 2

The collectors appointed at a recent meeting of the residents in Dee-street to solicit subscriptions for the repair of the side-walks, have, we learn, met with gratifying success. The Government, also, has given a favorable reply to a request for assistance in the shape of penal labor. The hon. Secretary of the Southland Provincial Hospital desires, through our columns, to acknowledge the receipt of one pound fifteen shillings, collected by A. Swhan, Esq., at the Five Rivera Station. The model of the Great Eastern, built by Mr Larson, and described in our columns some time ago, is now on view in the window of Mr J). Webster, painter, Dee-street. : , The local volunteers this morning call for ten-. ders for the erection of a drill-Bhed, a suitable site for the, building having been obtained on the Government Reserve, facing the railway station. A goodly portion of the cost has alao been provided by the members of the corps magnanimously voting the whole of their capitation grant to the object. To make up the balance, they have decided to appeal to the public j and Messrs Harvey, Geisow, Dunlop, Hyams, C. Brown, J. L. Thomson, Huffadine, and Scandrett, have been appointed to collect subscriptions. Some, we know, may object to what may appear an extravagant expenditure for the accommodation of so small a number of men, while others may see little use at all for " playing at soldiers," as they call it, in a place apparently exempt from danger, either from within or without. We may simply remind both classes of opponents that possibly the very rea«on of the corp's numerical weakness is to be found in the absence hitherto of anything like decent provision for its comfort, and that so far from its being a matter of indifference whether the volunteers increase in strength and popularity, or " resolve themselves into their original elements," and disappear from the scene, it is most desirable that young men , should be encouraged to join their ranks, and that they should become a-permanent institution. ■ The habits of regularity, punctuality, co-opera-tive action, and general discipline, enforced in every well-organised military body, cannot be too highly estimated, not to mention the physical benefits resulting from drill exercise. We therefore hope the plucky effort of the volunteers may be effectively supported on the part of the j people. i The ' following communications have been ■ received by J. M'Pherson, Esq., chairman j of the Chamber of Commerce, who re-I quests us to give them publicity: — | " Colonial Secretary's Office, i « Wellington, 2lst April, 1870. ; ' "Sib, —l have the honor, by direction of Mr; Gisborne, to transmit for your information the ; enclosed copy of a letter, dated 2nd inst., from the Chief Secrecary of Victoria, recommending ? that grain should be bought and sold by the , hundred pounds (100 lbs.) avoirdupois, instead '. of by the bushel and the ton, and to state that : the Government would feel obliged by an expression of your opinion on the (proposal made. —T have, &c., A. Maodonaid, for the Under Secretary." ! [Letter referred to.] " Chief Secretary's Office, [ " Melbourne, 2nd April, 1870. I •" Sib, —l have the honor to inform you that the Government of Victoria is desirous of giving effect to a proposition which has been urged upon it by the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce on the "ground that its adoption would tend very much to facilitate the operations of dealers in grain and flour : namely, that it should introdace, or give the weight of its sanction to, a system whereby those articles should be bought and sold after a given date by a weight of one hundred pounds avoirdupois, to be denominated for the purposes of trade the Cental, in lieu of, as hitherto, by the bashel and the ton. The Government is informed that the merchants of the other Australian Colonies view the proposition with great favor. Assuming this to be ao, it would seem that the object the advocates of the system have in view would oe probably gained by giving notice that all purchases of grain or flour on Government account would be effected only according to it, and that it has been adopted by all the departments of Government. If your Government concur in the proposal, which I have now the honor to eubmit, I would further suggest that for the sake of uniformity, the Ist July next should be the date after which the altered system should come into operation. The Governments of the other Australian Colonies are being addresed on this subject. —l have, &c., (Signed) "John A. MaoPhkrhok. "The Honorable the Colonial Secretary, New Zealand." We understand that a meeting of the Invercargill, Chamber will be convened for Monday next, to take the matter into consideration. It ia notified in the General Government Gazette that Walter Hippolyte Pilliet, Esq. has been appointed a Resident Magistrate for the Resident Magistrate's district of Akaroa; and also, to be Registration and Returniug Officer for the election of members of the House of Representatives for the Electoral District of Akaroa. Both appointments are to date from the Ist of May.

We learn that two tenders for the supply of the chairs required for the completion of tho Winton railway, have been received by the Government, in answer to their advertisement, one from a local firm, and the other from Dunedin. They have been submitted to the engineer for ' his report. As the establishment of a foundry in the Province would be a great benefit, it is to be hoped that this wiU be taken into consideration in deciding the matter. Tenders for improvements to the Riverton and Otautau road, opened at the Government offices on the 3rd inst., but held over for consideration, were decided upon on Friday last, 6th inst., as under — M. Hogan £250 0 0 H. Powell 240 0 0 J. M'Menamin 239 0 0 J. Cardie 224 10 0 J. Gallagher (accepted) ... ... 199 19 6 A contributor to the Sydney Mail thns discourses on the relative merits of horses and \ bullocks: — "I suppose somer you Sydney chaps'll larf at me ploughing with bullocks, but somehow I like 'em to plough with better nor horses. Horses is . well enough in the light up. land soils, but when you come to the heavy bottoms, give me the bullocks says I. Of course you'll say as I'm old fashioned. Well, praps I am; but I say thi3 — you can't work them heavy bottoms with a pair of horses, and if you have more, you must have a man to drive, and then there ain't no saving. They may praps go a bit quicker nor bullocks ; but I don't know as they do much if you've got a good driver as keeps 'em up to the mark, and don't let 'em get into the old Government pace. There ain't no reason why bullocks shouldn't walk as fast as horses, at their work, but it's the old Government stroke as done it, and done it so long that people's come to believe as bullocks can't go no faster. Perhaps they won't keep up the pace so well on the hard roads, seeing that their feet get tender from not being shod like horses; but where's the horse as will take a load along a cross country road, as ain't no road at all, like a teamer bullocks will. They can't do it. » long as -3$ dray will keep on its wheel, bullockf'll have it along, though they go down on their knees to do it. There's no mistake about it, they are regular plucky beasts is bullocks. If they can't fetch it at once, they'll try at it twice,- and '11 keep on pulling till they drop, when nine outer ten horses 'd gib no end, and regular cave in." The Lyttelton Times of the 3rd inst. says : — We have had the opportunity of inspecting a sample of flax prepared by boiling and scutching, which is certainly equal, if not superior, to the general run of machine-dressed flax. A Mr Pegg, of Oxford,. first tried the experiment, and Mr Dumergue has since followed it up. The great merit of this system is its cheapness, as flax of very fair quality can be produced for something like £8 per ton. The following notice, signed by Edward Jollie, Provincial Secretary, appears in a Canterbury paper : — " Officers employed in the service of the Provincial Government sre hereby informed that they are expected, to refrain from taking any part in elections for the Superintendency or for members of the Provincial Council, beyond recording their votes, if they desire to do so." The local paper publishes the following extract from a letter recently received in Queenstown from a gentleman lesiding at Cromwell : — " I have paid a visit to the Bendigo reef a few days ago. I was speaking to some old Cardrona men, who are very sorry they ever left there. Several parties are registering their claims, and leaving for the Matatapu River and other places. Business is very dull at present, water scarce, and I fear when the frosts set in that all mining workings will cease for the winter. It is now very cold there, and only for the qnantity of alcohol consumed I hardly know what would become of the inhabitants. At Cromwell, I believe, the great battle has yet to be fought between the Mayors as to who is legally to hold the civic reins. Municipal honors here have become a farce, and sensible people art sorry that such honors had ever been extended to Cromwell." We regret to learn of a fatal accident having occurred at Jacob's River, near Uapt. Raymond's homestead, on Sunday the Ist inst., whereby a young man, named Wm. Reid Miller, lost his lie. Deceased, who had been in Capt. Raymond's employment as shepherd for four years, and who was much respected in the neighborhood as a steady well-conducted man, was returning home when the accident occurred. The night was dark, and the river in flood. No one saw the accident occur, nor was it known until the following morning, when his horse and dog were found on tke bank. Search was made, and the body recovered on the succeeding Thursday, a mile below the ford. The remains were interred at Avondale. Deceased was a native of Glasgow, and well connected. Mr Graham, M.H.R. for the Oamaru district, addressed his constituents on tha 29 th ult. In the course of his speech Mr Graham said "he would like to see the whole Northern Island formed into one great Province, and the whole Southern Island formed into another graat Province, with a general parliament to legislate for the whole — leaving matters in which local knowledge was required to be administered by local bodies. Even now he would certainly advocate the taking away of all legislative functions from the various Provinces, as the present state of the statute books of New Zealand — with their Colonial Acts, and separate sets of Ordinances for each Province — was a disgrace to any civilised community. It was high time that all these were codified and reduced to an intelligible form, for at present it would puzzle a lawyer to say what was law in New Zealand. Immigration was another important question. He was convinced that New Zealand could not go ahead without a large influx of population, and that the introduction of immigrants should be conducted by a general administration." The sudden change of weather since Sunday (saya the WaTcatvp Mail of the 28th ult.) has caused the residents of the Lake to feel rather acutely that hoary winter is coming upon us apace. The piercing southerly buster and driving sleet experienced on Monday and Tuesday have produced their results in the shape of severe colds and indisposition suffered by many amongst us. It is generally prognosticated by the weather-wise and the old residents that we shall have a very severe winter. We do not understand the assumptions, or what they are based upon. A summer equally as warm aa the

past one was experienced in 1862-3, followed by the memorable winter of 1863, in which occurred those disastrous floods so fatal to life and destructive to mining cWms and property. We have been requested to state that, owing to the heavy state of the roads between Long Bush and Popotunoa, the overland mails for Dunedin, &c, will close at 6 a.m. instead of 6.45 as heretofore. Our blundering contemporary charges " a local sheet " with haying " copied " one of its " mistakes." On making enquiry into the matter, we find that this momentous mistake involves the large sum of 2d • " After this, the deluge !" It is a comforting, pleasing, and poetical idea (says the Dunedin Echo) that the " good die young," but a* a set-off, certain people don't seem to die ai all. Te Kooti has a charmed life. The notorious Capt. Hayes, well known in this colony, seems to have another. They are occasionally! k'lled (in the columns of a newspaper), only to break out ere long in a fresh place. Captain Nicholls, of the Jeannie Duncan, now in Auckland, tells us the latest of Hayes. He was informed by a man at Levuka, who had been acting as trader for the Captain, then of the schooner Atlantic, to procure native labor, that, this vessel had put into Samoa Island, short of water, having 130 natives on board. It became known that some of these men had been kidnapped, and Capt. Hayes was taken prisoner, and the vessel seized. The man who acted as trader for him escaped from prison. What a fortune Barnum would make if he could only " travel" with Te Kioti, Captain Hayes, and — say "George Francis Train.!"...... '. The twentieth session of the Nelson Provincial Council was commenced on Tuesday, the 26th ult. The correspondent of the Wellington Evening Post says : — The Superintendent's address shows a deficiency in the estimated revenue of the past year of £18,445. He takes a hopeful view of the future, owing to the auriferous reefs discovered at the Lyall, Wangapeka, and Collingwood. An Auckland journal has been informed that His Excellency Sir George Bowen has purchased, or is about to purchase, that valuable' property belonging to T. Russell, Esq., known as the Pah Farm, and situate near Onehunga. The property, which cost £12,000 some years ago, has been ex-, tensivelyj ani judiciously planted with trees, and. otherwise improved, and will in' a few years be^ come one of the handsomest sites for a country residence in the neighborhood of Auckland. The intention of Sir George Bowen to purchase this property shows that he is not the oaly Governor who has duly appreciated the magnificent climate, and situation of Auckland. .- f,^ - ; > ■ The Olago > jDaify 'Times of the 2nd inst. says: — " As a sign of the prosperous condition of the province, we may mention that there is not a single debtor in the gaol at present. The last one was discharged yesterday morning."— In an up-country journal -we find the following doleful account given by its Dunedin correspondent, and we confess that we feel at a loss how to reconcile the two statements : — ■" We are all down in the mouth. No signs of commercial improvement. The Banks putting on the screw. , [Respectable men coming out of bank parlors with very red faces, after needless wrangling with the potentate of the money-bags. Open grumbling and secret curses plentiful for good bills returned. A man of fair standing suddenly pulled up and his paper marked " Present again," to his great astonishment and disgust. As a good customer he has been indulged occasionally in the luxury of an overdraft, but now the stern mandate comes across the sea, and overdrafts, however temporary, are prohibited, and that precisely at the time when a little judicious help would keep honest men on their feet, and mitigate the severity of the crisis. I hear whispers in tM gutters of some of the banks themselves, and if care be not exercised a grand commercial cyclone will be brought about of force sufficient to nnroo/ and lay prostrate some of the strongest erections Now if this dread climax be brought about whom" • have we to thank for it but ourselves. We invite j banks from a foreign land to assist us, and for a j season they pour tin their capital upon us, and | gradually they draw in the accumulations of the industrious classes to be lent out again, but the profits are not retained here. Melbourne, Sydney, or London sweep away bur ppr cents, and fatten on our business, and the capital does not fructify for the local advantage of the Colony. Who reaps the gain of 80 per cent, increase on our flocks, or pockets the half-million — the value of this last clip ? Who sucks up the thousands paid for freight and the commissions on advances ? No one here ! Where does all our gold go to;? New Zealand's twin islands form a magnificent bivalve for the man of Threadneerfle-street. . The oysteris consumed with infinite relish no doubt, and we are left the shell ! There are three " millions of deposits in our banks, but sad to say, as years Toll on the deposits are not becoming larger. We are being bled to death by va^npires. Let us try and bring about a better system of establishing a National Bank of New Zealand, which will allow us to get rich as a people by retaining amongst ourselves the fruits of our own capital and ; industry. Our present single local institution is not so local as it should be, as a large proportion of its shares are held in London, and the dividends and bonuses leave New ZeaUnd."