General News.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3823, 30 March 1881, Page 2

General News.

In Sydney the administration of justice by Justices of the Peace has reached such a pass that it is frankly ooufeised in Parliament that the time has arrived when it will be necessary to dispense with the services of unpaid Justices, and have Stipendiary Magistrates. '■'■ The chief Justice had occasion recently to animadvert on a case in which a license was granted under circumstances 10 disreputable that the Government have been compelled to cancel the license, and treat the action of the Justices as null and void. The subject of packing, the benches of the Police Courts has also been brought up in the Legislative Council by Sir Alfred Stephen. This evil is also rampant in Melbourne, where in the notorious Stephenson case, twenty • six Justifies turned up on the Bench to assist the Police Magistrate in ooming to a decision as to whether the Customs had been defrauded or otherwise.

An hot&l that makes up three thousand beds has been built at San Francisco. There ar£ arcades lined with shops on the ground floor, two or three resturants,. a theatre, and other places of amusements within its outer walls. '::. ,, V The common black swift can fly two hundred and seventy miles an hour. .. .The passenger pigeon of the United States'can accomplish a journey of one thousand miles between sunrise and sunseti. '„'.,' As many as one hundred and seventy of the Peers in the House of Lords hare been created during the present reign, and owe their fortune to no accident of birth, but to their distinction in the Law, the Army, or politics.