General News.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4050, 21 December 1881, Page 2

General News.

" Killing is no murder " in San Frsb> cisco. The News Letter, apropos of some recent murders, says:—The jury which found Joseph Kenn, who carved his wife to pieces, only guilty of murder in the second degree is a better jury than the average San Francisco dozen of dolts. Some juries would hare disagreed ; others would have acquitted Mr Kenn; in fact, it is beyond mortal ken to predict what a California jury will not do. Mr Kenn only carved his wife to pieces in a fit of emotional insanity, and he goes up to prison till some equally insane Governor pardons him out. Young Kalloch slew Charles do Young, and he has since waved Ms bloody hands in benediction from a pulpit. There is no right, no law, no sense of justice to the murdered, but only a maudlin sympathy born oat of wedlock for the murderer. But it is useless to take up valuable space with a subject that has been dissected so thoroughly. Let us rather take away the name of San Francisco from our city, for the name is an insult to the memory of a good man, and get H new name—one that would express the idea of a city of unavenged blood.—Era.

To say that authors, journalists, editors, and that sort of people are od the whole well informed, is to pay them no higher compliment than it would be,to assert that a medical man or a lawyer is not destitute of the rudiments of medioal or legal knowledge, or that there was onAsa time when a clergyman could repeat^re Thirty-nine Articles, and perhaps had even dipped into patristic theology. It is the business of these persons to be, not profound, but to know something, and that in a manageable shape, about a good many matters. That is a pretty anecdote which has been repeated about the late President Garfield to the effect that when be waft a poor student at Hiram, teaching his land* lady's children in return for board and~ lodging, and haying one day to He in fifed while his single suit of clothes was being darned, the propheti£ r ,landlady reproved him for grumbling ,'it his poverty by saying, " You shonldTinbt care aboaMuch small matters as that; you will forget all .about it when you come to be President."

A preacher who took for his text, " He giveth his beloved sheep," after talking for three quarters of an hour, got out of his pulpit, remarking, " I guess you're all bis beloved, but I wish the chosen in the front pew wouldn't snore so I "

In a letter addressed by the hon. the Attorney General to Mr G. H. Wilson, of Gisborne, and which is published in the Gisborne papers, he expresses the following opinion regarding the proposal of reserving freeholds by the Crown:—l have given full consideration to your letter in which you ask me if I could support a proposition for leasing instead of selling the Waste Lands of the Crown. Such a mode of dealing with the public land appears to me to be open to the gravest objections, and with my present light on the subject, I at once answer I could not support such a plan. Without going fully into the subject, I may mention that there appears to me on the surface to be two objections,' which I consider fatal—(l) lam satisfied that the inducement to become a leaseholder, instead of a freeholder, would be very unattractive to persons intending to settle in the colony; and (2) experience in the neighboring colonies has shown that the periodical payment of money to the Government on account of land, by way of rent, or as instalments of purchase money, operates most prejudicially. To 7 my mind the true way to prevent the accumulation of unimproved land in the hands of individuals is a judicious system v of taxation. "/"

Every now and then one comes upon some suggestion in favor of the federation. of the Australian colonies. LordEllesmere, who has been on a visit to the Australian colonies, has.been much struck by the want of union among them, not only as to their fiscal systems, bat many other matters. Addressing a meeting at Worsley, in England, he said that even in the matter of railways-Bach* colony had . - a different guage. The result was that goods sent from one colony had to be transhipped, which was a great evil and a source of great inconvenience. If Australia, instead of being split up into four colonies, could be induced to go in for federation of governments, it would become a vast empire in the southern hemisphere, which would ' rival any country in the northern.—Era. It appears that the American lawyers shrink from undertaking the defence of Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield. On this point the San Francisco News Letter remarks: —" The majority of j sensible people who believed that there was no case a lawyer would not undertake under the influence of a retainer, will do well to note that the glibbest tongue that ever wagged in legal jaws is dumb when asked to defend the slayer of the late President. It argues better for the'ootopus grasp of an average attorney than the world gives the profession credit for, and it indicates that for once the better nature of a lawyer has prevailed, snd that his repugnance to defending Guiteau is as intense as is his fear of being mobbed and losing his practice if he undertook the job. The small estates of England are nearly all mortgaged to two thirds of their value, and the rents now received are insufficient to pay the interest, let alone support the Squire and his family. Columns of the . London Times are filled with notices of old country residences, wooded parks, and snug country homes to be sold. In Iqn* colnshire farms can be had if the tenant will only keep down the taxes; in Shropshire lands cannot be had at any price ; iv one parish in South Warwickshire only 600 can be let out of 3000 acres; The farmers feel this distress in a peculiar way; those of them who have a desire to emigrate are prevented by not being able to sell out their stock and implements. No one desires to go into farming.