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Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 7, Issue 375, 24 December 1863, Page 4

The General Assembly was prorogued on the 14th inst The following is— THE GOVERNOR'S SPEECH. Honorable Gentlemen of the Legislative Council, and Gentlemen of the House of Represents lives, The diligent attention with which you have devoted yourselves to the business of the country enables me, after an unusually short though most important session, to release you from your legislative duties. It is highly gratifying to me that the measures which I have adopted for the suppression of the rebellion, the maintenance of her Majesty’s sovereignty, and the protection of the peaceable inhabitants of these islands from lawless aggression, have met with your hearty approval and support. The signal success which has .attended the operations of her Majesty's military and naval forces, cannot but be a subject of great congratulation. The decisive defeat of the Waikato tribes by General Cameron and the combined forces under his command at Rangiriri, and the occupation of Ngaruawahia by her .Majesty’s troops under the Queen’s flag, will, I think, convince those tribes that the cause of the Maori King is hopeless and will, I trust, induce them to become peaceful subjects ot her Majesty, and yield obedience to the law.

While fully recognising the responsibility of the colony towards the Maori race, I snail not relax in following up our successes with such measures as may be necessary to reduce to obedience those who may still further ofler resistance to her Majesty’s authority. I regret that it has been found necessary to pass laws, conferring temporarily on the Government powers which, under the British rule, are only granted by the Legislature in times of great public danger. It is my earnest wish and intention to use those powers so as to interfere as little as possible with the ordinary course of the law, and to bring about a permanent peace, beneficial alike to both races, with the least possible amount of suffering and loss to all her Majesty’s subjects. Gentlemen of the House of Representatives, My especial thunks are due to you for the prompt liberality with which you have placed at my disposal the very large sums of money for which I have thought it necessary to ask, to meet the demands of the present crisis. You may rest assured that these sums shall be expended iti such a manner as will be best calculated to effect the purposes for which they have been so readily voted. The supplies which you have granted for the public service shall be administered with a careful regard to economy. The great increase in the revenues of New Zealand, though the result in a great measure of the prosperity created by the rich and extensive gold fields of Otago, is also due, 1 am happy to say, to the general prosperity which pervades the Southern Districts of the colony. Honorable Gentlemen and Gentlemen,

I am glad to be able to congratulate you that, notwithstanding the demands made upon your time for the consideration of measures more particularly affecting the Northern island, you have been able carefully to consider and deal with those questions affecting other portions of the colony, which required your early attention.

The various amendments made in the laws will, I doubt not, enable the administration of the Government to be satisfactorily carried on, until the state of the colony shall justify my calling you together.' I anticipate especially beneficial results from the wise alterations that have been made in the land laws of the provinces of Otago and Southland.. In conclusion, I call upon you to join with me in an earnest prayer that it may please the Almighty disposer of events, to whose favour we owe the success which lias hitherto attended our arms, in his great mercy to grant that the unhappy struggle in which we are engaged may be speedily brought to a successful termination, and that peace and prosperity may be thus restored to the inhabitants of both faces in these islands.

I do, in her Majesty’s name, now declare this Assembly do stand prorogued, and this Assembly is prorogued accordingly-

HOMCEOPATHY. • Most persons imagine that the of infinitestimal doses is the fundamental principle of homoeopathy. This is an error, though a very natural one, arising from the fact that mediciues containing, perhaps the decilionth part of a grain of the clrug which ,it is designed to administer, are called Uomcepathie medicines. The fact is that drugs of any amount of strength may be administered on pure homoeopathic principles, and it is only because infinitesimal doses are always administered on those principles that they have acquired the name of homoeopathic medicines. The two great systems of medicine which are commonly distinguished as homoeopathic and allopathic, may more justly be described as counteractive and tentative. The man who is afflicted with any disorder, if lie wishes to get rid of it on homoeopathic principles must take the very drug which, if taken by a man in health, would produce the symptoms of that disorder. The drug that he thus takes counteracts or neutralizes the disorders under which he is labouring. If on the other hand he goes to an allopathic doctor, he is given a drug which? long experience, and repeated trials, have proved to be a cure for his complaint. The knowledge of the efficacy of any particular drug has been, obtained by repeated experiments, and this may therefore be well denominated the tentative? principle. An instance of the extraordinary effect of a poisonous medicine administered to counteract the' bite of a snakeby an allopathic doctor, came under our notice some years ago in Australia. The patient had been bitten by a snake of a? deadly species, and. some time having elapsed before the doctor saw him, his speedy death was looked upon as certain. Entertaining no hope of saving his life the medical man tried, as a- last resource the administration of arsenic. Finding that it seemed to arrest tlxe progress of the subtle virus through the system, he ventured on another, and another dose, till at last tlffe patient had taken as mucharsenic as would have killed two men in ordinary health. But the patient recovered, and never felt any bad effects from the battling of the fwo poisons in. his system. Now it is well known that strychnia produces symptoms precisely similar to those of tetanus or lock-jaw. Might, not the judicious administration of strychnia, when other means Bad failed, have saved the life of the lamented Colonel Austen % —N ew Zealander.