The WAirarapa Daily. TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1879.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 111, 18 March 1879, Page 2

The WAirarapa Daily. TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1879.

The Masterton Borough Council meets this evening, and among other questions to be discussed is fin ingenious motion of Cr Gapper's, in which the Insurance Companies are asked to lend £IOOO for the purpose of securing an adequate supply of water for Fire Brigade purposes. No doubt the Councillors, in deciding the proposition, will carefully consider whether such a scheme is to the advantage of the Borough; and the Insurance offices will also, if the matter comes before them, carefully weigh its advantages and disadvantages. At present the Borough pays a Night Watchman £IOO a year as a safeguard against fires, and if it borrows £IOOO it will have to pay at least another £IOO a year for interest and sinking fund. If £2OO a year spent by the Borough would make the Masterton Fire Brigade strong enough to cope with a fire, the money would be wisely expended; but we doubt whether water pipes through the main street would enable the engine now in use to do much more than it did at the late fire, and it is a question whether the Council, without it can gain a decided advantage by the proposed expenditure, would be justified in so devoting too large a slice of its

present very limited income. The Council can do more to prevent tires than it can in the direction of curing them, By passing stringent regulations for protecting roofs and walls with non-inflammable materials, it can reduce the area over which any future conflagration will spread. If the proposed water service which the £IOOO is to provide were to be utilized for the supply of water to the residents in Queen-street, the expenditure of such a sum of money would he much more profitable. Sooner or later Masterton will require waterworks laid on. Private enterprise promises to provide them within a very short time. It would, therefore, be a waste of money to lay one set of pipes down this year for the Fire Brigade and perhaps a second set next for household purposes, when one good set would answer both purposes. We think, too, that the expenditure of perhaps £SO would be sufficient to excavate three or four big water holes in the creek which runs parallel with Queen-street, holes large enough to hold an ample supply of water for the extinction of any ordinary fire. These holes might be made at points convenient to the principal blocks of buildings in the town. We should, too, be somewhat surprised if the Insurance Companies agreed to advance money on Corporation debentures at seven per cent-, Insurance Companies have plenty of money for investment, but their laws for placing it out, like those of the Medes and Persians, alter not, They require good security and the highest rate of interest. The first condition the Masterton Borough Council can comply with, the second it cannot fulfil. By waiving the second condition the Insurance Companies might obtain an indirect profit which would more than compensate for the direct loss, ' But suc]i a method of . making

both ends meet would bo regarded as unbusinesslike by Directors,-and would never be acceded to. The business. of all big companies is invariably idone under fixed rules, and there would be no precedent or regulation under which any company of standing would lend money at seven per cent, when nine 1 ' was obtainable. Cr Gapper is doing, good service by calling public attention to the necessity of making the Masterton Fire Frigade more efficient, and though we do not believe his present proposal will lead to any practical result, it may lead on to some other scheme or counter proposal which may solve the difficulty. It is bad to have to make bricks without straw, and the task to which Cr Gapper, with commendable earnestness and public spirit is devoting himself, is almost as hopeless.

The usual fortnightly meeting of the Masterton Borough Council takes place this evening.

Messrs lorns & Fergusson hold a furniture sale in the Town Hall, Masterton, on Saturday next. The Marlborough Comity Council lias declined to bring the Act into operation within its jurisdiction. A meeting at Greytown to-night is convened to affirm the union of the Carterton Investment Society with that of the Wairarapa,

The frame-work of Messrs Sellar and Hales' laroje new store is now up. Some of the timber in it is heavier than we have seen in any other building in the town. Wm. Smyth, distiller, Glasgow, commenced business four years ago with £2,000. Ho lately broko, holding property worth £323,000, which was bonded to the amount of £239,000, Correspondence in the London papers states that the vendors' agents, Sir Julius Vogel and another,, are entitled to £B,OOO out of the purchase money as commission for floating the New Zealand Agricultural Company,

Malta has established a quarantine against Tripoli. It is said unburied bodies of persons who diod of the plague in Ashtrachan still remain, All European Governments have taken precautions to establish quarantines. A San Francisco paper says" Ten years hence, if this island Colony continues its immigration policy, and California remains without an immigration bureau, New Zealand will be the more populous of the two." Avery happy and apt answer is given by the Auckland Free Lance to a correspondent signing himself " New Chum," who " wanted to know, you know," if there was any probability of a " run " 011 the bank, The Free Lance says: " There is not the least danger of a run on the bank hero. The boot is on the other leg. What people dre.id is the bank making a run on them. You will find tilings a little upside down in this country." Verily, these be the words of truth and wisdom!

The Wellington correspondent of the Sun writes as Mows re the bankruptcy of Mr Assistant Under Secretary A. M. Smith:—"The rumor is that Smith was was promised that he should be reinstated, but the disclosures havo been such that Ministers see this cannot be done, and as soon as the difficulty is over, therefore, he is to be relegated to some obscure country position, with just enough salary to keep body and soul together. The lesson will be a useful one,"

It is stated (writes the Dunedin Age) that the Land Tax in the North is likely to prove a failure. 111 one district it has been ascertained that the capital value of propetry is £190,040 ; value of improvements £BO,OBI ; net value of land, £100,5G5; number of properties in district, over 3000, owned by some GOO people, Out of this number only 43 are lhible to the tax, and the amount of tax leviable upon this £100,550 worth of property is only £4112s 2|d. The individual amounts payably range from l|d to £5 lGs. In some cases, whero he would otherwise have been leviable, part of the property has been conveyed to the owner's wife, thus largely reducing the basis upon which the tax can be levied. Mr Henry Jackson (says the New Zealand Times) has declined to resign his position as chief surveyor in this provincial district. On Saturday he received a letter from the Government informing him that if he resigned he would receive as compensation one month's salary for every year he has been in the service, but that if he did not resign Ministers would be obliged to recommend his Excellency to discharge him. Mr Jackson replied saying that had lie been requested in considerate terms to send in his resignation he should have regarded it as a hard judgment, but to be threatened with the alternative of dismissal was neither usual nor courteous, and the length of his servico should have protected him from such treatment. Under tho circumstances self-respect forbad him to pocket a monetary consideration accompanied by such a cruel indignity, and he was therefore obliged to decline to relieve those who had the power to dismiss him from any portion of the responsibility of their act.

The Governor and suite (writes r< Sydney correspondent) are expected to leave New South Wales for New Zealand on or about the 15th of March. The new naval commandant, Commodore Wilson, will convey them to your shores with appropriate pomp. What Lady Robinson wants, however, is not pomp, but comfort, for, like .the Princess Louise (another Governor's wife) she is a very bacl sailor. The Governor's party, consists of himself and Lady Robinson, Miss Robinson (who has not " come out" in society yet), Master Hercules (little fellow), Captain St. John (A.D.C.), Mrs St. John (a daughter of Sir Hercules), and the Hon. Mr Lyttelton (Private Secretary), The Governor leaves one daughter on this side the water, Mrs Finlay, whose husband is an immensely rich young Victorian squatter. The Robinsons will be much missed by the upper ten in Sydney, and Sir Hercules himself will be missed by almost everybody. People contrast, his departure from this colony with that of Sir George Bowen from Victoria, and of course the comparison is all in Sir Hercules' favor. By the way, it is alleged here that the party now dominant in New Zealand politics has some leanings to Republicanism —that Sir George Grey is tainted in that direction. Your new Governor will not help that movement; he is an out-and-out Imperialist. The integrity of the Empire is very dear to Sir Hercules Robinson, Yesterday lie said—" You will have some day, and I hope not before long, to provide for the federation of the Australian provinces into one dominion, And above all, to arrange eventually for that closer political association with the mother country which will admit of many millions of self* governing Anglo-Saxons at the antipodes advancing in national life, while still remaining an integral portion of the Empirg of which it is now their pride and privilege to form a part,"

A counter-petition :is being signed at Carterton to the one already forwarded praying for a borough.'

The Scandinavian Ball in the Town Hall, Masterton, held last evening, passed off very successfully, although;the attendance was hardly as large as had been anticipated. . Yesterday was observed as a close holiday at Carteiton in honor of the patron •saint of the Emerald Isle. Our correspondent states that the stores .were all sluil,'and that a chain, ; shot might have been fired from one end'of the town to the otheivwithout hurting anyone.

R v J. r Ci'(jighton has been interesting himself to secure a shipment of ..prairiehens for the. .Canterbury Acclimatisation Society. The subject of importing a supply of these birds for Auckland was introduced by W. J. Hurst at the annual meeting of the Acclimatisation Society on Wednesday.

At Messrs F. H, Wood and Co.'s cattle and horse sale at Greytown on Saturday last there was a large attendance. Working bullocks brought from L2(j to L2*l per pair, and horses from L2 .to L3G. Some waggons and drays were sold at different prices—Ll4, Llolos, and Lll; trap and harness for Ll4los'; cart, L1416s- The property of P. Cotter, jun., which was sold by the mortgagee, made a total- of L 340, Every lot was put up ,without reserve, and the prices were satisfactory toboth buyer and seller,

The writer of London Town Talk in

the Melbourne Argus says: "It is curious that the first realisation of a Utopia should have been embodied in an Admiralty report, and if Admiral de Horsey's account of the Pitcairn Islanders is 'true (which there are no reasons to doubt), it seems there is a community on this planet which has almost attained to social and moral perfection. It is, of course, in ' the Pacific'; but there are not only no wars, but no crimes there. ' The almost puerile simplicity of the laws i 3 the best evidenceof the good conduct of thepeople',, Theft, illicit love, and the use of profane' language are the only transgressions contemplated by the Pitcarin code, and none of these are ever committed. Their religion is that of the Church of England, but a little difference; there- is no high Church, Low Church, Slow Church, or No Church, and there is no clergyman. I need notadd, since they live in harmony, there is no lawyer, No alcliolic liquors, except for medicinal purposes, are used, and drunkenness is unknown.' Thore is no money in the island. There is a population of ninety—forty males and forty-one females—and they speak English only. Fancy a people without a Bradlaugh, a Kenealy, or even a Whistler. My only fear is that the publicity giv?n to theexistence of such a paradise will cause Mr Cook to' organise' and excursion thither."