SOCIAL REFORMS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1638, 4 January 1883, Page 2

SOCIAL REFORMS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Tiik remarkable measures proposed by members of your Legislature in regard to the land question and national assurance have created iriust interest here, and ,nota little discussion. The Fall Mall Gazette, in noticing these proposals, remarks that, if New Zealand will give these measures a trial, she will earn the giatitude of Europe, and, whatever the issue, will do herself little harm, as nothing that could happen would very well injure New Zealand. Whether this is meant ironically or otherwise I know not. I may be permitted, perhaps, to remind your readers that I have several times drawn their attention to this pressing land question, and in my letter publishes in the Mad for July Ist of this year, I suggested the outline of a scheme which I venture to think is more practicable than that of Sir George Grey. This veteran statesman proposes that the State should acquire all the land, and let out the same on 21 years' leases. If it were desirous to produce an unhealthy, discontented radicalism in any country, I can imagine nothing ao well suited to produce this as Sir George Grey's measure. If the history of countries has shown one thing more than another it is this, that the best way to promote a healthy Conservative spirit and a stable community is to give every man 'an opportunity of sitting down under his own vine and fig-tree, with a few acres of freehold to hand down to his posterity. To disturb this every 21 years, and have a man iv doubt whether he could not hand clown to his eldest son the home wherein lie and his bi others and sisters were born, is to loosen every bond of society, and utterly destroy the stability of any community. AVli.it is aimed at here is to pass n measure limiting the amount of freehold to be held by any one man ; and in my letter above refen cd to I suggested that the State Government in the colonies should affix the price of the land in the various districts from and after a certain date, and that any subsequent rise in value should be divided between the freeholder and the Government. As to Major Atkinsen's scheme for compulsory insurance, it cannot be too highly praised. A measure of the kind successfully worked would do an immense work in reducing pauperism and crime, and increasing the respectability and amour propre of every individual member of the body politic. I fear however, that the sum of .-C42, to be paid between 1(5 and 23, is too large an amount ; at any rate, it would stultify the whole thing here, where our population is so vast and yet so poor. If only 5s a week could be secured after the ago of 65 uas reached it would be something— at any late, it would ward off starvation, and save aged parents from being a burden on their struggling children. A small payment of, say £1.5 would insure this annuity.— London Correspondent N.Z, Times.

Thk most powerful king on earth is wor-king ; the laziest king, lur-king ; the meanest king, shir-king ; the most popular, smo-king ; and most disreputable, joking; aud the leanest one, thin-king; and the thirstiest one, drin-king; and the ?lyest, win-king ; and the most garulous one, tal-kiug. And then there is the hac-king, whose trade's a perfect mine; the dark-skinned monarch blacking, who cuts the greatest shine ; not to speak of ran-kiug, whose title's out of question ; or the famous ruler ban-king, of good finance digestion. A Cukious Fact in Evolution.— All animal life is not subject to death according to the American Journal of Science. Examining through a microscope one of those minute single-cell creatures known as a protozoon, the journal remarks that we see it expanding into an ellipsoidal figure, which becomes/for a time longer and longer. It then begins to contract about what we may, for the sake of popular intelligibility, call its equator. It assumes the form of two nearly globular • bodies, connected, du J mb 7 belllike, by a narrow neck. This neck becomes narrower, and at last the two globes are set free, and appear as two individuals in place of one. What are the relations of these two .beings ,to the antecedent form and to each other ?"' We examine them with care ; they are equal in aize, alike in complexity, or rather simplicity, of structure. We cannot say that either of them is more mature or ' more rudimentary than the other. We can find it their separation from each other no analogy to the separation of the young animal or the egg from its mother, or to the liberation of a seed from a plant. Neither of them is parent, and neither offspring. Neither of them is ' older or younger than each other. The process of reprqduction, or rather of multiplication, must, so far as wo can see, be repeated in the game manner for ever.' Accidents excepted, they are immortal, and frequent as such accidents musftbV, the individuals whom they strike might, or rather would, Hk6'the ! re3tof their "community; have gone on living and' splitting themselves up'forever. • ' It is strange,''when,examining certain' infusoria sunder i the microscope, to consider that, these irail and tiny 'being-were lrHngwot potentially.in their ancestors, but^ really in theft own , -persons; > perhaps ' 'in! »the <■ Ladrentian i fepojph.. •'' - , ..vi'<',<} ••;'i,i«»s?J > %-^ u-M u -M % jMessrs^iGJlark.and.rGahe, „Cam^ridgei|