OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2533, 4 October 1888, Page 3

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

|FBOM OCB OWN COBRESrONDENT. ] Sydney, September 27. Freemasonky had a grand jubilation last night, when, in the presence of some 4000 brethren of the craft, His Excellency, Lord Carrington, the governor of the colony, was installed as Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales. Freemasons are a very important nnd influential section of society, and the principles they profess, if faithfully carried out, would make a very different world. In any case such an event, therefore, would possess great significance. In this case it is of more than ordinary importance from the fact that the ceremonial, in the words of the Installing Master (Chief Justice Way, of South Australia) " removes from Masonry in New South Wales the reproach of being divided into parties, and exhibits her to the world for the first time as a united brotherhood." Hitherto we have had lodges working tinder the separate constitutions of England, Scotland, and New South Walts. Now, with the almost unanimous consent of all, we start to go alone, As unity is strength, an increase of prosperity may confidently be predicted. The case of lawyer Oahill just decided, shows one of the alarming blots in our legal system. Some time ago the Peat's Ferry railway accident occurred. Among the persons injured were two spinsters, dressmakers. Mr Oahill took up their case, conducted proceedings against the Government, and obtained for them verdicts amounting in the gross to about £1250. So far good. 15ut when the lawyer presented his "little b 11" of costs, it amounted to considerably over £2600 ! It came before the Prothonotary for taxation, and that officer's professional eye at once discovered that the claim was a fraudulent one. He reported that the briefs had been swelled to an indefensible length by the copying of multifarious particulars ot no importance to the case, apparently with no other object than to charge for them .Mr Want's fee of £100, also, was initialled as having been received by him, whereas it had not been so received, and Mr Want, although he would not say that the initials were not his, could not say that they were. The judges gave Mr Oahill the benefit of the doubt as to Mr Want's initials, but they fined him £JOO. for having swelled his bill of costs in such an unconscionable manner. I may state that under the hands of the Prothonotary the sum of £2,500 dwindles to something like £300. The most unsatisfactory part of the affair is that a number of lawyers, instead of strengthening the hands of the Prothonotary, are indignant at his action, thus fortifying the popular idea that the whole fraternity sympathise with such doings. The press, however, is beginning to ask why a lawyer, who is accused of fraudulent practices, should not be huuded over to the courts to be dealt with in the same manner as any other penon. We smile complacently at the benighted state of our forefathers, because they allowed the clergy to become a privileged class, exempt from the operation of the ordinary laws. But in many respects we ate guilty of anomalies quite as foolish and indefensible.

" What may happen to a man after he is dead," was seen the other day in the case of the remains of the late brilliant but unstable Deneihy. He is a celebrity of the early days of tho colony, Many have never heard of him, but to one section of our colonists his memory is an object of idolatry. He possessed phenomenal talents both as a speaker and writer. But his instability was equally phenomenal. He gave way to drunken habits and died in poverty and disgrace at Bathurst, where he was buried in unconsecrated ground. A number of his admirers, headed by Mr D. O'Connor, M.P. for West Sydney, thought the time had arrived to do honour to his remains and last week they obtained authority to ransack the Bathurst burying ground in search of the relics. Here they were met by unexpected difficulties. People who knew to an inch where the body was buried 25 years ago were strangely at fault when the ground began to be turned over. The first body exhumed and thought to be his was rejected, as a pair of gaol boots were found in the coffin. It was finally settled that it was the remains of "Spider" an aborifiiual who had been hanged for rape. Then a skull was turned up, with a remarkable frontal development, which was at once claimed as that of the departed orator. But unfortunately j the thiKhbonesuadiich appeared to belong to the "said sjßl were those of a man fully six feet high, whereas Deneihy was rather under than over the average height. This trifling difficulty, however, was solved by an old identity, who claimed to remember that the bones in question had been thrown on Deneihy's coffin at the interment. Eventually a satisfactory assortment of fragments was mustered, put into a gorgeous coffin and sent down to Sydney. As for the other remains whose last resting-place was so unceremoniously disturbed, I have not heard that any special care was taken of them, over those which were said to be •'Deneihy's. Mr O'Connor orated in his usual florid style, and they received, moreover, the ecclesiastical good offices of which they had so long been deprived. In view of the fact that large numbers of parsons affect unbounded admiration for tho dead-and-gone recipient of these posthumous honours, it is a remarkable and noteworthy fact that out of the whole population of the metropolis, only eighteen attended the ceremony, Surely

it would have been possible to vindicate his memory without so many unsavoury concomitants.