The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1892, CURRENT TOPICS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2800, 15 October 1892, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1892, CURRENT TOPICS.

It is a question whether shoj assistants will be much the better fOl the Act on their behalf in the mutilated form in which it was passed bj the Legislative Council. It gives tht shadow without the, substance of i weekly half-holiday. It does nob enact that any shops shall be close!, and the only "-^vision made for eiforcing the Act is the clause which casts upon a shop assistant deprived rf his holiday the duty of laying in information against his employer. H»w many shop assistants, we should like to know, dare quarrel in this way with their bread and cheese? They wou.d be very likely to get more than enough of holiday for their temerity. Tie provisions of the Government Bill »s introduced and passed by the House were reasonable and necessary, but the Council made it practically inoperative. The Woodville case, from being a charge of libel against a newspaper proprietor, and of little more than local interest, has developed into a serious question affecting the administration of the law. After Mr Haggen had been committed to prison for the libel the medical gentleman whom he had called as a witness to prove the truth of the libel but was not allowed to examine, laid an information for malpractice against the prosecutor of Mr Haggen for libel. The magisterial investigation was begun and continued for several days, when it was adjourned, the Magistrate having to attend to business in other parts of his wide district, and successive adjournments have hindered the conclusion of the hearing for about a month. The position is this—lf the charges now under investigation are substantiated Mr Haggen's statements cease to be libellous ; but, meantime, his incarceration continues, through the bad arrangements for the conduct of Magistrate's Court business in the district. It is not surprising that great dissatisfaction is expressed with such a state of affairs, but whether the R.M. or the Department of Justice is in fault we cannot say. It is certainly not creditable. It does not take much to make a crisis in some parts of the world, and most people probably regard the cause of a difficulty which has arisen in Samoa as very trifling. History, however, repeats itself in the Sainoan crisis, the cause being i change in the calendar, which though "only of one day is causing on a small scale similar trouble to that which attended the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Ont.il recently eastern longitudinal time has been observed, but through American influence western time has been introduced. The change is so far only partial, some of the islands keeping the old time, some the new, and some being divided. The principal effect of this difference is seen in the observance of Sunday, and here the difficulty is intensified by the introduction of the religious element, the London Missionary fsfoaiety having adopted th* new date, while tfre Wesleyans adhere to the old. This has led to thj? observance of two ISundays in the week, whiph h.as caused to look upon the change oi dates a§ an attempt to de-Christianise them, and feeling accordingly runs high on the question. Tt is a pity to see strife caused by the want of agreement of the religious bodies on such a subject, and all will hope that the difficulty will soon be adjusted. The trouble in Samoa ought to be a warning to a mischievous German, who wanjbs t# upsef; find rearrange the whole calendar. He is a thorough reformer, and proposes—" Eacfc quarter of a year to have ninety-one days; the first Cjojjth thirty-one, the other two thirty. Only th* fourth quarter, and in leap years the second, f -° h»ve ninety-two days, one being added at the end of each—the 31st of December a,vA the 31gt p£ June. The first day of each quarter would )thpn §,1 ways be a Sunday, the first of esch .S*#nd m9#to: a Wednesday, and the first of each fchird a Friday. The 30th of June and the 80th of December would always be Saturdays. The 31st of December of every year to be called the extra day, and the 31st of June in leap years the leap day. The weeks which they close wpuid then have eight days instead of seven. Basfcer Sunday always to be the Ist of April, Whit Sunday the 19th of May, and Christmas D, ay the gji-th ,of December. The Ist of January to be thrown b, ack eleven days, so that it would always foe J;;he shortest day in jfcfte year, fhe jlsj; qjE Ap?i£ jyould then approximately coincide with the beginning ot spring, the Ist of Jujj with that of summer, md the Ist of October with that of autumn, These eleven days to be got by the omission of the extra days and leap days in the first nine years after the introduction of the new calendar." The brilliant "•enius thajb would torture the world with su.qh a reform should be handed over to the Samoans to J?e dgalt with according to native custom.

Mrs Clara Parker's surrender to the TkjLelbourflie police makes it probable that the sca^ai-d^yourers will have a feast I^rV .Glajra Parser £as for a 1 laqq time been not unknown to famp, kujb thfi special scandal which 1105/ excites interest caoie before the public only some six niofttfys ago, when §he J9i»4 Mr Joseph Clarke, os e of $ie

financial princes of Melbourne, on ! certain, promissory notes, to which he ( asserted his signature had been forged. l The verdict went against her, and she was arrested for perjury. In a very mysterious and suspicious way she was bailed out by two men who were | complete strangers to her, and spirited J away across the New South Wales border while under the influence of some narcotic drug. After her return to Melbourne she was, she asserts, kept three-parts drunk till she was got away from Sydney on the San Francisco steamer, but becoming thoroughly sober at Honolulu, apparently, and finding herself being sent off penniless, she made haste back again, and surprised the police by a letter asking them to come and arrest her, which they did. Meantime one of her bondsmen has been m gaol because he was not able to pay the bond money, and the other would have been had he not kept out of the way of the police. Mrs Parker is now where she runs very little risk of being hocussed, and everybody is waiting for her trial to learn the reasons why such desperate and expensive attempts were made to get her out of the way. Such sensational circumstances render the husband's application for divorce a mere side show,