ANCHOVIES AND TOAST.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1748, 21 September 1875, Page 2

ANCHOVIES AND TOAST.

(From Our London Correspondent)

Londdnt, July 27.

AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS. The only fetoae on whi':h the Conservative nartv h is threatened to stumble has been the Agricultural Holdings Bill. This bill as V o°u know, is chiefly to give to tenants a right to compensation for unexhausted improvements. No measure of the kind is really wanted. The agitation was first got up by the Howards, implement manufacturers of Bedford, who thought thereby to curry favo*ir with their customers, and the ball has beeflkept rolling by " Chambers of Agriculture" and Journalists in want of a subject, and with no technical knowledge. It wou'd ndt be difficult to prove by examples that it is the British landlord who is in more need of protection than his tenant. Good tenants are so scarce that it is only reasonable to suppose that landlords are glad to secure them and happy to retain them ; and as for bad tenants, who far out-number the good ones, why they are the very men who make most noise and scream out for compensation. These are the men who sell every scrap of manure and straw they can lay their hafldr on daring their tenancy ; they want watching like mice, and then when a course of their starvation treatment has half ruined the land, they cry out for compensation'for improvements, forsooth. 1 think I do remember 3ome few noisy souls amongst the farmery of Auckland, fellows who were for ever making speeches at meetings and growling about farming not paying. This class is well represented everywhere. There is legion here; and if farming does not pay them it is scarcely to be wondered at by anyone who knows their habits. Under pretence of attending markets such men are scarcely ever at home. They drive fibout from one town to another and spend what would make a nice little fortune at the ale-house. SIR JCLIUS VOGEL. The Illustriated London Jtfews has immortalised Sir Julius Vogel and a trio of his dark skinned co-legislator?, Wiremu Katene, Makena and Kt.raitiana. A descriptive article, as usual, accompanies the sketches and New Zealand obtains a full share of commendation. The borrowing policy of your Julius is well described, but ifc is amusing to observe how, after launching out in terms of admiration of the political progress of Sir Julius Vogel, the Editor draws in his horns and wonders "how it will all turn out." That is what we all wonder, I suspect we are quite satisfied with thing 3as they are, but then we know that they cau't always remain so, and so we want to get seme kind of forecast as to what we are to expect. The Illustrated is wonderfully cautious. THE HON. W. FOX AT HOME. The U.K.A. and Mr Fox have been hobnobbing together to a wonderful extent. I suppose there was nothing stronger than tea on the festive board, but if so the brew must have been of a very excellent quality. The festivities took the form of a breakfast. I conclude it was so arranged in order that it might be said, these men are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day." As you might anticipate, Sir Wilfred Lawson, that facetious old baronet, occupied the chair. Mr A. McArthur, Mr Whitworth, Mr Sullivar, Mr C. Wilson, Mr Dicksou, and Mr Butt were amonyst the members of Parliament who attended at the Westminster Palace Hotel and a put-in at this breakfast. After the disappearance of the ham and ege?, Mr Pope, QC. (dees not stand for Queen chirncter) moved, "That the Executive Council of the United Kingdom Alliance, recognising the high character and eminent services of the Hon. Win. Fox, M. &.., ex-Prime Mii i^ter of New Zealand, as a patriotic statesman and caroesf social reformer, feel very great pleasure in extending to him a hearty welcome on his visit to his native land, trusting thst his temporary sojourn io England may be a source of unmingled satisfaction, alike to himßelf and his numerous friends and aclmirers, and that his life may be lonp spared and his future career be one of increased usefulness, honour, and rerjown." You may imagine the glorification of your ex Premier on this occasion. He absolutely squirmed with —I was going to say delight, but it might have been the muffins or the hot-buttered rolls. En passant, I wonder whether a hot roll or a glass of whiskey does a man most homage. The resolution was seconded by Cardinal Manning, who you know has of late gone in tremendously for teetotalisim— more power to him. And whilst talking of him, will it be much out of our way to mention, that his social position has been pretty well laid down, by the fact of the Royal Family at their last gardenparty having admitted him and retained him some time within the Eoyal circle. The words of Manning are worth quoting, for he pays you antipodean folk a high compliment. He said:— "That no man could have observed the course of the last thirty or forty years without being firmly convinced that, instead of the mother country assimilating the Colonies with herself, the Colonies had been gradually assimiliating the mother country with themselves, and that the policy pursued in these wide new fertile fields of our political life, which were untrammelled andundivided by obstinate traditions of class, afforded an open field for legislative wisdom and for statesmanlike government which might well imprint itself on the mother country. Sir Wilfred was of course as funny as usual, and I don't think you will think me out of place if I quote the opening of his speech. He said that not long since a person who had been out of Eagland for some time in one of our Colonies came back to this country. He was dining with a friend in London. After dinner one of the guests got up and said he must go away. "Where are you going?" said the stranger. "I am going down to the House," was the reply. "What house?" "The House of Commons." "Good gracious!" said the colonist, "is that thing going on still?" Now, his fiiend Mr. Fox came back after a long and honoured absence in one of their colonies, and he was very glad to see so many friends and colleagues who wrote M. P. after their names present to, show him that they not only took an interest in the affairs of the people they represented directly, but also in the affairs* of their fel-low-subjects in so far distant a country as New Zealand. The whole address of the i Hon. Baronet was of course in favour of 1 the ' Permissive Bill and at its close, Mr Fox, in reply, said he wished to correct a slight misapprehension with regard to what he did in the New Zealand Parliament. He did not succeed in passing the Bill through the House while he was a responsible Minister. By an arrangement they had of "open" questions, he stood disassociated from his colleagues in the matter, and it was not until he became a private member that he succeeded in passing ifc through the House. Mr Fox then proceeded to give an account of his visit to the prohibition States of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, &c , and stated that during the whole of the time he was there he neither could obtain nor did he see consumed, with one slight exception, any alcoholic liquor. By way of contrast, he said that in the city of Durham, one of the "sacred cities of the Empire," and under the shade of its old cathedral, were men reeling drunk ; that in the space of two hours he counted one hundred persons under the influence of

dnr>V, and from the noise that came htrn public houses, he should estimate that« many more were inside. On the ■whole th meeting was very successful—in paarino resolutions, and the members seemed to be highly satisfied with one another and thejr "