VICTORIA.

Press, Volume VII, Issue 686, 10 January 1865, Page 4

VICTORIA.

We take the following items from the Argiis summary for December: — The Head of the Department.—A nice little constitutional question has arisen be tweenthc Government and the judges of the Supreme Court, respecting the privileges of the latter. It is disclosed in a correspondence laid before Parliament. The correspondence may be divided into distinct parts. The first relates to a holiday trip of Mr. Justice Barry to Sydney and Brisbane during the vacation last January. The Government submit that the judges have not the legal right to take such a step without »J leave ; but the judges deny that they are

legally bound by this opinion. The Governor and Executive Council direct that all official communications by their Honors " respecting the rights, privileges, or duties of their offices" to the Governor or Executive Council, shall in future be addressed to the Attorney-General; and the judges ask his Excellency to submit the question to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The second part of the correspondence arises out of the suit Molesworth v. Molesworth. On the 28th November, the Attorney-General suggests to Mr. Justice Molesworth the expediency of the divorce and matrimonial causes jurisdiction being administered by one of the other judges. Mr. Justice Molesworth, in reply, denies the right of the Government to interfere; but intimates that, before receiving the Attorney-General's letter, and owing to the duties of the Divorce Court having become personally distasteful to him, he had requested his brother judges to relieve him from that class of business, and that they had acceded to his request. Following out the above intimation, the judges have made a re-arrangement among themselves of the judicial labors in reference to the hearing of matrimonial causes and applications. Mr. Justice "Williams has taken matrimonial causes and Mr. Justice Molesworth, heretofore an equity judge, has tried criminal cases. Victorian Runholuers. —A return laid before the Legislative Assembly shows that there are in Victoria 1156 pastoral runs, occupying, at the time of the passing of the Duffy Land Act, an area of 31,875,468 acres, and producing a rental of £225,113 17s 7d, or an average of little more than l_d per acre. As many as 89 runs, occupying an area of 6,277,340 acres, produce less than _d per acre. Since 1862, 364 of these runs have been transferred, and 1,311,469 acres embraced in them have been alienated. As many as 70 runs, extending over 3,748,593 acres, have been forfeited under the provisions of the Land Act of 1862. In addition to the above, there are 16 runs, occupying 345,604 acres, the area or rent of which has not been satisfactorily determined. The number of licenses issued to pastoral tenants for grazing purposes during the present year is 1172 ; the number of persons to whom the same have been issued is 737; and the extent of land held under such licenses, for grazing purposes, is 30,722,886 acres. Pastoral.—Next month the Intercolonial Show of Wool is to be held; and, it* the entries are good, it may help to clear up some of the doubt which now prevails as to whether we gain or lose by importing merinoes from France and Germany. Amongst the sheep-owners, opinions are about equally divided on this point, some holding that the sheep bred from those longest in Australia are the best and most profitable, while those on the other side say that we cannot have weight of fleece and strength of staple without new blood; and the show of wool was proposed with the view of practically settling the question, if possible. Shearing is now over, and all the wool warehouses in town are full. This clip has been everywhere heavy, and of full,. strong growth. Pleuro-pneumonia has broken out again rather more virulently in a few places, but has, we trust, done its worst in this colony, in which it first appeared. It is, however, doing mischief enough in the other colonies, none of which are now free from it except Tasmania, out of which it has been kept by stringent regulations iv regard to imported cattle. The commissioners appointed here to inquire into the nature of the disease have brought up their first report, which is not yet published, bnt in which they say that this disease is neither contagious nor-infec-tious, because they failed to give it to a few .animals brought over from Tasmania to be experimented upon. These may have been hardy enough in constitution to resist it, but beyond a doubt pleuro-pneumonia has been, and still is, highly contagious amongst the cattle bred on this side of the straits. The Volunteers. —The volunteer force is preparing for a grand field day, to take place on Monday, January 2, on the Melbourne race course. Major-General Chute, the Commander of her Majesty's Forces in the Australian colonies, is to take the command, and both the metropolitan and the country corps are to be present. The proceediugs will be watched with much interest, for recent events, more especially the announcement of the contemplated Russian invasion, have brought vividly before the public the fact that they are now relying entirely upon the protection of their volunteer defenders. At the present time, it may be mentioned, the force numbers 8,500 men ; some 3,200 of whom will have earned at the close of the year the classification of effectives. The cavalry corps are 260 strong; the artillery, 1,000; the naval brigade, 280; and the rifle companies, 1,900. The concluding quarterly official inspection of the various corps is now taking place. As it is only necessary that the men should attend two of these inspections in the year, the attendance at the present parades has not been so good as those which were held earlier in the year. Nevertheless, in the majority of instances, considerably over three-fourths of the members of the respective companies have presented themselves for inspection. The colonel-commandant has expressed himself highly satisfied with the degree of efficiency manifested. The report prepared by Commodore "Wiseman and Colonel Warde, R.E., on the defences of the port of Melbourne, has not yet been made public, but it is understood that it dwells strongly upon the importance of securing a central defence in the bay, and states that the colonial war sloop Victoria, if armed with Armstrongs, could render the batteries great assistance as. a gunboat. In the meantime, an interesting effort has been made to turn our own resources to account, by the construction of a gun-raft, an ingenious contrivance to float a heavy piece of artillery in shallows beyond an enemy's reach. Tne raft is composed of two punts braced together by a wooden platform, on which a smooth-bore

sixty-eight pounder has been mounted. Such is the buoyancy of the contrivance that, with the gun, with fifty rounds of ammunition and a full complement of men on board, the draught of water is but seventeen inches. The raft has undergone a trial and worked excellently, sailing and steering well, and remaining comparatively steady in a heavy sea. As auxiliaries, crafts of this description would probably be able to aid the batteries a great deal, but, of course, more formidable means are required for the main defence of the port. The Legislative Assembly has adopted a clause granting who have ranked as effective for five years an allotment of] fifty acres of agricultural land. This has | given much satisfaction in the force, not so much on account of the material benefit as because of the cordial recognition it involves of the value of the services which are being willingly rendered. The grant lias, however, yet to be confirmed by the Legislative Council. The Reform League.—The Australian Eeform League held a public meeting on the 30th, to report on their proceedings durmg the past half-year. They have, it appears, received £276 10s., and expended £268, which some of the speakers explained had not contributed to bribery and corruption at the late elections. The electorial results were referred to with some complacency ; and the chairman and other speakers took pains to explain that the league was not opposed to the present Government, provided -they acted up to " hustings professions " on the question of protection. Educational. —No less than 157 candidates entered for the Civil Service examinations. Of this number some six or seven failed to present themselves, and of the remaining 150 but 47 succeeded in passing the preliminary examination in English and arithmetic. At the University, 39 candidates went up for matriculation, of whom 18 passed. This is the season when our highest class schools give the public their annual elocutionary displays. The masters and pupils of the Scotch College, and a very large attendance of friends of the institution, celebrated their anniversary in St. George's hall on the 18th. The report, by Mr. Morrison, the principal, gave a satisfactory account of the progress of the institution, and entered at some length into the larger question of education generally, as raised by the report of the Royal commissioners. Mr. Morrison claimed credit to the institution for having already adopted many of the commissioners' recommendations. Speech-day was celebrated at the Church of England Grammar School on the 14th, by a large attendance. His Excellency the Governor presided, supported by the Bishop of Melbourne and other friends of the institution. Dr. Bromby, the excellent head master, gave a satisfactory report of honors won by the school at the University examinations, and the elocutionary, and particularly the musical, portions of the programme gave evident satisfaction to the audience. A New Fuel. —Several gentlemen interested in engineering operations met on the 7th at Messrs. Langlands' foundry to witness a trial of Mr. Patrick Hayes's method of generating heat, as intended to be applied to furnaces of steamships, steam boilers, &c. It appears that the production of tar at the various gasworks increases much faster than it can be used, and Mr. Hayes has discovered a plan by which this, as well as pitch and other bituminous substances, can be as readily employed for heating purposes as coal itself. The experiment demonstrated clearly that an enormous heat could thus be obtained, and kept up to any length of time, unaccompanied by the annoyance of smoke, the latter being consumed in the process of combustion. RIJSSIA.AND THE AUSTRALIAN' COLONIES. —"We clip the following from the Maryborough and Dunnolly Advertiser: —We propose to furnish our readers with a hitherto unwritten chapter in the history of Victoria. As it relates to an event so recent as the threatened raid of Russia upon Australia, it will perhaps be read with some degree of interest. Among the officers under the command of Admiral Popoff, was a young Pole, lieutenant in the Russian navy. When the I Bogatyer reached Shanghai, after her visit to j Melbourne, this Pole, becoming acquainted with the atrocities perpetrated upon his countrymen by the Russians, solicited the Admiral's permission to resign. This was refused, on the ground that the Russian Admiralty alone had the power to accept of such a resignation; but hoping to attach the lieutenant more closely to the Russian service, Admiral Popoff promoted him to the command of a vessel. While on the China station, and in the temporary absence of the I admiral, important despatches arrived from St. Petersburg, which were to be opened if the admiral should be away by the next lin command. This was Captain . I Those despatches disclosed the plan of attack on Melbourne, and other Australian cities, in the event of a war between England and Eussia on the subject of Poland. The Pole felt that he could be no party to reprisals of this kind—reprisals upon the subjects of a state whose only crime was its sympathy with the miseries of his oppressed and unhappy country. He therefore took the earliest opportunity of deserting the service of Eussia, at the same time communicating his motives for so doing to an eminent comI patriot. Tlie compatriot divulged the plans lof Russia to Mr. Sumner, of the firm of I Grice, Sumner and Co., of Melbourne, by j whom they were revealed to the Government of Victoria. This was in July last, and by I the same mail inte' et was forwarded to the I: • and hence the appeara in the Times which has ci ion iv Australia. We vi in precautionary and < were taken, but we do n > i mention their charaete* found his way to Europe, sard of in Paris, and at th understood that he holds he service of Spain.