NOTES.

Press, Volume XLIII, Issue 6627, 18 December 1886, Page 2

NOTES.

Thebe wa3 nothing distinctively Caledonian about the original Sixteenth of December which the holiday last Thursday is designed to commemorate. The Canterbury Settlement was founded under English auspices, and not one of the celebrated pilgrim ships had the bagpipes on beard. Yet Anniversary Day is appropriately enough consecrated to Caledonian sports -'to the Fling and "-Gillie Calium," tosEing the caber, and tbe best dressed Highlander. For the übiquitous Scot was here before the pilgrims, and he has left his mark indelibly on the history of the pro* vinee. There were pioneers before the historical pioneers of the first ships, as there were kings before Agamemnon ; and these earliest pioneers (like the earliest kings of Greecp, we were going to say), were for the most part Scotchmen. So far back as the year '44, when Christchurch was a wilderness, and Port Cooper, not yet .re-ehrißtened Lyttelton, owned no white inhabitants, a small band of colonists were endeavoring to build boats and houses and grow -potatoes in the bays of Basks' Peninsula. They were for the most part from beyond the Tweed, as their names— the Sinclair?, Hays and Deanses of this pre-pilgrim era—sufficiently testify. And they were present to welcome the pilgrims and join with them in the work of colonisation. 'It is not, therefore, on the lucits a non lucendo principle that the 16th cf December is a day of great Caledonian rejoicing and demonstration. The growth of the Caledonian movement in Canterbury has been comparatively recent, but it has been rapid. A strong and vigorous society, bound together by the silken cords of national feeling and tradition, has gtown up in a few years, and now we bave Scotchmen from all parts of the province " forgathering " once a year to witness the J Highland games, to hear the old Scotch j songs, and to renew the vow that notwithstanding a great number of altered circumstances they will "brithers be for a' that." It is a fine example of the adage that those who cross the sea may change their country, but do not change their disposition. A pibroch is as musical to the Scotchman (and may we say in parenthesis as unmusical to every one else ?) in Lancaster Park as it was, let us cay, on the Banks o' the Tummel. They don't grow out of it any more than tbey grow out of a score of other national characteristics. Whether young New Zealand will fellow in the ways of their sires in this respect is more than doubtful. It is scarcely to be expected that the Old World institutions will have for them the same significance; but the exuberant good fellowship of Caledonian gatherings such ss the one of this week is certainly a thing worth preserving the secret of.

Speaking of the pilgrims and the pioneers who preceded them—very few of the latter, alas! are now alive —there are few things so entertaining as to listen to their narratives of the olden times. The privilege is a rare one, for they A-e not easily drawn out, and their stories never come quite freely except in the form of reminiscences, when a second "Old Identity " happens to be of the company. The writer had recently the good fortune to spend an evening in the company of aa ancient mariner who had been in New Zealand not very far short of half a century, and it was like turning over the leaves of another Arabian Night's Entertainments to listen- to his stories. Ifl would be gratifying to our readers to reproduce some of them, bnt there is a certain intangible quality about them which won't bear translation. As soon as the Hue eqmdem vidi, «l saw these things with mine own eyes," is taken away, the charm is gone; the incidents fall fist from the lip* of a stranger. Amid all that has been written about New Zealand, true and false, it is a pity that these tales of real

adventure, told unostentatiously by those who really tcok part in them, should slip into oblivion. They are part of our annals, put of a history that will ba surpassingly interesting to posterity; yet they remain unwritten and seldom told. In two decades there will be no one left to tell them at first hand.

The First Offenders* Probation Act has not been received with much favour by the Judges, but the strictures which have been passed on the Act ly the press in criticising the disparity of the sentences of D<ile and H:ll the ether day are not altogether merited. Tha two cases in point no doubt could not hava been better arranged to show the inequality of judicial sentences. They were decided on the same day in different parts of the colony; the i fleece, the stealing of postletteis, was the same; and in each case the prisoner had previously borne a good character, yet Dile got two years' hard labor from Mr Justice Williams, while Hill got off with a sentence of two years' palice surveillance from the Chief Justice. Teat illustrates the inequality of sentences in a very pointed manner, but it proves nothing fcr or against the Probation Act, further than that the Act has enlarged the field within which this inequality can be shown. There were unequal sentences before the Act waß passed, and there always will be, for it is impossible to measure out accurately the amount of punishment that ought to be visited upon each cSender. With the generally expressed opinion that the Judges should confer among themselves aa to the eort of cases to which they would apply the bo as to give consistency to the p ac'Jce of the different Courts, we concur. And there cannot be much doubt that Mr Justice Williams' remarks in sentencing Dale express the common sense of the matter: "It would never do if the public got it into their headß that the Act gave a man license to sin once, and, because of previous good character, to sin with comparative impunity." Subject to this interpretation as to its scope, we believe the First Offenders' Probation Act will prove a useful measure. Its weakest point, to our mind, is one which has escaped most of its critics. The Probation Officer is constituted the judge of the character of all »ceased persons. He inakeß his investigations where and how he pleases; he can apply for his information to the accused's frienrTs or to his enemiep, to the police or to the man in the street, and ou£ cf tbe fulness of the knowledge tyiZß obtained he is to say " whether the accused may reasonably be expected to reform without imprisonment." Allowing the Probation Officers to be men of the highest integrity and discrimination, it would be difficult for them to do their <> ok entirely satisfactorily. To which the aue>wer of the framers of tte Act, of course, is that to ask perfection in any sjstem is to ask an impossibility, and that it is of especial importance in a young commurity that a criminal class should not be formed out of those who, having lived honestly, have happened to make one falsj step.