POLITICAL ITEMS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3140, 21 July 1881, Page 4

POLITICAL ITEMS.

Mr Sheehan made a good hit when he imagined a Licensing Bench composed of Messrs Fox, Saunders, and Speight, and a better one when he told these distinguished advocates of temperance that their honorarium was partly paid out of the Customs levied on spirits and the license money paid by publicans.—Observer.

A motion has been carried in the House of Reprentatives that every member of that august body shall by virtue of his membership be entitled to visit all the gaols and lunatic asylums in the colony. If some M.H.R.'s should happen to pay protracted visits to these establishments they will cost the country less in their new quarters than in their old ones. —Wairarapa Daily. It would appear from the following opinion of the Auckland Star's Wellington correspondent that the proposal to remove the seat of Parliament will be cprried in the Lower House. The telegram says : —The Southern members are convassing to gft the Beat of Government removed to Christchurch or Dunedin. They are unanimous for it, and it will likely be carried by a large majority when brought up. The estimated cost of removal is £50,000. They expect large savings in Hansard and otherwise.

The Post thus " chaffs" the Times concerning some typographical errors which have recently appeared in the latter journal : —" Our morning contemporary announces that Captain Russell is to interrogate the Government on the advisability of establishing a " penal port" between New Zealand and England. '1 his is an exclusive piece of political information possessed ouly by our contemporary, inasmuch as the sole notice of motion standing in Captain Russell's name on the Parliamentary order paper is one in reference to a " parcel post" between England and New Zealand. Probably the question is to be addressed to the " Minister for Porks," whose existence our contemporary, also from exclusive sources of information, notified to its readers the other day.

" f-inbad " in the Pre-s gives another view of the G-aming and Lotteries Bill. He says:—The Bill has passed tho Upper House, and whether it will meet with equal success in the Lower remains to be seen. The Derby Sweeps, now so popular all over the colony, being stopped, will mean that the Australian promoters of Consultations will take annually out of New Zealand quite £20,000. I don't think that seems good enough. Further, no Calcutta Sweeps will be permitted under heavy penalties by the new Act, and in this case, as in that of the Derby Sweeps I think that the Upper House are really straining at a gnat, for a more harmless form of gambling could not be imagined than either of them. Personally I don't think the Act will work very effectively. Such will be the result of trying to make us all moral by Act of Parliament. Hon. members will pass an Aot shortly, I shouldn't wonder, to tell us how we are to spend our money. The Wellington correspondent of tho Auckland Observer says : — " Everybody almost connected with Parliament is suffering from some form or other of catarrh. Some get it in the throat in the form of quinsy and bronchitis; some in the lungs, like poor Home, our well-liked Sergeant-at-arms ; and some into their spleen by a flowing down of the humour of discontent. Poor Home, by the way, has had a narrow squeak for his life. What is wanted is some patriotic fellow to be found to burn down the House of Representatives and let ns get a Btone instead of a wooden structure erected. The timber of which Vogel's father-in-law had the building constructed has shrunk like Vogel's policy, and the wind comes in searchingly through the chinks and crannies. Some of the members of the House assert that it would be no trouble to construct a draught-chart after the manner of meteorological charts, Bhowing how the draughts circulate at the different hours of the day and night. Some of the newspaper fellows talk of setting fire to the building, but the Speaker advises them to wait until the Government go into the fire-risk business."

A Southorn paper says : —The Hon. Capt. Eraser is an oddity in his way, and if he has any tiring to say upon a question generally contrives to get off something striking. When the Chinese Bill was introduced into the Lsgislative Council tho other day, he delivered himself as follows :—The race was one of filthy vices and loathsome diseases, consequent on 5000 years of stagnant civilisation. They had been driven out of India 4000 years ago for their hideous and abomir. • able vices and diseases. They were taking the bread from European mouths. They were so vile that the germs of disease, not to be killed by boiling water, were to be found in the vegetables they grew in their refuse. Boiling oil alone would kill those germs. Let Europeans be cai'eful, therefore, of eating Chinese grown cabbage. Chinese would in time get too strong to be restrained if not restrained now. It was bo in Honolulu, where, from a small beginning, they had come to hold every plantation. Seventy thousand had lately gone to Kashgaria, and carried all before them with their own made guns, and 2,-00,000 could as easily have

gone. They would soon have entire possession of North Australia. They were most treacherous, as witness the Naseby murder. However, a Chinese had been hung for that, ■ilthough it was the wrong man (laughtei'), the other one having the benefit of a clever lawyer. His countrymen, though, to their credit, boycotted him, and cleared him out, and he (the speaker) hoped he had since cut Us throat. The germs of their loathsome lisease were going through a circle, and Europeans must be careful or they would get them through their cauliflowers.

The Roman Catholic Bishop of Ossory (Dr Moran) has written a letter in which he says of the Irish Land Bill that " there are some principles interwoven with ifc which are conformable to common sense and to "hristian teaching, and which, when fully developed, must one day become the Magna Charta of the rights and liberties of our tenant farmers. "

Mr John Bright, writing to a gentleman in Bradford on the subject of protection as a remedy for depression in the worsted trade, says :—" You have had great prosperity with the present tariffs, and to suppose that your case would be improved by ref us* ing to buy what you want from foreigners seems to me an idea worthy only the inmates of a lunatic asylum. Great expansion is followed by depression, to be followed, I believe, by return to a fair measure of prosperity. "

At the funeral service of the late Dr Punshon lately, the Rev. Dr Jenkins said the deceased was one of the most powerful missionary speakers ever given to any church. The last scene of his life was a brief one. There was no evening, not even twilight, in his season of work. Until the last few hours he was not aware his end was approaching. He had no fear of death, but to a friend who asked him if he had he once said, ' Oh, the rapture of living !' and ' I do not like to feel that my work is done.' Not long befoi'e his death he said to the medical man, ' Doctor, am I going ?' The physician answered, Yes.' Their deceased friend then said, ' Thank God; Jesus is to mo a bright reality.'

A Peshawer correspondent of the Civil and Military Gazette tells the following anecdote about the late Sir Louis Cavagnari. Many, many years ago, ycangCavagnari was " shorJringly b. 1 rider; but, in f !'-* of ".. naturally bad seat, and l-egardless of constant, falls, he would attempt to ride any animal. One evening at mess, having been chaffed about his frequent ' pips,', he undertook to ride any one there a steeplechase. The challenge was accepted, and the next lay the race came off. The conditions were that, whoever got first over the last jump was to be the winner. Young Cavagnari, riding all legs and arms, led nearly the whole way, and on arriving at the jump put his horse at it. The animal did not clear it, and came down, giving his rider a most iwful cropper, on the right side, however, of the jump. Cavagnari's cap flew off in one direction, his spectacles in another, and he himself was, to all appearance, badly stunned. He recovered himself, however, in a couple of seconds, and standing up, whip in hand, ashy pale, exclaimed, ' I've won, anyhow.' The Pall Mall Gazette, of April 8, says : —This expediency (of understanding the Irish, question) concerns Great Britain quite as much as it concerns Ireland. It is for our own sake as much as for the sake of the Irish that we have once more turned to the eternal Irish question. There is no need to dwell upon the hindrances and perturbations which li-eland introduces into English affairs. English and Scotch measures of the greatest importance wait in vain for the attention of Parliament. Tbe principles and organisation of English political life are confused. The parliamentary system itself has received the severest blow that has ever been struck at it. Our military strength has been crippled; no inconsiderable portion of our small army is occupied in holding Ireland ; and if we were at war, our naval strength would also be crippled by having to keep cruisers away from its shores. Have we not had enough of all this ? Has not the time come for brushing away the class blindness and spurious economic and juristic maxims which perpetuate so lamentably a necessity ?