NEWS AND NOTES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 15, Issue 2013, 13 December 1870, Page 3

NEWS AND NOTES.

Accokding to our correspondent "Cosmopolite," we follow servilely the leadership of some journal or journals unknown, in our comments on the English telegrams. As these comments are generally written on the very day that the telegrams arrive, the thing is a plain impossibility. To say that the Germans plundered and massacred their enemies does not imply a charge of any special degree of cruelty against them. No nation ever carried on war without plundering and massacring its enemies ; at the same time there are not wanting indications, such as burning vilbges and the like, that the Prussians are becoming brutalised by the continuance of the war. If the stories about Bazeilles are true, they will be able to take very little credit, indeed, to themselves on the score of humanity. Because the last telegrams state that there was a difference of opinion between the Tours Government and the Paris officials in regard to an armistice proposed by England and some of the other neutrals, about the middle of October last, that surely cannot be taken to prove that Prussia had not the offer of magnificent terms of peace from France, through M. Jules Favre, in his interview with Bismark in September. The terms then offered, so far as we can recollect, included the dismantlement of the fortresses in Alsace and Lorraine, the payment of on enormous war indemnity, and the surrender of a large proportion of France's iron-clad fleet. Nothing short of cession of territory, however, would be looked at by Prussia. Most likely any other nation, in the same circumstances, would have been just as little disposed to forego her chances of aggrandizement. She remembered how long she had sat, like a surly but rather magnanimous mastiff, answering the yelpings of the Gallic bull-terrier by growls only. Now that she has him by the throat, she means to stick to it, as, mutatis mutundis, her own throat would have been stuck to. " Serve him right," cry the human lookers-on, but the divine — can they be expected to join in such a chorus ? The impassive, clear-headed Eerliners will, no doubt, regard the religious festival as a capital joke, but it will have its due effect among the provincials, otherwise it would not be resorted to. Pietism and militarism seem to jumble themselves up together quite naturally in the Prussian mind, not now for the first time, but all through their history. Fre- i derick William, father of the grent Frederick, did not know much' about theology, but he had one theological idea deeply imprinted on bis mind, " that desertion was from heU ; the work of the children of the devil ; a crime of which no child of God could possibly be guilty ; " and his fieldmarshal, the "Old-Dessaner," the inventor of the modern system of military tactics, took an equally remarkable view of Luther's famous hymn, " Mine feste burg ist wiser Gott" (a strong tower is our God). " God Almighty's grenadier march" he called it. So long as we havo no manufactures among us, the youth of our country will be at a great disadvantage beside the youth of other countries. In other countries there are abundant opportunities for. giving them a training in one department or another of skilled labor. Here they must either be navvies,' shepherds, or shopmen. Sir Charles Dilke, when in Melbourne, though a violent free-trader himself, observed that it was impossiblenotto admire the spirit of the Victorian working class, submitting willingly to an increase in the price of the necessaries of life, in order that their children might have an opportunity of rising in the world by some other road than either farming or shopkeeping. Sir Charles Dilke's admiration was, in all probability, misplaced, as it is much more likely that the Victorians were induced to establish protection by the hope of immediate profit, than by any such farsighted and disinterested motives as he attributed to them ; but as there are some people in the world who may be actuated by motives of this description, it is as well to

keep always a few ai'gumonfcs applicable to their peculiar mental constitu* ion in hand, ready to serve them out as required. Another reason why it is desirable toj have native manufactures established, is that tht!!!* existence among us would allow of .our drawing upon a much less exhaustible source for emigrants than we can at present draw upon. In the meantime we can offer; no inducement to anyone but an agriculturist to come and settle amongst us, thus we lose, the opportunity of replenishing our population from the most intelligent class among our countrymen.

It has long been a problem with statesmen, whether it will ever be possible for France to make a steady progress in the direction of freedom, und if so, under what conditions as regards her political institutions. Hitherto it seems as if she were only destined to proceed from catastrophe to catastrophe, luxuriating in a revolution once In every score of years, only to fall, as soon as the excitement is over, into the clutches of a citizen-king, or a Csosar. The Yankee idea on the subject has a good deal that can be said in its favor. It is that a republic, in order to last, must be a federation of small states, on the United States, or Swiss Canton, principle. As long as there is one central authority, they say, which has the right of appointing all the minor authorities throughout the country, so long will the state be liable to be placed, at any moment, at the mercy of one man. That fcgedom,.may be built on a lasting foundation, it is necessary that there should be a thorough dispersion of power. Each state, or canton, or depart-, ment, as the case may be, managing, all its own internal affairs, and combining with the others merely for the purpose of common defence, common customs duties, and a few other things which are obviously better managed by a consolidation of resources. The instance is worth taking a note of by the first orator who wishes to preserve the " sacred fire of provincialism " (see Hansa7'd_) from summary extinction ; or to save the "Christian Martyr," (see Hansard) who, allegorically, represents the same entity, from destruction at the hands of her savage peraecutors.

"Knock the Province on the head" (the Independent says) is a common cry in Wellington at present, one too, which it will set itself to show the impropriety and futility of. It shows, at least, the desirableness of putting off the knocking on the head process till His Honor the Superintendent cornea home to preside at it. The opinion meant to be expressed by this ferocious metaphor is, that the Provincial Government should cease to exist, and that the present electoral districts should be formed into municipalities, invested with powers of local self-govern-ment. What, precisely, the agitators think would be gained by carrying out such a scheme does not appear. The cost of the Provincial Government perhaps ; but Wellington would have, instead, half-a-dozen municipal governments, which would oost, in the aggregate, much more. To gain more efficiency in the conduct of affairs ? One would think not. The class of men selected by the municipalities would be , worse even than the present Provincial Council, though that would seem hardly possible ; evidently the more that the ratio of the representatives to population is enlarged, the . worse will the representatives become ; after the best men are taken you must fall back on the second rate ones. Altogether it does not seem clear what the Province in the concrete, would gain by knocking the Province in the abstract, on the head.