AUSTRALIA.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12700, 8 March 1904, Page 3

AUSTRALIA.

JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE. (Received March 7, 11.15 p.m.) SYDNEY, Monday. Mr Arthur Griffith, an ex-Labour member of the Legislative Assembly, in a letter to the press, replies to Mr Justice Stephen. He says that Parliament never attempted to reduce the judge’s salary, but simply refused to vote him a large gratuity over and above his legal salary. He denies that he ever wrote to the judge complaining of a judgment given against him. He says: “After the case had been settled I wrote to him respectfully poftiting out a very serious misstatement which he had made regarding a matter of fact while delivering judgment, and asking him, as a gentleman who had injured another, to do me justice in acknowledging and correcting his fault. The judgment ‘of the court I never questioned. That Mr Justice Stephen should attempt To connect in the public mind my failure to win a verdict in a lawsuit and my subsequent action as a representative of the people in opposing what I considered an improper grant of public money to a highly-paid public servant, is to my mind altogether contemptible.”

THE PLAGUE. (Received March 7, 11.15 p.m.) SYDNEY, Monday. A plagued mouse was discovered in the Grafton Bond, the first trace of the disease since the finding of a rat in August last.

THE BIRTH-RATE. SYDNEY, Monday. The Birth-rate Commission, in the course of their report, allowing the same ratio of decline for New South Wales as for the other States, estimate that in the period from 1864 to 1902 Australasia, through the reduction of the birth-rate, lost 940,000 in population. Legislative regulation of employment had not yet, so far as could be traced by statistics, had any tangible influence on the birth-rate, but the commission could not overlook the fact that restrictive regulation of trade effectually interferes with the continuity of employment in many walks of life, so that a man’s income is more or less precarious, which cannot fail to indirectly discourage the existence of large families. Dealing with the relation between the fall in the birthrate and insanity, the report says;— “In New Zealand the birth-rate has fallen almost continuously since 1878. The insanity rate has had a slight but uniformly upward tendency since 1874, and this tendency became pronounced in 1878.” Comparing New Zealand with New South Wales, both the fall in the bfrlh-rate and the rise in the insanity rate have been of greater intensity in New Zealand than in New South Wales. In the birth-rate, taking ten years to 1900, New Zealand comes sixth (not fifth). Tasmania, which occupies seventh place, alone of the Australasian States occupies a better position with a decline of from 31.9 to 28.2. In Western Australia the decline was from 35.6 to 30.7, Queensland from 36.4 to 30.2, Victoria from 33.6 to 26.8, and South Australia from 33.9 to 25.8.

AN ISLAND WRECK. SYDNEY, Monday. The captain of the Elbe states that the steamer was driven ashore at Ocean Island in a storm which suddenly arose on January 23rd. She was loading phosphates. The captain was ashore at the lime, and the crew escaped safely. The steamer remained hard and fast till the 15th, when the tide lifted her clear of the reef. She was got into deep water but was found to be leaking so badly that she was run ashore again to prevent her sinking. When the crew left she was hanging on the reef almost perpendicularly, a total wreck. She was sold to the Pacific Islands Company for £7O. The crew came to Sydney in the steamer Windsor, which called at the islands on the 20th. It is reported that daring attempts were made to claim the Elbe after the crew had temporarily left her, and force had to be employed to drive off the intruders The captain will probably report to the German consul on tie matter.