CLIPPINGS OF THE MONTH.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1632, 9 March 1866, Page 3

CLIPPINGS OF THE MONTH.

{From the Spectator of December.) We rejoice to report that the Queen has officially announced her intention to open the new Parliament in person, if her state of health at the time permit—of such we trust there is every reasonable hope. The duty of leading society must be —to any one who does not really enjoy it —-about the most irksome that is discharged on the face of the British Isles, and the Queen is doubtless making a great sacrifice when she promises to begin that manotonous work of little meaning, and yet clear obligation again.

It is announced semi-officially that the Princess Helena, now nearly twenty, is [about to be betrothed to Prince Christian, of Augustenburg, younger brother of the pretender to SchleswigHolstein. This gentleman, who is the younger son of a mediatized Duke, without power, people, or estates, is said to have been selected " because he has neither principality nor functions," and can therefore allow his wife to remain in England, which Her Majesty greatly desires. As the Queen, who i' must be remembered, accepted Mr. Neeld's bequest of more than a quarter of a million, must now be immensely rich, and can endow such children as need it with princely fortunes, there seems no reason why the nation should demur to an alliance which can scarcely be acceptable to all members of the Royal House. A Princess of Denmark, a Princess of Prussia, a Princess of Augustenburg, all sisters-in-law —surely the quarrels of kings cannot be quite internecine if that group is possible.

Mr. Bright's speech at Blackburn — which as regards its invective against the Tories we have discussed elsewhere — was so studiously conciliatory towards the Liberal Government, and so flavoured with a prescriptive tinge of feeling almost worthy of a Whig in some of its sentences, that it will be regarded by many as a bid for office. He said "the new administration is composed of men probably more entitled to confidence than any other administration of our time." And he trusted that the last years of Lord 'Russell's life " would be sweetened by the thought that &od has twice enabled him to render signal service in the glorious work of building upon i broader and monft lasting foundations the ancient liberties of his country." We do not ourselves put the interpretation of a bid on Mr. Bright's language, for we believe him to be a single-minded politician, and we know that he has repeatedly, even in his most virulent Radical speeches, contrasted Lord Russell favourably with all our other contemporary statesmen. Towards all our institutions, except the Tories, however, his speech ; was wonderfully moderate, and his only fling even at the House of Lords was in the potential mood. If, he said, the Tories had succeeded in obstructing all reforms for the last forty years, "the House of Lords mould in all human probability have been emptied into the Thames." A conditional proposition, conditional, too, by an hypothesis contrary to the fact, is an excellent safety-valve for the feeling of such a man as Mr. Bright. The minds of English people are very lightly stirred by thinking of what

'would have happened " —even to sacred beings like peers—under a contingency which has not occurred ; and while it has the great advantage of alarming nobody, we do not see but what, in an artistic point of view, it

has quite as good an oratorical effect as more scathing and penetrating sarcasms.

Mr. W. E. Forster has accepted the Under-Secretaryship to the Colonies, and his appointment has _ been received with general approbation by all the Liberal party and most of the Liberal journals, the Times alone excepted, which acquiesced sulkily in the inevitable. It is a fact not generally known that Under-Secretaries do not vacate their seats—the theory being that they are not technically Ministers of the Crown, which even Junior Lords of the Treasury are. Mr. Gocshen as Vice-President of the Board of Trade, must be re-elected for the City, and Mr. Chichester Fortescque for Louth; but the member for Bradford remains member for Bradford still.

Another British ship has burnt another town, this time we are happy to say blamelessly. A person named Salnave, leading a rebellion against President Geffrard, perhaps the ablest negro alive, has obtained possession of Cape Haytien, and kills opponents unscrupulously . The British Consul protected a few, Salnave demanded them, the Consul refused them, and Salnave had them shot. The Consul complained to the captain of H.M.'s gunboat Bulldog, who demanded satisfaction, and received first an insult, and secondly a shot from the fort. Of course be replied, destroyed the fort, sunk a steamer which also fired into him, and unfortunately lost his gunboat on a rock in the harbour. He and his men were, however, rescued by a Haytien steamer, and he has been conveyed to Port-au-Prince, to be congratulated for his courage—which, by the way, was really splendid—by the legal President of the Republic. Napoleon, it is known, never blunders. It is presumed therefore that the French like long accounts of little plays acted before and by the French Court, in which the great people act grotesque parts—the Princess Mettenrich, for example, acting a cabman, and the Imperial Prince representing the Future. One wonders how that last idea was conveyed. Was the child trampling down the Red Spectre, or was the Revolution swallowing him, or was he perchance dressed like a waiter, with the perpetual catch-word "coming ? " The dispute between Captain Jcrvis and the majority of the Directors of Great Eastern Railway has broken out in a new place. The majority sent down a clerk name Beck to collect some facts at the Railway Hotel, Harwich, or as Captain Jervis says, to spy upon him. Jervis ordered him out, and as he did not go turned him out with more or less violence. Mr. Beck charged him before the magistrates with assault, but the Bench held that the hotel being the property _of the railway company, Captain Jervis had a right to order anybody out of it. If that decision is correct, travellers should carefully avoid railway hotels. They may tread on some director's toes without knowing it, and may be ordered out summarily, or led off to execution, or something equally illegal, If Captain Jervis is legally an innkeeper, as he claims to be, he must admit travellers, and the name of Mr. Beck's employers had nothing on earth to do with the matter.

Dr. Temple has addressed a letter to the Timos, in which he argued in favour of admitting students to Oxford without obliging them to reside in any college. They would then, like the students of Edinburgh, live where they pleased, and could, Dr. Temple thinks, obtain a university education for £50 a year. The objection to this scheme is, we think, that it would secure a little too much. Independence would in a few years become the fashion, and the colleges would be deserted. The way to prevent this is to grant the permission only when justified by poverty, but this, again, would tend to affix a stigma to non-residence which is in many ways injurious to the character. Would it not be possible to abolish in favour of such students all college fees whatsoever, those for commons and rooms included, without drawing any visible distinction between classes ?

The Kanieri. —Mining matters at the Kanieri are exceedingly brisk, one engine being already at work, whilst the preparations for receiving others are in a forward state. The large 46-horse pcfcrer boiler has been safely landed a little above the township, and is now being transported on ways to its intended position close to Lyttelton street. The parties who own this plant have formed themselves into a company under the title of the Westland Steam Drainage Company. They are six in number, and gave notice of registration on Monday last. The Star Steam Pumping Company is a great success. It commenced working on Monday, and answers admirably. — West Coast Times, March Ist.