RIFLES AND RATES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXI, Issue 15488, 14 December 1910, Page 8

RIFLES AND RATES.

As a sort of corrective, we suppose, to its startling story of the Ulster Unionist Council advertising in Germany for a large supply of rifles, the Press Association tells us this morning that the Earl of Aberdeen docs not think the concession of locai selfgovernment to Ireland will result in civil war, " After continuous residence in Ireland for years, watching affairs, and meeting people ol every class and creed," his lordship writes,

" I am profoundly impressed concerning the absolute baselessness oi the alarm about the consequences of Home Rule." Possibly the story about the rifles, improbable as it may seem at sight, may have some foundation in fact. It would be quite easy for the Ulster Unionist Council, in its zeal for the Conservative cause, to send an advertisement, to one oi the Berlin newspapers asking for fire-arms, but its purpose would be to alarm the timid British electors, not to secure the means lor indiscriminate shooting.

Perhaps we have an echo of the same kind of thing i n another cablegram wo publish thi s morning, stating that the underwriters have decided to raise the rates of insurance on steamers carrying frozen meat, on account of tho labour legislation' in Australia and New Zealand. If this really refcls to the steamers and not to their cargoes we must assii me that the underwriters imagine that a vessel manned by a white crew will be in greater peril than one manned by a coloured crew. Wo know of n o other change likely to bo brought about by recent legislation that can affect their interests. But we suspect that the cable agent has again been confused by the election squibs that nro flying about at Home and that the raised insurance rates will prove just as nebulous as the German rifles.