NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7658, 8 June 1886, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Me. John Leydon, having determinod to go to Kimberley, advertises his selling off. Notices of certain alterations in the trams to and from Newmarket are given in our advertising columns. Several of the Southern papers, including tha Otago Daily Times, are opposed to a lavish expenditure on the Otago Central line. The Rev. W. Poole, one of the saved passengers from on board the ill-fated Ly-ee-moon, was at one time sub-editor of the Melbourne Age. Some home papers are discussing the question, what is a syndicate? The phrase has lately become familiar to us, but the thing itself has long been familiar under the name of a *' ring.'' The Wellington correspondent of the Dunedin EveniDg Star informs that journal that the costs of the recent libel case of Stewart v. Wakefield and Roydhouse amounted to £1700, those of the plaintiff alone reaching £1050. The Customs revenue and beer duty collected at Napier in May show an improvement on those for the corresponding month last year to the amount of £679 on Customs and £63 on beer. The increase in the Customs is principally on spirits. A sad record for the N.Z. Alliance ! The Customs duties collected at Wellington for the month of Mav amounted to £19,716, of which only £33G4 was contributed by ad valorem, and yet the Premier iu his Napier speech said our tariff had an ad valorem basis, hence the falling away in the revenue returns. The above figures afford a good contradiction to his statement. ■ "Policyholder," writing to the Napier Telegraph, wants to know whether Mr. Graham, who is seeking re-election to a scat on the Government Life Insuranoe Board, has not two brothers in the service of the association, and whether those two relatives of his did not get their appointments after Mr. Graham got on the Board ? The Napier Telegraph is of opinion that Mr. Ballance's Native Lands Administration Bill, of which so much has been heard during the recess, would, if carried, bring about the complete ruin of nearly all the occupiers of native land on the East Coast. The measure is now before the members, but the editor thinks it will most likely find its way ere long into the waste paper basket.