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New Zealand Mail, Issue 767, 12 November 1886, Page 23

The decision of the Wellington Cricket Association to play a team of eighteen against the Australian team, although doubtless highly creditable as far as boldness and courage are concerned, may be looked at from another point of view from which it does not appear altogether wise. In Auckland, where cricket has alway* been well played, and where they have the assistance of Mr Barton, the best batsman in New Zealand, the Cricket Association has decided to play twentytwo. It is a question, then, whether the Wellington Province is justified either in putting itself above the province mentioned, or in selecting a smaller number of players to represent it than have been selected in a place where cricket is certainly equal to that of Wellington, if not superior. Possibly the Association may reconsider their decision.

Grave complaints reach us as to the manner in which some persons occupying presumably respectable positions, behaved at the Railway celebration of last week. These ill-conditioned fellows disgraced themselves by drinking to excess, at their hosts’ expense of course, and then, while in a state of beastly intoxication, conducting themselves in a -most gross manner in the railway carriages where ladies were present. It" is to be hoped that these drunken brutes will meet with their reward by finding every decent house closed against them in future. Their behaviour was a shameful abuse of hospitality.

The report of the Royal Commission on the Stark Purchase was received by tho Government on Saturday. Its purport has been so fully anticipated by the telegraphic reports of the proceedings that it calls for little notice now. The Commissions find that the allegations of conspiracy to defraud the Government were not sustained by the evidence, and that although the price paid for the laud was in excess of its value, there w;s3 no irregularity in the mode of conducting or completing the purchase. The Minister for Public Works, Mr Brewer, and Mr Seaman, are all acquitted of blame, and the allusion which had been made to the Colonial Treasurer is pronounced “ baseless, malevolent and unworthy of notice.” No surprise will be created by the outcome of this inquiry, which has been from the first more or less of a solemn farce. Whether the Commission has reallv got to the bottom of the affair is a question on which some difference of opinion may exist ; but it is idle to discuss the matter any further.