BY WAY OF CANADA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 898, 17 May 1889, Page 12

BY WAY OF CANADA.

Judging from certain items in recent cable messages the question of establishing telegraphic and steam com-

munication between England and the Australasian colonies by way of Canada is receiving more and more attention, and bids fair to evolve ere long some definite results. The proposed LIOO,OOO subsidy to an Anglo-Australian mail service via Vancouver ought to go a long way in facilitating the establishment of this service, which is one likely to be far more beneficial alike to these colonies and to the Empire than the San Francisco line. We strongly suspect that we have not yet come nearly to the limit of the lengths which the United States would go for the sake of maintaining regular steam communication with these colonics. It is quite on the cards that if only New Zealand holds out firmly we may get a better San Francisco service than the present one without paying any subsidy at all, especially if this Vancouver project prove a success. As for the Pacific Telegraph Cable, that ought to be deemed an essential strategic feature in a complete system of Imperial defence. It is assuredly essential to safety in the event of war.

Among the inore prominent business which will be brought forward are the following Bills : —Electoral, Hospitals, Charitable Aid, Chattel Securities, Patents, Industrial Designs and Trade Marks, Medical Practitioners, Copyright and Libel Act Amendment. It is understood that the Civil Service Reform and Classification Bill will also be among the number. As already mentioned these Bills have not yet been formally approved by the Cabinet, so aity sketch of their provisions must necessarily be taken as only approximately accurate.

The provisions in reference to hospitals and charitable aid will be embodied in two distinct Bills, instead of being lumped together in one measure as at present. Both will be framed on the lines indicated by the Premier in his Hawera speech, and both will be based on the same main principle. The intention is to simplify administration, to vest it more in local bodies than at present, and to adopt the system of subsidising in proportion to the number of cases dealt with —of patients in the one instance and of paupers in the other—and not merely in proportion to the sums raised locally by subscription or otherwise. The pauperfarm scheme has been referred to before, as has also the proposal to charge on the Consolidated Fund certain specified cases of hopeless pauperism.

The Electoral Bill will, in all probability, Do a very close reproduction of last year’s Bill. The Hare system will again be proposed for adoption in a somewhat modified shape, but it is not yet decided what size the districts shall be, or how they shall be grouped.

One of the earliest measures to be introduced will be the Medical Practitioners Bill, which provides'for the establishment and incorporation of a Medical Council, and for the manner in which the Medical Register is to be carried on.

By the Chattel Securities Bill the laws relating to this subject will be consolidated and simplified so as to lessen the heavy expenses now often associated with bills of sale. This will partly be effected by introducing a new method of definition, interpretation and specification, which will obviate to a great extent the present need of voluminous and elaborate descriptions in the bills of sale.

Consolidation aud simplification will also be mainly aimed at in the measure relative to patents, industrial designs, trade marks, &c. The provisions now in force in Great Britain will, so far as prac • ticable, bo incorporated in the proposed neiv legislation on these points.

LAMPBREAKING.

A pparently the rascally

imps who infest certain parts of this city have decided that Wellington shall

not be electrically lighted. At all events they are doing their utmost, by breaking as many as possible of the lamps, to prevent the introduction of the electric light. “They love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.” And so whenever nobody is looking—smash goes a lamp ! The police seem uttei’ly impotent to suppress this persistent practice of stone-throwing, and the magistrates by the idiotically lenient punishments which they generally impose for larrikmism do all in their power to encourage the pest. But surely the 30,000 citizens of Wellington are not to be deprived of the long-expected improvement in illumination merely because a pack of wretched cubs are permitted to wreak mischief and destruction as they please ? Yet if the lamp-smashing goes on at the present rate, large portions of the city will nightly be left in darkness. It is high time that sharp and severe measures were taken to repress this wilful mischief. The police certainly should be able to lay hands on some of the perpetrators and these if brought to Court should be dealt with with unsparing severity. If they are of an age at which corporal punishment can be prescribed, this should be inflicted with relentless rigour, and heavy pecuniary penalties should also be imposed, with the object of reaching the parents, who, in many cases, by failing to bring up their children better, are really responsible for their misdeeds. If the money penalty should exasperate stern parents into superadding a sound thrashing of their own to the official birching, so much the better. This would quickly have the happy effect of suppressing a nuisance which is becoming intolerable, and it would be for the great benefit of the detestable imps themselves.