Current Topics.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1037, 15 January 1892, Page 30

Current Topics.

With reference to the particulars of the property tax paid by Mr Bell, we have been in communication with Mr Crombie, wjio has stated to us that no Minister, not even the Minister in charge, has access to the confidential figures of the Department ; that no Minister or any one else outside the Department knows what tax any one pays, or how his assessment is made up. About land values, there is, of course, no secrecy, as the valuations of the Property Tax Department" are the basis for the valuation rolls of the local bodies. No Minister, Mr Crombie added, has ever applied for information of a confidential nature since the Department was formed, and none, he is sure, would ever have thought of doiug so ; and, of course, if any Minister had applied he would have been refused. We accept Mr Crombie’s statement, and we may say at once that no one ever for a moment had even a passing thought that the Commissioner aud his officers were false to their trust.

When Mark Twain wrote that wonderful series of chapters on the steamboat life of the Mississippi, he was not Mark Twai at all. The popularity which that book got him made his nom ch so famous that the majority of his readers know him by no other. uc i_ < person as Samuel L. Clemens is to nine out of every ten of them a total strangei. “ Clemens, who’s he ? I know the man who nearly made me die with the ‘ Jumping Frog ;’ I know the man l o got the world to follow the ‘lnnocents Abroad ’ with such extraordinary delight , I know him who described the volcano of Kilauea so vividly that you could iust see the flames leaping m tnc crater and the promontories tumbling into the fire ; I know the man who described the Blue Jay shovelling acorns into a hut through a hole in the roof. I know the creator of the arunken hotel guest who tried to pour Rhenish out of a corked flask, and formed a wild notion that his right and left neighbours, an old clergyman and a maiden lady ot commanding age, must have emptied it. I know the delightful creator of. Tom Sawyer, and the" little Prince and the little Pauper. That’s Mark Twain. But Clemens, who’s he, anyway 1S a little speech we once heard ourselves, showing forcibly that there is e^ ei ' something or nothing in a name. concerns us chiefly is that we mive received six letters from the pen of both Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens—are they not the same. We are delighted with the letters, and concerned that there are no more of them.

The cable artist who told us that there is a hitch in the Behripg Sea negotiations because a modification is required iu the agreement, ought to have had. the common sense to give us particulars of the modifications. But perhaps he did not know the terms of the agreement itself. Now that we come to think <f it, we find that nobody outside the inner official circle appears to know them. The last thing we have seen on the subject is a suggestion ; the suggestion of an American journal, for a committee of three, viz., the Kaiser of Germany to act for Great Britain, the Czar of Russia to act for the United States; the President of the Swiss Republic, who does not live anywhere near the sea, and is thereiore sure to be impartial in marine matters, to be the umpire between them. Jbrom the uncertainty prevailing a month ago in America on this subject, we presume that the hitch in the negotiations means that the question of the arbitrators is delaying the arbitration.

The American House of Representatives lias done the right thing for the wrong reason. It is wrong to refuse help to the Russian peasants because the Russian oppressors of the peasants also oppress the Jews. But it would be equally absurd to send large food supplies into the hands of peculating officials, without any hope of their ever reaching the unhappy peasants. The leading feature of the situation is that the Valley of the •Valera is hermetically sealed by—no roads, no beasts of burden, nothing to feed transport animals with, a frozen river, only one strategic railway. The rest of the country lias plenty of food, but it cannot be taken into the Valley of the Volga, which is become the valley of death.

It seems a curious thing that the tenders of the Te Aro Railway should have been called for before the City Council and the Harbour Board had been consulted about chat work. . They are the two governing bodies vitally affected by the railway, the one in its streets, and the other in its wharves and general management of the harbour. Fortunately they are both on the alert, and have accordingly brought their ideas before the Premier. What they have asked for is 7ery simple, and very reasonable, and very necessary for the public convenience. The idea of making a railway within a few yards of a colliers’ wharf, without thinking of making provision for a siding to get railway trucks alongside, must surely represent an oversight; so must the destruction of the boat harbour without giving notice to the Harbour Board. However, no harm has been done, and the alterations required in the plans are but small. But though small, tlie reasons in their favour are overwhelming.

The world is discovering by degrees what the Anarchists are made of. Their tenets have been en evidence for a great many years, but most people considered these as mere froth, much like the words of the celebrated Ancient Pistol, who, when the pinch came, swallowed the leek. He said that “ All Hell should stir for this," bub he took great care to swallow the obnoxious vegetable nevertheless. Men could not believe that the atrocious doctrines of the Anarchists could ever get beyond the filmiest regions of the very wildest theory. Everything must be broken up, everybody who has anything must be destroyed, before plans can be drawn for building up the new order of things. That is the theory. Human nature cannot believe in the possibility of its being held seriously for a moment as anything

more practical than a dream. Bub of late years the Anarchists have taken some pains to make the world consider them in another and less favourable light. Bombs thrown among crowds have persuaded men to believ e that there is more practical wickedness m their sect than for a long time met the eve. On the Continent of Europe, where these people are known, they nave been Ion" feared. In the United States their true character was suspected at Chictigo a few years ago ; and only the other day the police made short work of some rather extensile preparations they had made in Chicago and Philadelphia for celebrating the memory of the Chicago executions At the same moment the police weie on their track in England, and, as recent cables inform us have succeeded m makin" a most notable and extensive capture. The Anarchists are shown m their true colours, and they have bee ? taught that in free countries the law is very careful to prevent liberty from degenerating to license.

General Booth has nominated his eldest dan "liter as his successor in the supreme command of that Salvation Army vv nc 1 has numerous corps in all parts or tne world, and we presume she will succeed to the funds and the property now standing in the name solely of General Booth. Hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash, and other material property, wi'l by that time have come into and accumu ated m the hands of the great commander of the Army. How is it to be spent, who is responsible for the expenditure, where is the audit of the accounts ? Are all Ihese funds to be left in the hands of the General and his fair successor, in perpertuctm, and without any controlling autnority? These are questions to which those of the public who subscribe to the cause will be apt to desire to obtain answers. It is a tribute to the sex no doubt that the founder’s daughter is selected as his successur. _ The great work—and unquestionably it has been a great work—of organisation has been effected, and to a large extent, it may continue to run with less supervision lliau was necessary in its earlier . years. Nevertheless it requires a genius , for command, and before this lady will he a task which few of her sex would be able to undertake. Even assuming her capacity to supervise, there should, without doubt, be some intimate board or council to look after the finance, and see to the disposal of funds to which the public are understood to be extensive donors. When the old gentleman dies the testator’s daughter will have a difficult game to play before she can satisfy her numerous subordinate officers and the generous public whose funds she. will have to administer.

The people who dream fairy dreams are the land owners whose property is so situated as to give them a prospect of getting compensation for benefits conferred. The railways of the Odony, for example, have quadrupled the value of many a property, but to each property owner they have had to pay fabulous sums in exchange for small slips taken off for the road bed, and nothing has been allowed as a set off in consideration of the value of the balance of the property improved beyond recognition. Perhaps one of the reasons why so many property owners denounce the railway policy of the last twenty years is that the policy was a revelation of their power of asking compensation. But what are they to the London property owners ? We read in The Times of the 20th of November that the South Eastern railway company coveted a piece of land 16 feet deep, mid comprising an area of 4134 superficial feet. The land was of little use tlie owner, but what did that matter ? The railway company wanted it ; he asked L 1,250,000 for it; which is at the rate of’ thirteen million pounds sterling per acre. The company is still without that land, and its owner is still without a use for it.

A correspondent writes irom Karori expressing disappointment that Mr McLean did not at his last meeiing there enlighten the electors about the policy of the Government. Our correspondent must be easily disappointed, for every child in Wellington knows quite well that Mr McLean is incapable .of explaining to the electors anything in the whole field of politics. He makes impassioned appeals to the electors to trust him ; he fervidly informs them that capital is not taking wing ; and he abuses his opponent, after which some member of the Government declares that he is everything he ought |to be. We have every confidence in the bulk of the electors that they will not be led away by stuff of this kind, - even when backed up by irrelevant parade of the “ Continuous Ministry,” which is dead, and pathetic appeals for the life of the Ministry, which is not threatened in. the least on the present occasion. But if the Government were threatened, the obvious thing to be said is that a Government which depends on politicians of the McLean stamp deserves to fall.

Lord Coleridge’s proposal for the appointment of a Council of Judges to con-

sider the practice of the Law Courts, the uniformity of sentences, and the costliness of litigation and appeals, is a proposal to radio illy reform the practice of the law. The practice in the matter of sentences is simply a scandal to the administration — e.rj. , the other day a ruffian for threatening to murder some women was sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude, while many ruffians who have brutally caused the deaths of their wives have got off for brief terms of punishment. Moreover, 'the law is a 3 a rule ferocious towards crimes against property, and mild about crimes against the person. But.it is idle to multiply instances ; the fact is notorious that the penalties of the law are governed either by no principle at all, or by a vicious principle. As for the cost of litigation and appeals, no one doubts that. There is pressing need for reform in the penal department and in the financial department. If the proposal of the Chief Justice of England produces the necessary reform it will be a boon to to the whole Empire, and perhaps to the whole English-speaking world.

If it be true that the Dublin. Castle explosion is the result of a criminal act, then it is one of the most deplorable occurrences in Irish-American political crime that has, as we said the other day, happened since the Phoenix Park crime. Ac no time could such an affair of so criminal a complexion have been more inopportune (if opportunism is allowable in such connection), for at no time for many years lias Ireland displayed such recupera'ive power, such increase of wealth, such reduction of pauperism, such marked decrease of crime, and such excell-nt evidence of increased comfort throughout her domain. Lord George Hamilton, MP. for Eiding, First Lord of the Admiralty, addressed a public meeting in Dalkeith in November last. Referring to the condition of Ireland, he said that so many myths had passed for truth as to that condition that he would lay before them a few statistical facts ; avid these, as he narrates them, are certainly satisfactory to all who desire the peace and prosperity of Britain’s sister island. He showed that at the present moment Ireland is quieter and more prosperous than she has been for twenty years before, “ except where the two factions were fighting.” The gaols and workhouses are steadily emptying; the deposits in the savings banks are steadily increasing—two facts which, he rightly concluded, form a true test of the favourable progress of the country. .After the Salisbury Government came into offic* tbe total of indictable offences was 30 per cent less than it had been during the same period under Mr Gladstone’s ad minis'ration. Agrarian crime had been reduced 50 per cent, and pauperism 11 per cent. The number of evictions during 1891 was 63 percent less than the last year of Mr Gladstone’s term of office. Boyc .tting cases', which formerly numbered 5000. were now only 400, or a reduction of 1250 per cent. The deposits in the joint stock hanks showed an increase at the rate of 15 per cent, and in the savings hanks of 50 per cent, while the increase in the railway receipts are 13 per rent. These are all very substantial and highly satisfactory evidences of progressand prosperity, and if the continued presence of that alliterative word, Peace, could be steadfastly maintained throughout Ireland, and the fights between the two factions fairly terminated, no country need enjoy a prosperity greater than that which Ireland may secure. With such marked signs of growing trade, and personal comfort, as the statistics given specify, it is fervently to be wished that all trouble and all factional outrage, or its semblance, may be entirely obliterated. It is a question of Peace and Prosperit} 7 as a"ainst faction fights and baleful outrage! If the Irish people are wise, faction and outrage will die, banking deposits will continue to grow apace —a certain' sign of the growing welfare of any people.

There is one reflection which the Australian reports about Lord . Onslow s resignation suggest. It is obvious ; but though obvious, has never been made. We are invited by these critics to believe that if the citizens of Wellington had adopted the proposal for a drainage scheme last year, the Governor would not have resigned. Now, if the citizens had adopted the scheme, the city could not have received any benefit for some years. Some four years would have been required for the completion of the scheme. For the greater bulk or that period the condition of the city and of Government House would have been no better than/ it is now, and before the expiration of the period Lord Onslow s term of office would have expired by effluxion of time. It is too much to believe that he has resigned because the citizens have refused to adopt a scheme of drainage which could not possibly produce any effect for the better during liis term of office.

The bacillus of influenza is discovered at last—i.e., there are two claimants of discovery. One is tlie famous Dr Koch, of Berlin, who claims on behalf of liis son-in-law ; the other is an unknown China-

man named Cheong, unknown except in the butter trade. The Germans have inoculated and killed sundry animals with tlieir bacillus, amongst them a monkey. The Chinaman has injured nothing, nor has he established that the tiling he took out of the body of a patient of his was a bacillus at all. The specimen was too dessicated for the scientific men to examine with any hope of success. Dr Cheong therefore has been asked to send some more in a liquid furnished him for the purpose. In the meantime we may dwell upon the superiority the Chinese theory has over the German. The German theory advances no farther than the bacillus ; having got his hare, your German does not know how to cook him —just Ivoch’s position with the bacillus of consumption. The Chinaman says, “ I find the microbe and I burst him up.” His theory is simple. The bacillus netting into the system, makes a web under the skin, spreading, disturbing, paralysing. The Chinaman says he has found that the whole power of the web departs if the web is broken. He, therefore, concentrates his efforts on finding the web. Once found, he breaks it ; and the patient is at once relieved, and eveutually cured. During the last few days he has reported several cases much improved by this method. There appears to be some sense in the Chinaman. We only hope he may go on and prosper. The world wants a remedy, and does not care very much where it comes from so long as it comes.

The American President’s reminder that the sugar duties will be levied in March will give a shock to public feeling in Hawaii. Hitherto the sugar from there has by special arrangement been permitted to enter the United States free of duty. When the Suuar Bounties Act was passed, and the McKinley Tariff Act with its reciprocity provisions, there was consternation among the sugar planters, chiefly Americans, of Hawaii. Then it was that we heard those mysterious whispers of American annexation. If Hawaii could only become part of the United States the sugar planters would receive a bounty of two cents per pound, instead of having to pay duty, to get their sugar into market ; under which circumstances they would not fear the reciprocity sugar of Cuba and Brazil. But the whisper of annexation nover grew loud enough to impress Congress, which is now telling the Hawaiian planters that they made a mistake when they mistook a temporary pleasant arrangement for a permanent one, and exhorting them to thank their stars that it lasted so long.

Tewfik, the Khedive, the gentlest of his race, and the most upright, is dead. His greatgrandfather, Mohammed Ali,wasthe most masterful and powerful ruler who has arisen in the Turkish Empire since the days of <he last ol the great Ottoman Sultans. Had he been left to himself he would have seized the throne of those Sultans and left his family upon it ; and who knows if it might not have been a better thing for Turkey than the grasp of the wretched family that reigns in Stam ■ boul to-day. ? For colossal perfidy this Mohammed takes rank, thanks to his massacre of the Mamelukes, with the first monster of history, whose number, happily for human nature, is not large. His son Ibrahim had the military talent of his father ; he showed it by conquering and holding the Soudan, a task which has baffled some good soldiers since his time ; but he reigned but a short while. By the way, it was in the pell mell defeats inflicted on the Turkish troops in Syria by this very Ibrahim that Yon Moltke got his first and most valuable lessons in war. Two sons of Mohammed succeeded Ibrahim, Abba 3 and Said, the latter of whom began the Suez Canal. The fifth Khedive was Ismail, the prodigal who dreamed a dream of Empire from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, but, running his country into disastrous debt, was deposed and exiled —not without many wriggffngs, and not before he had bribed his Suzerain, the Sultan, to bestow upon his branch of the family the right of succession. It was Ismail who entertained half the European sovereigns with such extraordinary magnificence at the opening of the Suez Canal, and it was in his time that Nemesis appeared in the shape of Mr Gave, the accountant. This gentleman reported astoutidingly, but Ismail smiled him out of court. To him succeeded Mr Gosclien, of London, and M. Joubert, of Paris, and these financiers dimmed the Khedival smile considerably. Mr Rivers Wilson, following them, made a strong report which extinguished that smile altogether by depriving the Khedive of all his private property, which, inclusive of the famous Daira estates, was valued at £450,000 a year. Throughout the first half of 1879 Ismail reigned, and his son Tewfik vyas supposed to govern as the President of the Council, but the real Government was the Anglo-French combination. Ismail by tlie°end of tlie half year, having exhausted all his devices of wriggling and the patience of the combination, was deposed. The- combination touched a spring in Stambcul, and out came a firman of deposition with the sign manual of the Sultan attached. Tewfik has reigned eleven years. In the beginning the rebellion of Arabi —a capable, pitriotic Egyptian, who believed in

“Egypt for the Egyptians”—gave him some trouble, relieved the Anglo-French combination of the French admixture, gave laurels to Sir Garnet Wolseley, and a peerage, and made a fine figurehead of Tewfik. He has reigned like a quiet, respectable English gentleman, while English troops and English administrators have “run” his country. The Soudan, conquered by Tewfilc’s grandfather, was lost during his reign, and Gordon was left to perish! But the obloquy is not to him, but to the ‘‘runners” of liiscountry. His death, which occurred under the burly shadow of; Lord Salisbury, makes no difference of any kind to the state of affairs. Either of his sons will do for the work of puppet. But the memory of their father will be rescued from oblivion by the shining virtues of his reign, virtues which he was tlie first of his race to display.

From Melbourne we have particulars of the circumstances under which an infant of three months was absolutrdy proved to have been starved to death in that city, r On the eve of Christmas, the time of kindliness and good will and generous acts, the poverty-stricken mother of the hapless babe walked tlie streets of that large city with her infant in her arms, herself penniless, hungry, ill-clad, and in the most destitute condition. Truly it was pitiful; in a whole city full, food she had none, either for herself or ■' er wretched infant. She had, it appears, appealed for help to several philanthropic institutions, but in vain. She had left a poor but kindly friend’s house in the suburbs with only threepence in her pocket, enough to pay her tram fare, reached the children’s hospital at 9 o’clock at night, and obtained some medicine, but the house surgeon could not grant her request to take in the infant, as it was under the age prescribed by the rules. Surely these rules should be sufficiently elastic to allow the surgeon to exercise that discretion of humanity which none of the profession would improperly employ. She then •went to the Immigrants’ Aid Society Home, the kindly doctor giving her sixpence to pay the tram fare. But the night-porier there could not admit her or her child because, again, it was “against the instructions of the Committee.” She was directed by a constable to go to Dr Linghton’s Home at Collingwood, walking the whole way, and found the gatekeeper absent, the gates closed, and the place in darkness. Back to the Immigrants’ Home, and there, too, the gates were shut. The child had had no food for some six hours, while the mother had fasted much longer. At last, heartsick, footsore and weary, she lay down on the side of the road running through the Government Domain, where mother and child ivere exposed to a cold, inclement night, and then at six in the morning—Christmas morning—the child died of absolute starvation. The doctor who made the post mortem ex.amination said the infant had “slowly starved to death,” and he added in his evidence that its life might have been saved if it had been at once admitted to } the Immigrants’ Home and supplied with food, of which its poor little stomach was quite empty. The coroner said the mother should have returned to the house of the friend, instead of lying down on. the road. But she, too, was suffering from hunger, and was fairly worn out after tramping for many hours, helpless and hopeless, on the pitiless streets. The coroner's jury gave a verdict in effect censuring the night porter of the Home for not reporting the woman’s application and condition to his superiors. But that seems unreasonable considering tlie distinct instructions to admit no more cases, although the matron said that, notwithstanding the committee’s instructions, she would have admitted a woman with a dying child had she been informed of the application. There were thousands in Melbourne iu comfortable homes who have and to spare, who would cheerfully have given liberal aid to auoh a sufferer had they known, but the poor mother knew not where to go to find them. In such a city, with its wealth and large population, there ought to be casual shelters for sufferers of this class, such shelters to which the passing night constable would direct forlorn, hungry and suffering creatures, where they could at least find such warmth and food as would keep life in them until morning broke. Even in this small city of ours an application, where destitution and starvation were so abundantly evident as in this case, there is not a police officer on any beat who would not have contrived to obtain some relief and sustenance for such objects at any hour of the night, and the officer in charge of any of the stations would provide a meal for any similar sufferer. It gives a severe shock to the feelings to think that in rich and populous Melbourne in a time of festive enjoyment and plenty such a miserable death as that by starvation should have been a possible occurrence.

The meeting at the Opera House is remarkable for two things. First, the Premier confessed the weakness of the Government, and secondly, Mr McLean had the hardihood to develop the “ money bag” argument. Tlie Government may well be. left to itself in this matter. It has, by the mouth of the Premier, admitted that its case is desperate, so desperate as to be. past praying for. The confession is astounding, but yv6

so astounding as the line taken by Mr McLean. The man who makes usurious interest out of the moneybags which give him bread and butter, actually strives to blacken the man who he thinks represents the fair, reasonable ordinary rate of interest. How he got the figures in the face of the secrecy of the property tax returns is not a mystery. He is the Government candidate, and the Government has access to the information. The affording of the information is a misuse of power, which proves the utter desperateness of the Government position as described by the Premier. But the electors cannot alio w that a 3 any kind of excuse. When sixty per cent has the audacity to ask that six per cent shall not be trusted, the misuse of power by which that extraordinary demand is backed up must weigh heavy in the balance against the unprincipled higher

An outcry has been raised, a cry of apprehension. It has come out of the ranks of the Civil Service. “If we vote at the polling place nearest to the biggest wooden building in the world, and vote, as is our custom, during the lunch hour, the hourly bulletins will show how we have voted.” That is the cry, and the cry is followed by a shudder at the expense of the Government. For our part we do not believe that the Government would take any notice if it could, and could not take notice if it would. The worst that coukl happen to anyone would be a knowledge that he voted at a time when a number of men voted on Mr Bell’s side. That would be far too shadowy a thing to enable any Government to do anything practical. But the cry is evidence that the feeling exists. Argument is useless against such a thing. The best thing to do for the panic-stricken is to show them a place of safety. These gentlemen are not obliged to vote during the lunch hour, and nobody forces them to go to the nearest polling booth. By voting at some other time and place they will be sheltered from their own fears.

Among the trophies of the Scientific meeting at Hobart is the paper of Prefessor Warren on the Shone system of drainage. The best and most economical system, he called it, for such cities as Wellington, Sydney and Auckland. We have many lieaven-born engineers among ns who are never tired of contemning the Shone system. Fortunately they know so much about some systems of their own that their testimony is neutralised by dispersion. Unfortunately a certain amount of force has been exercised by their criticism. It is idle, in fact, to attempt to hide from ourselves the fact that the rejection of the loan proposal last year was partly due to this very criticism. Now, Professor Warren is a very impartial authority ; he has no ends to serve in recommending the Shone or any other system. As a scientific man he simply recognises it as the best system for certain localities, Wellington amongst the number. It is something for our engineers in whom the city authorities have confidence to be sustained by such high authority.

The mention of the Panama Canal in the cable message the other day revives the question of the American Interoceanic canals. Will they ever be made, and if so, which of them ? The latter question appears to have been disposed of entirely, by the refusal of the French Government to ask for anything in the shape of Stnte aid. The mere smoothing of the way for the liquidator, even when aided by the punishment of the directors, is not sufficient tog J t the capital for completing the work. Moreover, Lieutenant Buonaparte Wyse, the liquidator aforesaid, and the Government of Columbia, do not appear to be happy in their negotiation about further concessions. It is averred by the liquidator that the United States Government is only waiting to get possession of the Panama Canal for a song, in order to complete the work at American cost, securing American control. That, however, is not likely in face of the relative cost of the Panama and Nicaragua schemes. The Commission sent out by the liquidator to report on the Panama work has set down the cost of completing a lock canal at thirty-six millions sterling, including cost of administration and interest. As to a tide-level canal, the Commission has nothing to say about the expense, which is significant. On the other band, the maximum estimate yet given for the Nicaragua work—for construction, administration and interest—falls a shade under twenty-four millions sterling. Further, the engineers have never expressed a doubt about the Nicaraguan works when comple'ed ; but the Liquidators’ Commission has reported that the foundations on which the dams for the summit lake and locks must rest “inspire only very limited confidence.” If it were a question fnf -aid from the United States Government, there seems little doubt, taking these figures as reliable—necessarily a doubtful point at this distance—that the Nicaraguan would be the favoured canal of the two. Up to the present time, however, Congress has set its face hard against any subvention ; many attempts have been made to get a State guarantee of three per cent for the necessary capital, but they have all failed conspicuously. Another effort is to be made this year, and it will he backed

up by a story of the practices of the Pacific railway kings. The quickest route across to California is the railway route, the cheapest that by the Panama railway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific lines of mail steamers. But the railway companies have, by “pooling” their receipts and buying off the opposition of the Panama Railway Company, maintained their rates at oppressive levels. The resuit is that an enterprising firm.of shipowners, which has lately started a .line of steamers to run between New York and the Pacific ports via Cape Horn, can compete with advantage for the trade. The people of the Western Slope have begun to resent this state ot things vigorously, and their agitation is gathering power every day. Newspapers and public speakers denounce railway kings as worse than the mediaeval robber Barons, who levied blackmail from the travellers using the roads near their castles. They talk about the enslavement and degradation of the people ; and they say words in season about the Traffic Association which has risen up to fight the railway monopoly. The politicians of the West are taking the matter up, seeing in this monopoly a lever for bringing to the front the question of State control over the Interoceanic canal. Without State control the canal will be the worst of all monopolies they declare, and without a State guarantee for the cost of construction there can be no State control. We shall see presently how the agitation fares. In the meantime the canal across the Nicaragua country goes slowly on. Some 500 men are employed, the breakwaters at the port of Grey town, on the Atlantic side, are well forward, a channel has been dredged to the depth of between twelve and fourteen feet, half a mile of the actual canal has been formed and with the dredgers brought from the Panama canal that part of the work is getting ahead fast. On the Pacific side a good deal of preliminary clearing work has been done close to the port of Brito. If nothing is done to enable the company to get more money it is obvious either that the canal will at the present rate of progress not be finished in .twenty years, or that it will not be persevered with at all. Congress may, however, be induced to give a guarantee, or the public may come forward with the necessary help. But the present position of the Nicaraguan canal is decidedly a position of languor, while the Panama Canal may be regarded as a thing past praying for.

The Commonwealth Sill has been, of course, long known to be a dead thing from one end of Australasia to the other, New South Wales dropped it out of siglic in the confusion of the elections, and failed to fish it up again during the political troubles which followed. The Bill was euphemistically shelved undercover of the statement that Mr Barton, the firm friend of Federation, had charge of it, which everbody understands to mean that Mr Dibbs, the implacable enemy of Federation, has charge of Mr Barton. Queensland has ostentatiously dropped the Bill ; m Victoria the Bill has got the two Houses of Parliament into something like a deadlock ; Tasmania has shelved it ; South Australia has forgotten it; New Zealand failed to keep a quorum of the House of Representatives to hear the Bill described. The behaviour of this Colony was not surprising to any one, because public opinion manifestly cared little for the Federation offered by the Federation Conference in such crispness of unchangeable detail. But the behaviour of the other colonies was simply amazing to all who had x-ead the proceedings of the Conference, and were impressed by the perfervid enthusiasm which surrounded the whole question of Federation. Everything appeared to have given way to unanimity ; a compromise was accepted at a critical moment ; nothing l’emained but for the Legislatures to adopt the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill. So sure was the Conference of \ the public support that it sent the Commonwealth Bill to the several Colonial Legislatures, not for their consideration, but for their adoption, detail for detail, exactly as it stood. Afier that a plebescite or some sort of apxxenl to the people, and Federation would be an accomplished fact. The awakening muse have been Jude among the politicians who had assembled in Conference. The p ain fact which confronts them is that the people of Australasia have not followed the lead of their representatives in this matter at all. They were not representatives ; in fact, they pretended to be, and they reckoned without the facts.

But why has the public, act ng upon the Legislatures —a sensitive being with regard lo the voting public is your politician ! —thrown Federation so very completely to the winds ? Mr G. 11. Reid answers the question very simply in an article just published in the Sydney Quarterly Magazine. Partly, he thinks, the Bill aimed at too much ; its lramers actually expected to get over the vast difficulties of a complicated subject without any discussion, mistaking a morbid craving after unanimity for statesmanlike and business-like work in the arrangement of details. Then there is no provision in the Bill for keeping the comman I over the Exchequer in the hands of the Representative Chamber, and there is nothing about Representative government. '1 he “States” Party, headed by Sir S. Griffith, Mr Clark, and Mr King-

ton, and the Federal Party, under Sir H. Parkes and Mr Barton, had very different views as to the explanation cf the provisions bearing on money Bills and the governmentof the country. Thepublic, without going into the matter of the dispute, was simply amazed at the dispute. Here were two Parties declaring through their champions that the smaller States could control the Money Bills of the Federation in the Senate, and that they could not ; and insisting that Representative Government was, on the one hand, guarded with jealous care against changes ; and that on the other, change was the first thing open to anyone to propose. The public saw the terrible liability to deadlock, and did not see that any means was provided for dealing with deadlock. Now, of all things the most dangerous and the least desirable is a Federal Constitution which in matters of vital importance is uncertain. Hod the rival politicians said as much during the Convention as they have said since, the public might not have been shocked by the exhibition of these hideous and disastrous uncertainties. But as the rival politicians were steeped in a morbid desire to appear unanimous when they differed radically, their Bill has been swept to Hades by an unanimous public opinion.

Is Federation lost, then ? Mr Reid says that the principle is by no means lost ; and in support of that view he talks much common sense. He reasons very fairly that the principle can be tried gradually by means of existing institutions, remin'diog his readers that Mr Gillies, of Melbourne, actually recommended that course to the Convention. Defence had been put forward as the great and pressing reason of Federation. Mr Gillies said pertinently, “ Can’t we do that at once ? May we not lose the substance of pressing needs in a pursuit of shadowy and perhaps impossible agreements ? My advice is to spend no unnecessary time in trying new means, but to make use of the agencies which exist, and which, when being used, will create no alarm in the minds of men.” To this the Federation has returned. The Federal movement carried it away into the far distance, but after many vicissitudes ha 3 brought it back to the starting point, a broken Bill dragging at its chariot wheels. The chanjes are that the rude fate of the ambitious attempt will be found to have given considerable strength to the claims of the simpler method of gradual development through cautious single experiments. We are informed by Mr Wyatt (registrar of births, deaths, and marriages for the district of the City of Wellington) that the mortality for last year was more than 100 in excess of the record for 1890. He con. aiders that the largest share of this mortality is represented by infants, of whom a large number have been carried off by bronchitis and influenza of late. The returns of births, deaths, and marriages for 1890 and 1891 are as follows :

Excess of births over deaths 780 872 These figures are highly significant, and should be pondered over by the authorities whose duty it is to conserve the health of the citizens by improved sanitation and other means.

1891. 1890. Increase. Births ... 1372 1355 17 Marriages ... ... 388 359 29 1deaths ... 592 483 109