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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4201, 7 September 1874, Page 2

Considerable complaint is made aa to the imperfect publication of the hours at which passenger trains run between Wellington and Hutt, and the complaint seems certainly to bo a very justifiable one. Only at some of the stations are time tables to .be seen, and these are so few in number and minute that it takes a sharp eye to discover them, and they are not to bo seen, as they should be, in the chief places of public resort in the City. Neither are they advertised in the daily papers. It would be a great convenience to the travelling public to have the monthly time table publicly posted or printed in card form, or properly advertised in the papers, and it is to be hoped that the authorities only require their attention drawn to the matter to have a change in this particular effected at once. The hours of departure and arrival of trains, as well as the of fares, are widely and prominently made public in the towns of the South Island between which railways extend, and the same is the case in England and America, while time tables, published for circulation by Bradshaw and Ids : imitators, are both numerous and cheap. It must be some time yet before a Bradshaw's Guide can become an institution in the Colony, and until that time it would be well if, the railway authorities afforded all possible information. The cost cannot bo great, and the convenience to the public would be considerable. There are other particulars—such as the closing of the station doors, and the opening of the ticket office only a few minutes before the starting of each train —in which improvements might be made. The inconvenience of the old English system which is being too commonly adopted in the Colony has led the authorities in Canterbury to imitate the American practice, in the issue of tickets and other items, and, so far as we have heard, the change is much appreciated by the public.

In ft late address to Us constituents at Sydney, Mr. Parkes, the Premier , of , New South Wales, made the following remarks as to the Californian mail contract which now appears to have broken down : —“So far as this contract was concerned, I had nothing whatever to do with it, because the Postmaster-

General was the proper person to negotiate the matter, and the contract was finally entered into 16,000 milea away from me? Well, in Loudon Mr. Hall produced a gentleman, and that without much loss of time, who was known in the monetary world to be a man of substance —Mr. Forbes—and was known all over the world as a man of capital. But, besides Mr. Forbes, there were two other men of undoubted substance, who could command half a million of money, who are bondsmen in the contract to the amount of £50,000. My hon. friend and colleague the PostmasterGeneral, before accepting even Mr. Forbes, or Mr-. Cunningham, or Mx\ Dxx Boxxohe, employed the Government bankers—the Bank of New South Wales —to inquh-e as to the stability and undoubted position of these men. Coxxld mortal men have done more for your interests ? The Government have a letter from Mr. Donald Larnach, stating that both of these iixon ax-e of undoubted substaxxce, with whom the Government of this country may safely contract. Did we not do all that reasonable men could expect of us ? Sxxppose the service fails—suppose the contract fails. It will only fail by reason of our having made such a good bargain that it could only be carried on at a loss gx-eater than the payixxg of £50,000. If it does fail the bondsmen will have to pay their bonds. If it fails, there is nothing strange that an undertaking of this kind should fail, but the conti-actox-s will have to pay the penalty. But the Government of this country is concerned in preserving the service, and while I and my friends, with your support and the support of Parliament, are entrusted with the destinies of this country, depend upon it the service will be carried oxxt.” Mr. Parkes was loxxdly cheered at the close of his remarks.

The statement of the Treasurer of Victoria for the year 1874-5 has been submitted to the Parliament of that Colony. The total revenue for the year is estimated at the large sum of £4,515,182, of which £4,259,135 is from ordinary soxxx-ces, £75,679 from repayments of advances for railways, £IO,OOO fx-om other Governments on account of the postal communication, and £170,368 is the amount of the balance from 1873-4. The expenditure is estimated at £4,473,080, of which £1,495,556 is for special appropriations; and the estimated balance to be cax-ried forward is £37,102. During the year the departments are .expected to yield as follows : —Customs, loss £50,000 of dx-awbacks, £1,765,000 ; Excise, £101,500 ; Territorial, £878,000 ; Public Works, £1,009,625 ; Ports and Harbors, £21,000; Post and Telegraph Offices, £204,000 ; Fees, £105,000 ; fines, £12,500 ; and miscellaneous, £162,510. The duty* on imported spirits alone is expected to bring in not less than £510,000, and that on tea, £72,000, a sum precisely the same as is expend from rice ; spirits distilled in Victoria, £32,500 ; duties on estates of deceased persons, £60,000 ; sales of land, £220,000 ; leases and licenses of land, £480,000 ; pastoral x-ents, £130,100 ; railways, £920,000 ; and labor of prisoners, £IO,OOO.

A bather curious state of matters, it appears, has ax-iscix out of the case of the ship Virghxxus, seized by the Spaniards on the Cuban coast, and aftex-xx-ards given up to the American authorities, by xvlxom she was claimed. One of the conditions of the settlement of the affair made by the Hxxifcsd States with Spain was, “ that the latter should pay an indemnity to the sailors seized and to the relatives of those killed, unless she could shoxv within a given period to the satisfaction of our State Dcjxartxnent that the Yirgixxius xx-as not an American ship in such sense as entitled her to the protection of our laxvs.” The New York Herald noxv asks ;—“ Has Spain satisfied our State Department on this head, and has the xx-holo subject been permitted to dx-op by the facile gentlemen who sustain the ixxterests of our people so very gently when they are opposed to Spanish interests ? Will some in Washington stir it up and let ns knoxv hoxv the case stands ? ” The same authority points out that xvlxile tlxe American officials appear to persist no longer in holding to their doctrine that the Virginius xvas an American vessel, England insists that she xvas, and also that Spain shall fulfil her engagement xvith the British authorities on' that ground. The Herald comments on this state of things thus “If xve have abandoned this case it is because xve have admitted, in Spanish showing, that the Virginias xvas not an American ship; but England, at this moment, is. pressing her case against Spain, basing- it on. the irrefragable evidence thoroughly satisfactory to her that the Virginias was an American ship. She was, says John Bull, an American ship as against any other nation. Though tlxe United States might criticise her papers, Spaixx must have respected them if she had regarded international laws. Therefore, as she xvas an American, Spain had no contx-ol over persons on her, and Spain must pay.” “It is queer-,” adds our great American contemporary, “to find England maintaining the rights of our ships xvhen oxxr State Department has abandoned tlxem."

There is something peculiar about the state of the labor market in South Australia, The President of the Yorke’a Peninsula Miners’ Union is away to Western Australia, to negotiate terms upon which the miners may have passages paid for them to that Colony, in order that they may be employed on a railway in course of construction. There is no doubt about men having been discharged from both the Moonta and Wallaroo mines, but the company working the former would appear to be employing a largo staff of men. The price of copper is lower than it was ; but against the 1420 employes the company paid last year, 1443 are now employed. If, then, the director's have thought proper to suspend a hundred men from employment, there does not seem matter for surprise that such a course should be adopted. Incidentally, it would sewn that some of the men wishing to leave do so , without substantial cause. Three of them are said, by South Australian newspapers, to have taken £ISOO with them in cash. There is a strong probability that they will not repeat this experiment in the next Colony they take up their abode in.

During the last twenty-five years the gold and silver mines of the United States have yielded the precious metals to the value of 1,533,644,934 dollars. To that enormous sumCalifomia alone contributed 1,094,919,098 dollars, nearly all of which was gold. Nevada produced silver to the value of 221,000,000 dollars. Utah is reputed to be enormously rich in gold and silver ores, and her mines have only lately attracted the notice of capitalists, but they have yielded 25,000,000 dollars. Colorado produced 30,000,000 dollars, and Washington Territory and Oregon combined slightly exceeded the yield from Utah. Since mining has been systematically followed in the' Western States the yield has steadily improved. It is mentioned that in 1873 the actual yield of the Pacific Slope was 80,287,436 dollars, whereas for the year 1872 it was only 70,236,914 dollars, which shows a gain of about fourteen per cent. The increase is mostly in silver, and meets, therefore, the unusually great demand which has lately been made for this metal. The greater quantity of the silver produced finds it way almost direct to the English market. Tins appropriations by the American Parliament for the current year are reported at nine millions loss than they-were last year. “This,” remarks one of the loading'New York journals, “ is a good sign, especially if, the nine millions do not come to us again in the shape of a Deficiency Bill !”