OUR VICTORIAN LETTER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5551, 13 January 1879, Page 3

OUR VICTORIAN LETTER.

(from our own Correspondent),

Ballarat, Deo. 31. _ “ The same to you, and many of them ” will be the cry at every street corner in the course of a few hours. While I write, people are anticipating to-morrow’s toasts, and a few are illogioally drinking “ \ Merry Christmas” a week after the event. This Christmas the English roast beef and plum pudding have not been served up in the common fashion. It is usual|to sit down with Fahrenheit emphatically pointing to the 100, while we consume old English fare roasted to a temperature of 212 at the least. Cold, squally weather prevented the allocalism (fresh-coined) of a polar diet under a tropical sun. And now, within an hour of midnight, folks are preparing to welcome the New Y ear in divers fashions. Scotchmen are taking a thimbleful or so, just to tide over the time to midnight, at which moment there is a deliberate intention of marking the event by transferring more whisky from a position in space, where there is ample room for it, to a closely-confined apartment already well crowded with the lively “tots” of the evening. At last the embassy is afloat, and already the Colonial Office is trembling in its shoes, and the oligarchs here are in despair. I attended the farewell banquet in the Town Hall, and shouted myself hoarse when Berry, looking out over an attentive throng, traced in his sonorous tones the long career of aggressive obstruction practised on the people of this colony,” (Ministerial majorities), by the “ gunny bags ” of Melbourne, as he elegantly styled our wealthier legislators. He brought down the house with every sentence, and the applause would have been deafening if it had not been drowned by tho more deafening plaudits of tho other members of the Ministry. There has been furious writing about tho issue of free railway passes to this party demonstration, and the committee, feeling that they had made a mistake, hurriedly met and determined to pay into the Railway Department excursion fares for the visitors. Anyone listening to Professor Pearson immediately after the conclusion of Berry’s telling speech, could not fail to be struck with the enormous difference in the power of swaying popular audiences shown in the fiery diatribes of the born politician and the correctly worded platitudes of the weak-voiced scholar. There is not the slightest doubt that the bauquetters represented the class of people holding the chief political power in this colony, and there is less doubt that Graham Berry has taken their measure to a nicety, and will hold the position for some time yet. The selecting of the same night for banquetting a black politician known as Henderson Africanus afforded great amusement in Melbourne, and for a time Afric was thoroughly persuaded that his backers meant to send him Home in the Assam with Berry. However, he got £2OO or £3OO and a new rig out, and went twice to the Government House to interview Sir G. Bowen, but his Excellency sent out word that he had not time to spare just then, and really could not say when ha would have time. One thing is certain, if he had gone on board the Asss.m the Ministerialists would most certainly have mustered on the pier and thrown him into the sea. The agents,'having an eye to future contracts, and wishing for peace, declined to give Africanus a passage, so hia secretary is now disbanded.

Thanks to the thoroughly organised state of our police force, and the deep tactics of Capt. Standish, our noble constabulary still successfully elude the clutches of the bloodthirsty Kellys, who are known to be in such dangerous proximity to the barracks that the police dare not venture far from quarters. Deep sympathy is expressed for the one hundred and fifty noble fellows who nightly take their lives in their hands as they turn in to their bunks and dream of the peaceful patrowl they bargained for at the ridiculous rate of 7s. 6d. per diem. Hunting after these bushrangers has completely

upset all received ideas of the vocation of policemen. Time was when a man could mount his poncho and blow a quiet cloud in a little back parlour till morning, bat now—why a man may wake up any morning and find himself surrounded. Stormy times.