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New Zealand Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 3265, 23 October 1897, Page 2

Conbideeable interest is being taken in the case _of Sergeant Tillers since our article was published /touching the treatment of the police officers of the colony. It is thought that some special, effort

should be made ill Ills Case, and that the attention of Parliament should be called to it. As has already been stated, the Sergeant was painfully wounded while arresting a man at Wanganui who, but for tho brave conduct of Viliers> would more than likely have Committed murder. There is no fund out of which ths sufferer can be adequately rewarded for his seif-sacrificing conduct, and the member for Wanganui might well ask the. Government .to place a sum on the Estimates as some compensation to the man and his family.

A letter received by a Wellington resident tells a sorry story of the state of things existing in New South Wales. The writer left New Zealand some. 12 months since, and this it- hi* v« rdioi * —** I hope you huVe.uu tuoiigbt at auy lime of coiuiug to live here. iTou are far better off in New Zealand. What with the droughts* the fearful heat in the summer time, the plagues of locusts, caterpillars and rabbits, snakes, mosquitoes, Hies of all sorts, black and red ants, floods which cover hundreds of square miles, dust storms which penetrate every house and make living a misery, orchards infested with every known description of blight, mildew, fungus and lichen, I wish I had never come to New South Wales, but stopped where I was. Living of every kind is much dearer than in New Zealand. All dairy produce is high. The milk is dear and very poor. House rent is something dreadful for poor folk, a small five-roomed house running into 16s per week. Beggars of all sorts swarm, so much so that the Government* annoyed at the way they swarmed round the Federal delegates, is taking steps to abate the nuisance, and tho police have had a blind man and a cripple arrested. Add to this fact that employment is almost impossible to find at any price, and I think you Will agree with me that there are worse places than New Zealand to live in/*

Mb W. H. Hebbles, the member for the Bay of Plenty, ridiculed the idea , of trade with tho Islands and the countries of the Near East. The honourable gentleman is such an inveterate joker that one hardly knows when to take hiui bfit he appeared to be in earnest when be referred to this tnotoontous question. We regret; that Mr Herries, .or any other member of the Legislature, should think lightly of a project with which the future success of New Zealand producers is so nearly connected. With the progress of the Argentine Eepublic and the immense improvement in the class of meat sent by its breeders to .the London market; with the increased efforts of the Canadians to capture the British market for food products, tho chances of the New Zealand exporter grow less and less, and it therefore behoves us to look to a heAret add a. m"i\ch more more profitable baafcket, whose trade, it appears to bo, is to be had for the asking. We commend a careful consideration of the subject in all its bearings, not only to Mr Herries, but to every other well-wisher of our colony. '

Readers of latest English papers cannot have come to any other conclusion than that the engineers of the United Kingdom are at present engaged in a struggle against tremendous odds for concessions to which they are justly entitled. The London Daily OhronicU , which has of late years constituted itself the champion of the Trades Unionists of the Kingdom, has laid the matter most fully before its readers, meeting every Contention of the opposing side and reasoning with the federation of employers on the fairness and justice of the clalms of the men who have been locked out. It is encouraging to the friends of the movement in ‘favour of the recognition ox the eight hours* working day, especially for skilled workers, that in these colonies, as elsewhere, something like a combined effort is being made to holdup the hands of the unionists. To-night in Wellington sympathisers are asked to identify themselves with the cause, and we trust their demonstration will meet with the success it so well deserves.

■NpTWiT*STj.NSi3rd all that has been said with regard to the s'oandal of Willis street having been converted into A gambling school, where all sorts and conditions of boys and men are encouraged to lay totalizator odds with the bookmakers, the evil is as rampant as everfnd the law is openly defied day after day. Only yesterday, quite a crowd of man and Jodlhs were to be been engaged m making wagers and there Was but an empty,show of a,policeman patrolling the footpaths and clearing them from ,time to time. It is high time •that some effort were ; made to cope with the evil and ,we therefore’ draw the particular attention of the Commissioner of Police to the necessity that exists for the prosecution and punishment of a number of persona who have hitherto escaped the penalty which the law provides. A few convictions would effectually abate the nuisauce.

In explanation of the riotous scene which occurred iu the Austrian Parliament, it may be stated that it took place in the Lower House of the Eeiohsrath, where the conflict of parties in the Austrian Empire attains its highest pitch. In this colony we are scandalised—and rightly so—if a member of of Eopresontatives loses command over his temper, or if he sets himself up in any way against the ruling of Mr Speaker. But they manage these things differently in Austria and even outdo the Australians in acts of violence. Members of the Now South Wales Parliament have coma to blows in the lobbies and have " slanged ” each other in rudest fashion inside the walls of the representative chamber; but the excitement which has for some years past threatened the peace of the Lower House of- the Eeiohsrath now appears to havo broken bounds and broken heads have apparel] tly resulted. ■

The Chamber alluded to includes men of widely varying race and Creed, and it is positively startling to note the multiplicity of parties therein assembled. The’last general election resulted as follows: German Liberals, 110; National Germans, 16; Anti-Semites (who during 1690. obtained groat prominence through the efforts of Dr Lager), 15; Poles, 97 ; Euthenians, 8; Young Czechs, 36 ; Old Czechs, 10 ; Independent Czechs, 3 ; Left Centre, 8; Clericals, 3l; Slavonians and Serbo-Croats, 23 ; Bohemian Feudal Conservatives, 18 ; Moravian Central Party, 5 ; Italians, 6; Eoutnanians, 3; German Conservatives, 2. The Old Czechs were desperately defeated, and since that time an endeavour has been made to grant universal suffrage, but without success. The German Liberals were opposed to Count Taafle’s measure of reform, and he was compelled to resign. The cable man, with his usual aptitude for leaving out the most important details, affords no information as to the cause of the strife, arid there are so many of these that it would' be folly to endeavour to indicate it.