THE Otago Daily Times. TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1876.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4419, 18 April 1876, Page 2

THE Otago Daily Times. TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1876.

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness" was the dry remark of the mate of a P. and O. steamer to a passenger as both gazed on the hosts of Muhammads, Ijlflendis, Hassans, and Yusefs undergoing their Sunday morning scrub, yelling, chattering, and yabberin^ under the sturdy sweeps of the serang'a broom. What a pity cities cannot be treated like these unbelievers ! Had a former City Engineer been allowed to unfold, through the streets of Dunedin his mighty scheme of " Telescopic Combination System of Drainage " in which the pigmy drains emptied their contents into the big pond by such not: able conduits as the " Cloaca maxima, " and the " Emissarium" or had it been ordained that Dr W. B. Richahdson, of hygeian proclivities, should have been a contemporary of Adam and a pre-urbic sanitary Satrap in these parts, how very different things might have been! Scientists, with their turuip infusions and immersion-magnifying powers, might have given up their search for those mysterious germs and vapours of contagious fevers. Pestilential Vibrios, Bacterias, and other sucli imps, might have gone on wagging their tails in one prolonged spasm of ecstatic joy, ia perfect security that they would not'suffer a like late to the moa. Municipal rulers, when they donned that expanse of starch and smiled blandly on the urban electors, might have cast aside all prospective trouble from inconvenient questions on sanitary expenses, the backbone of Isaackian perorations would be awanting, and His Majesty of Dunedin might have turned his relieved energy to the mending of the broken pitcher of Mr Bright's nihilism.

'• Cleanliness is next to Godliness." There are many that place the former first, and the Godliness next; and we well remember an old army chaplain, whose general; advice1 to the men was to " wash and be clear?." But how are we to obtain cleanliness— that ie, public cleanliness ? Shall it be by pouring our filth into the upper harbour or into the sea at the Ocean Beach % Or shall the motley collection of improvised kerosene tins, buckets in a degenerated state, and cracked gin cases, which at present adorn our gutters and footpaths at the time of the tinkling of the bell, be continued % Or again, those other equally varied and infirm receptacles which are better in the understood state than in the expressed, be cleansed in the vicinity of the city ? Charming as it would be to enjoy a canter on the boulevards of the Ocean Beach sandhills, when they have yielded to Mr Chaplin's fertilising care, we gravely doubt the propriety of allowing a manure depot to be formed there. la it not a case of the frying-pan and fire over again 1 We have rather lively reminiscences of strong sou-westers, laden with not the most fragrant of odours, as we have jogged on the Anderson's Bay road; and one part of our organisation suffered so much that we have now. a decreased appreciation for "smells in general," but then we must not confound smells with poisons. What then is to be done 1 Shall disinfectants be sown broadcast over the city1? Shall people breathe through a sieve, or shall they frizzle those diabolical germs in the air before they inhale it ? Disinfection is so uncertain, because it is so rarely thoroughly applied-—fancy fumigating one of our draughty cabs without a fumigating house! What alchemic potency could whisk those sulphurous fumes into every little interstice of the cab furniture. Then there is that perplexing story in one of the Army Medical, Reports of the boy who was attacked with cholera and died, though he lived and had remained for some time in a house near to a chemical work, where there were great stores of chloride of lime which filled the house almost always with the odour of chlorine. Then, for the sievebreathers. Dr Tyndall's votaries, in this respect, might be enumerated as asthmatical wheezers, hyp chondriacs, spinsters sine charms, and effete bachelors. And even they are likely to give up the practice, if their appetites are bad—that is, if the later notions regarding the way life is maintained in fasting cases be true—viz., that nitrogen is absorbed from the air—for the nitrogen and the organic floating particles together might ultimately prove to be a prodigiously easy way of satisfying the pangs of hunger. And as for roasting and frizzling the molecules of and in air, why if Grace Calvert be correct us to the amount of roasting they require, then it appears to us

there would be a difficulty in getting the air cool again, and breathers might by some " reflex or uncoaacious cerebration " imagine they were in the Victorian House of Assembly, or at an extreme end of the Canadian AgentGeneral's "Devil's. Chain." Shall it be cesspools 1 They are universally I voted an abomination; and at the [mention of sewers, .Up loom lota of I cases like Paris, wherein 20 years the " mains" grew from 3G,000 metres to the surprising length of 350,000 metres, and yet the death rate only temporarily decreased from 1 in 3G to 1 in 40. And then the way in which noxious whiffs of foul air and putrid gases will enter into rooms and diffuse themselves, in spite of all ingeniously constructed traps, is notorious. How, then, ,\s the " mephitic atmosphere" to be purified, and our streets, bye ways, alleys, and back-yards cleansed of their dust, filth, aDd rubbish? That is the question of questions for our Councillors to settle, if they will only manage to keep themselves out of the condition to which poor M. de PourCEAUGNAC was reduced by the interrogatories of the doctors. That it cannot be settled too early is generally admitted. Keeking abbatoirs fringe the town on all sides, Boaking the soil around them with filth and putrefying blood; heads of oxen and sheep—food despised, forsooth!by. people who turn up their noses at Leicester—lie in heaps, in every degree of disintegration, exhaling no small stench ; skins are slung over railings, exposed to the sun, and in convenient positions to scent the passing breezes. Gutters want paving, more need scraping, and,quaking quagmires, fermenting and sputtering gases to be inhaled by tha public nose, require filling up. Oh, for some cataclysm, such as a grinding glacier, ora deluge Worthy of being chronicled in .the legends of Izdubar, to scour the filth away, without destroying life and property. Do let us make up our minds to have either one thing or the other in the place of the" piecemeal and grandtnothery state of things now existing. If it is to be a water carriage system, then let it be so in as complete a form as it can be carried out; if tome of the modifications of the dry earth system, then let this be also complete and general; but anything in the place of piecemeal sewers, dilapidated dustbins, broken down rubbish boxes, motley cabinet receptacles, and tumbledown unpaved slaughter yards which at present obtain. Why, even the cats manage these things more systematically thau we do.

It in well known that some time since the old City Police Court was reorganised, ard that two of the local Justices of the Peace now sit there daily according to a roster settled among themselves. Mr Bathgate, as a Kesident Magistrate, has by law all the powers and authority of two Justices ; he is, in fact, two single gentlemen rolled into one, but it has been generally understood that owing to pressure of civil cases all of what may be termed Police business had been relegated to the Justices of the Police Court, leaving only civil cases fo be dealt with by Mr Bathgate. It was, therefore, not unnatural that when, at an ordinary sitting of the latter's Court, a complaint under the Merchant Shipping* Act was made by a sailor against his captain, the j defendant's solicitor should have asked for an explanation of the fact of such a case being heard in that Court. In reply, Mr Bathgate intimated that he considered himself bound to hear such a case when application was made to him to do so. With the circumstances of the case in question, we have nothing whatever to do. This definition, however, of the duties of a Justice of the Peace has important public bearings. The fact that Mr Bathgate should have agreed to hear this case, and in doing so have ignored the existence of a Court regularly appointed to adjudicate upon such matters, constitutes an irregularity of Magisterial procedure which we hope not to see repeated. There can be no doubt that every Justice of the Peace is bound in his ministerial capacity to take' a proffered information, and on due grounds being shown, to issue a summons to the defendant. But surely, in answer to any special applications of the kind above stated, he must reply, " I grant you a summons, but it must be to appear iv due course at the usual time before the Court which has been specially appointed to. hear such matters, and I decline to grant a hearing at another Court, and before a Magistrate of your ,own selection." Unless when both parties are agreed, it is most inadvisable that litigants should have any power in the selection of their tribunal or their judge. Justices of the Peace, however conscientious, are men, and, as such, have different opinions. One may be known to hold strong views on a particular act, while some are specially severe on certain kinds of offences. If Mr Bathgate's position is sound, complainants might select their magistrate like their butcher or baker. We do not say that such a thing has occurred, but its very possibility is calculated to bring discredit upon the administration of Justice.