MELBOURNE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4687, 24 February 1877, Page 3

MELBOURNE.

(prom oub own correspondent.)

February 12th,

A beginning has been made towards working up the agitation in view of the general election. Mr Berry, on Monday night, addressed his constitutents at Geelong, and placed his policy before them ; or rather he explained that it was necessary that lie should do that, as he had just been reading over a, speech he had de livered to them eighteen months before, and his policy was exactly the same now as it was then. He had the same conviction of the wrong that was done jhirn by the Acting Go vernor jin refusing hini a dissolution, the same desire to lay a burating-up tax on the large landowners, and the same boundless confidence in the wisdom and statesmanship of Mr Berry. Without ostensibly doing so he replied to the suggestions of the_ Age, that he should retire from the leadership of the Protection party. To these good natured hints, Mr Berry calmly announces that he will do nothing of the kind. The Old Guard dies, but does not surrender. Mr Berry does not retire ;he is kicked out if he goes at all. For him the party will to the end of time be the "Berry party." As for his opponents, they are "as unscrupulous as any band of assassins who ever murdered liberty." That is what they are, and as Mr Berry likes plain speaking, he mentions the fact. What more homo truths Mr Berry might have uttered had the Age that morning not begged him to be moderate and mild, we cannot tell. But he was moderate and mild, and the above shows the form which his mildness assumed. With the exception of the Berry speech, there is little connected with our elections that is worth mentioning. The crowd of candidates increases, and it is evident that there is a very large number of our patriots to whom the salary of L3OO a-year is not wholly indifferent.

The Conference at Sydney on the duplicate telegraph cable did not bear much fruit. There were too many interests, and too little concession or ability to take a general point of view, to lead up to any practical issue. Indeed, had it not been for the subsequent scratch conference —if I may so speak of such a distinguished conclave—of the delegates of "Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia, there would have been no result at all. These representatives agreed to recommend to their Governments the construction of a second cable from Singapore to Port Darwin ; but bow far this recommendation will be ratified by the Governments and Legislatures that will have a voice in the matter remains to be seen.

That curious relic of mediteval monkery, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Goold, has issued a " Lenten Pastoral," in which the Education Act comes in for some mild priestly censure. Dr. Goold seems to have abated much of his fervour since the days when he called upon the faithful to resist the winked measure "even to the shedding of blood," and when his henchman, Archdeacon Slattery, threatened to " wield a free and flashing sword," and hew the unclean tbing to pieces. These pious gentlemen see that their chance of getting the Act altered is very slight, and in f:ict perhaps it answers their purpose better as a good standing grievance than it could if modified iv the most favourable form.

Our new Bishop, Dr Moorhcuse, has found a congenial employment for his leisure moments. lie spends thorn in writing letters to the Daily Telegraph in support of his claim to " apostoli cal succession." li the Bishop goes on penuiug foolish epistles in the attempt to substantiate in a penny newspaper claims that his wiser brethren are content to say very little about, he will succeed in writing himself down something not complimentary to his intellect or sagacity._ Who, does he think, in a practical community like this will value him a penny the more on account of his snecessorship to the Apostles ? The Bishop, unless he takes care, will disappoint at a very early date the favourable hopes formed respecting hhu. His first administrative act was a very serious blunder. Ke had to make an appointment to the incumbency of an important Melb )urne cimrch, and he selected for the post a very amiable, pious old clergyman, who, by the sheer imbecility o.

his sermo:as had already emptied one church, and is now actively .employed in emptying another. The excellent old gentleman is as a preacher absolutely intolerable. It requires a patience more than is accorded to moitals to endure his curiously senile and drivelling harangues, and it is only a question of time when he will be preaching to bare walls and empty seats, as he has been hap pily doing for a long series of years, it see?»is that he was promoted in accordance with some principle of seniority, which, if adhered to, will fill all the best and most important churches with worn-out, preached-out, broken down divines. And the bishop all the while, light of heart, is conclusively making ■good his claim to the apostolical succession by letters in the Daily Telegraph — price one penny. Sir W. Gregory, the Governor of Ceylon, is spending a holida}' in these Colonies, and after j having spent a few days in Victoria is now, in company with Sir George Bowen, doing a short tour in Tasmania. Sir A. Kennedy, the new Governor of Queensland, luckily failed to come on the Singapore, as he was expected to do, and thus missed being wrecked in this vessel on the coast of North Queensland. [Sir A. Musgrave, before leaving South Australia, n;ade, at a Parliamentary dinner given to him, a speech in praise of federation —the correct thing for all Colonial Governors—and also showing how it was that the shortness of tenure of power of Colonial

Governments lessened Ministerial responsi bility. All this is correct enough, but Sir A; Musgrave's remedy of giving Ministers a fixed and permanent tenure seems as though it would remedy the evil by destroying responsibility altogether. The Colony has been visited by, and still suffers from, a very severe drought, which is more disastrous from the fact that the rainfall during last winter was very much below the average. The country is in an extremely parched condition, the grass is withered and scanty to the very last degree, water holes are dry, and cattle and even human beings are suffering extreme privations. It may be reasonably supposed that these conditions have told on the prices of both bread and meat, which have gone up and ?.re likely to rise still higher. An enormous extent of country has been overrun with bush fires, and in Melbourne for days together we have been living in an atmosphere of smoke, which reddened the sun and spread a dense blue haze over the sky. I have never seen so smoky an atmosphere in Melbourne— certainly none which lasted for so long a time. The smoke made navigation of the bay insecure, and it was necessary often for steamers to reduce their speed to avoid the danger of a collision or other accident.

. The new and highly successful Russian play, "Les Danicheff," has been produced at the Opera House, and bids fair to be a success. The honours of the first evening were carried eff by Miss Ada Ward, a newly-arrived actress, who created a most favourable impression by the way in which she enacted the Counters. The Italian Opera Company are to open at the Theatre Eoyal. Thus, as you will perceive, we have drama at the Opera House and opera at the leading theatre. But we do not pay much attention to niceties of this kind with us.

The prospects of our ai.glers ar£ looking up. His Excellency Mr Weld, Governor of Tasmania, lately caught a splendid salmon in the Derwent, and now a Melbourne resident, Mr James, surgeon, has caught a fine trout, 2ft. Sin. long and lGlbs in weight, in the same noble stream. Fish acclimatisation has evidently been a great success in the streams of this delightful island, and there is clearly a brightening future before the Australian angler. They have acclimatisrd fish in Tasmania, but have not, it would seem, yet succeeded in acclimatising representative government in a very perfect fora. The very ,doubtful and objectionable Reiby Ministry lately had to summon a special session of Parliament to repair some gross blunders made in a Consolidated Jury Act, which prevented the impannelling of juries for a whole year. While the special session was sitting, the attention of Parliament was drawn to some very questionable exercises of the prerogative of pardon, and especially to one case of a woman convicted of arson, whose sentence had been remitted in spita of some very strong opinions expressed by the Judge in passing sentence. Both Houses of Parliament concurred in passing censure on the action of the Government, which contented itself with proroguing Parliament and taking no notice of the cpnsure. One Minister declared that he would not leave office till he was kicked out. Indeed, not much better was to be expected of a Cabinet, three of the Ministers of which are stated by a Tasmanian paper to have been present and participating in an entertainment got up to celebrate the release of the prisoner whom tliey had set at liberty. Now, all this bears out the much-canvassed assertion of Mr Parkes, that ] Cabinet Ministers and the friends of prisoners i often meet in the same circles of society. It also illustrates a saying of the late Mr It. D. Ireland, that in Tasmania nobody is regarded as cut of society till he is hanged.

The New South Wales Ministry also has lately had to weather a rough storm. Some serious charges of bribery and also of drunkenness were made in a loose way in the Assembly against Mr Garrett, Minister of Lands. Mr Garrett denied the charges of corruption, but admitted that he had spent the greater part of his late visit to Melbourne in a state of intoxication. But he rather comically urged, as a plea in mitigation, that his regard for the credit of the Colony had induced him to keep out of sight all the time, and no one knew anything of his whereabouts. ' He felt it necessary to tender his resignation, and a vote of censure on the Government was only staved off by the Premier and other Ministers giving the most emphatic assurances that Mr Garrett's resignation was final and absolute. As it was, they only escaped defeat by a very slender majority.