Passing Notes.

Otago Witness, Issue 1374, 30 March 1878, Page 14

Passing Notes.

The Reverend Father Hennebery is making his mark in New Zealand. He can hardly be called a missionary of peace, but then there is the Church militant, and his great apostolic forefather carried a sword, which, by the way, he used rather injudiciously in the matter of Malchas's ear. If therefore the Missioner is somewhat imprudent in the way he brandishes the sword of faith, it is only the apostolic afflatus we may suppose. There are other analogies between these two belligerent ministers which we might amplify if we had time. For example, the Missioner does not scruple to embellish his arguments with statements which are not facts, and he sticks to them too ; but then Peter fibbed, and clenched his words with profane language. But there is a break here, for Peter blubbered over the fib ;' but the Father is not likely to do anything of the kind, unless it may be that the Kumara cock, in the form of the Editor that has served him with a writ demanding a thousand pounds for slander, may bring him to a painful sense of the enormity of his sins, and of the costlynature thereof. Father Hennebery is a man of zeal, but it is zeal without knowledge- -of statistics for one thing, and of the little restraints of civilized life for another. He must be a very hot piece of property even to his friends ; and if in his wanderings he leaves them all such a legacy as he left to Bishop Moran, who is deputed to prove the 'annual murder of five million children in the United States, most people will come to think that it had been better h.9 had not come their way. The Father is one of those who sow the wind and must expect to reap the whirlwiad, but though the storm such as he raised among Catholics in denouncing mixed marriages as adultery can be laid by ecclesiastical fiat, a breeze in the law Courts is not so easily calmed. If a few writs for damages are plaoed in his hands at the various points visited, with corresponding writs of "ne exeat " at the several ports, his Apostolic mission will be seriously embarrassed by difficulties quite unknown in Apostolic times, while the exigencies of legal evidence as ruling in the Courts will come dreadfully awkward to a man accustomed to fling his statements widely about and leave to others the duty of picking them up and making them square with facts and figures.

The City Council has become painfully aware of the existence of another invasion of the Town Belt in the form of the Observatory. Strange that the trespass never occurred to the Council before, or if it did that they should have winked hard and said nothing, while so many were in hysterics over the Fever Hospital. It would be improper to hint that it is not the question of trespass, but rather of the effect which the trespasser might have on the value of private properties abutting on the citizens' recreation ground, that has been at issue in the minds of those who pull the strings when puppets dance. A lazar house is not an inviting object, however useful, while a temple of science, in the form of the magnificent and picturesque structure that looks down on the Lunatic Asylum is a horse of a different colour. The beneficiaires of the Hospital were but social pariahs, while there is something elevated and elevating in the associations of the elegant structure that perches on the heights of Roslyn. This is merely in reference to the obliquity of vision which failed to see the two trespassers at the me time ; for it is due to

the Council to say that when its squinting eye got fairly fastened on the' Observatory, the inviolate sanctity of the people's recreation ground came again to the front, and they would if they could have exiled the meteorologist and his furniture. But Government is more potent than poor sick patients, and a cautious note and condescending request, with a legal opinion that the Governor was in poaseß' sion, dissipated the scruples of the conservators of the people's recreation ground. Circumstances alter cases.

There are some things which no fellah can understand. Civil engineering is one of them. Its ways are past finding out. But there are questions in connection with it so obtrusive, that one cannot prevent them forcing themselves on the mind, even though a solution is not to be dreamt of. For example, in stumbling over miniature rocks which form the newly -made surface of any of > our principal streets, one wonders, in spite of himself whether the millennium of beasts of burthen will ever come, when hoofs will press and wheels will' roll on plain and even surfaces. To any mind but that of an engineer the thing seems easy enough of attainment, but it would be heresy, if not treason, for anyone to suggest the posibility of dethroning Macadam. Only the other day the Oity Council insisted on a crossing being made of asphalt. They were informed, it would have to sustain weights of six- fly seven tons. Nevertheless it was insisted on. If one was not an engineer one would feel inclined to think that if crossings of asphalt exist in the city, over which the whole traffic passes, and if a weight of six or seven tons does not deter the Council from submitting asphalt to the ordeal, the streets themselves might be made of asphalt, to the everlasting comfort of man and beast, and to the satisfaction of the erergrumbling ratepayer. It is true that so long as the system of breaking up the streets of the city by huge excavations once a month continues, it would be folly to lay down asphalt, as its removal and restoration are not so handily effected as when the material is clay and broken boulder. But when the happy day arrives on. which engineering ingenuity ' for squandering money may be exhausted, or the Oity Treasurer has got no more money to be squandered, it might be considered whether tar pavements euphoniously dubbed asphalt might not be substituted for the rude and barbarous system ruling. On the grounds of efficiency there can be no reasonable objection, for if asphalt crossings survive the traffic, asphalt roadways — which are but a continuous succession of asphalt crossings laid side by side — should live too. They have been successfully tried elsewhere, and it seems reasonable to think they should be as successf ul here. And then the - boon to warehouses and stores of having no more dust, no more water carts ; to the public no more dislocated ancles, no more broken hoofs, but vehicles rolling along as smoothly as on a tramway. Why it would be a revolution so beneficent that the very cabmen's horses would assemble in Manße street and deputationise His Worship and Councillors with an address of thanks.

Hospital management is not popular with City Councillors. They have had a taste of it in the Fever Hospital, and they don't seem to like it even a very little bit. Yet, what is to be done? The adoption of the lorn child is in accordance with the new system of things, and is it to be treated as an dutcast because unpleasant accompaniments attended the Council in its previous Hospital management 1 Most administrative bodies Are unaccustomed to the refusal of such powers and patronage as are involved in the handing over of our charitable instistutions, and our Council is happily exempt from any stupid distrust of its own powers, and its capacity for undertaking any kind of responsibility. But the Council must draw the line Bomewhere, , and it draws it at hospitals. It <% hardly fair to suppose that the Council had not other reasons in reserve more potential even than those which purported to guide them in looking askance on the generous gift of the Government. Had the offer been untrammelled with responsibilities of that mest objectionable kind, the raising of money, it is probable that the austere virtues of the Council might have yielded to the temptations to a little extended administration and its attendant patronage. But there is an ugly look about the pecuniary arrangement of "pound for pound " that gave a filip to the self-denial of Councillors. Spending money is all right enough, and is quite in the line of our civic administrators, but to collect "pound for pound" to the Government's contribution, the thing don't look nice at all. And then the Government official who made overtures to the Council had the temerity to speak of subscriptions, which clearly foreshadowed Councillors going out with little collecting-books in their hands, and adding to the grave cares of civic administration the very nasty business of begging for subscriptions. All this may not have been contained in the Government's proposal, but it has enough in it to repel, and raising money in any other way than striking a rate, and even that • under the pressure of necessity, is not among the duties for which Councillors subjected themselves to the troubles of election. It is to 1 l be feared that the scheme of foisting" on town councils their charitable institutions is not likely to take hold on the popular mind, It

was the proposal of Centralism with its fingers burned, and endeavouring to get quit of some few of the burthens under ■which it was endeavouring to stagger. As several Councillors were ardent Conr tralists, it seems an ungracious thing of them to refuse this proffered foretaste of the sweeto of Centralism. But eyes are becoming generally opened to the blessings of the great constitutional change, and somehow they don't seem to like it.