The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1974, 19 September 1889, Page 21

The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY.

IHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 18S9.

THE WEEK.

" Nnnquajn aliud natura, aliud sapiontia dixH."— Jdvxh.il. " Good nature aud good Dense mnot ever join,"— Fops.

The Joint Committee of the Upper and Lower Houses on Live Stock New and Babbits have reported

bhat " the changes made last

year have been beneficial," which report might have been taken for granted, inasmuch as those changes were made at the instance of the committee itself. The changes in question consisted in the abolition of the chief inspectorship and the transference of direct control to the Minister himself. Very little more can be said for this novelty than that it was one of the usual shufflings-up of official responsibility for which New Zealand is becoming notorious. Let a given function appertain to a responsible Minister, and somebody is sure to propose amid general applause that we should transfer that function to somebody else, not in politics, and pay him a gcod salary for undertaking it. On the other hand, if we have a man in office at the head of a given department, it is only a question of time when a bill is introduced to abolish that office and remove the responsibility into the hands of a Minister direct. We are fast drifting into belief in a settled rule that every system of control we possess in any section of Government is radically bad, and requires turning upside down at the earliest possible date. The worst of it is that the rule is not only settled, but continuously operative ; so that no sooner have we got our desired houleversevieivt than we contemplate it askance with suspicion and dislike, and never rest till we have it the obher way up once more. Local government, hospitals and charitable aid, bankruptcy practice, Government life assurance, management of railways, and now the Stock department, all supply in their history abundant instances of these extraordinary volte-faces, and many others outside of those departments might be quoted. This kind of thing is becoming slightly ridiculous, and we are not disposed to allow the Stock Committee's complacent approval of • its own reforms to go quite unquestioned. Nothing, indeed, would surprise us less than to find this same committee issuing next year a declaration, supported by the most conclusive arguments, to the effect that the attempt to control inspectors all over the colony by the direct orders of the person who might happen to be Minister of Lands for the time being is radically bad in principle, and that it is homeless to expect any good result until a thoroughly good man, &c, &c. — we all know the rest. Then everyone would blandly accept the excellent suggestion, and wonder how we could all have been so foolish as not to see it before If ever there was a country in the worl'l whose governmental motto was "Always swap horses in the middle of a stream," New Zealand has the honour to be that country.

In other respects the Stock and Eabbit Committee seems to have done Tari<m« its work, on the whole, useYormin. fully and well. It must

always be remembered in reference to this committee that it is practically "bossed" by Canterbury and Marlborough influence, hut it must be confessed that it is none the worse for that. It cannot be denied that these matters are studied much more energetically and in a far more organised way in these provinces than they are in Otago. Canlei I ury influence on the committee secured the erection at the colony's expense of the great rabbitnetting fence from the Tasman glacier to the sea — "to protect," as the Chief Inspector of Sheep for Canterbury puts it, poetically and almost pathetically, in a semi-official paper, "this fair Canterbury of ours against the cruel ravages of the Otago rabbit." Opinions in Otago differ as to whether this fair Canterbury of theirs can be efficiently protected in any such fashion, or whether, in fact, the rabbits which have got into Canterbury ever saw Otago at all. Nevertheless, we gave them their fence and paid our share witaout much grumbling, in consideration of the vigour and energy with which Canterbury representatives " run" the sheep and rabbit business up in Parliament. The interest in their report is in this part of the colony principally confined to the rabbit branch, and here the committee give forth what the Presbyterian Synod calls " no uncertain sound " on the vexed subject of ferrets, 6toats, and weasels. It appears that the Sydney conference set its imprimatur, for what it might be worth, on this method among others ; but the Government has discontinued the importation and breeding of the little scavengers, while continuing, with characteristic inconsistency, to subsidise rabbit boards for doing the same thing. Whether or not the serious dangers pictured by some as the possible results of stocking the country with stoats and weasels are fanciful or exaggerated, there can be little question as to the correctness of the committee's judgment that poison," followed by the natural enemy, and accompanied in appropriate circumstances by wire-retting fences, is the best and completest method known for "sorting" the rabbits, as they say in the country districts. The suggestion that farmers should be in some way aided in the erection of netted fencing deserves consideration, especially as such a provision has just become law in Victoria. The export of twelve and a-half million rabbitskins only last year shows how seriously the country must be still suffering under the ravages of this terrible pest, and how well it is worth the country's while to adopi every possible means to enable the settlers, large and small, to cope with it successfully.

The last few days of the session were devoted almost entirely to actual busiTh o ness, a change which of itself iKpiioguo. was sufficient to send a large

number of member^ scampering off home prematurely. Business is. all very well in its way, but its way is dry and

laborious, and on the whole it is the kind of thing which a self-respecting member finds it most dignified and desirable to leave to somebody else. Electors can't have everything, and if they wish to be represented by talented obstructionists and distinguished stonewallers they must expect their representatives to be a little impatient of the real unexciting business of the country. From these generalities about representatives, however, we must except Sn* George Grey, who is perfectly at home in obstruction, chuckles unfeignedly at the prospect of a stonewall, yet withal never leaves Wellington till the prorogation is actually over, and is always provided with measures of the utmost importance up to the very last moment of the Appropriation Act debate. In his undisputed capacity as the champion of " millions yet unborn," with whom he has long been on terms of the most intimate and confidential kind, and whose views we are thus privileged to gather with gratifying accuracy notwithstanding the troublesome fact that they are unborn, Sir George Grey lighted this week on a grievance which has been inflicted upon them by Sir James Fergusson. This ex-Governor of New Zealand, and present Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has been investing capital in the country he once governed — a somewhat venial offence, one would think, in most people's estimation, and one which, however much it may inconvenience the unborn millions, is apt to be regarded with considerable complacency by many of their predecessors. Sir Harry Atkinson, whose feelings towards the unborn are, we grieve to say, irreverent and frivolous, declined to postpone the business of the House in order that these wrongs might be inquired into, and unfeelingly added that he intended to conclude the work of the Government without listening to any f urthei " interruptions." The Property Tax Bill was swallowed with a bad grace, and the grant to the family of the late Mr Macandrew passed with a good one. A dreary debate on the question of the desirability of a dissolution served to increase the bulk of Hansard without effecting any other conceivable purpose ; and the lighter elements of the political drama were supplied by the troubles of Miss Ida Prince, and a snarling match between Mr R. Reeves and Mr Fish over the decision of the Petitions Committee in that young lady's case. * The passing of the Appropriation Act finally signalised the fact that the Government after many desperate battles and the loss of a fourth of its members, had once again " got to Chicago " ; and the Union Steam Ship Company added one more to its great services to the country by clearing Wellington of hon. members, and scattering them north, south, east, and west, into the arms of their grateful constituents.

It has come to be a regular thing for the San Francisco service to slip i Political through the House on the Hniiwaj. plea that it is only for one

more year. Apparently no Government, even with the Auckland members at its back, ventures to ask for two years' life at a time for this unpopular Yankee notion. This session the arguments in its favour were singularly weak and inconclusive ; while to those brought against it infoimer years were added the powerful consideration that the American steamers have been busily engaged in bringing down the price of grain in New Zealand by supplying the Australian market -with cheap produce from Calif ornian farms. We can find nothing in the feeble advocacy of Sir Harry Atkinson which adequately meets this new and grave element in the maintenance of the Yankee subsidy. We repeat what we have said before, that elaborate demonstrations of the possible saving of a day or two in the transmission of English correspondence are of minor importance in dealing with a question like this. No one pretends to be dissatisfied with the speed made by the direct steamers, which carry by far the larger proportion of our mails ; nor, if the San Francisco mail really does get delivered in London in quicker time than the direct mails, does anyone experience any lively satisfaction from the circumstance. The point is, Can we dispense with the cost of the San Francisco service, and still get our mails carried to and fro with all the speed and safety we desire, or can afford 1 It takes considerable hardihood, even for a politician with a provincial vote to conciliate, to answer this question in the negative. We have 10 magnificent fast steamers running, at fortnightly intervals, between New Zealand and London ; we have a slower service of cargo steamers, if we choose to proceed to the extreme of economy regardless of speed (a course which, however, is unnecessary and undesirable) ; and we have lastly a weekly service, if we choose to avail ourselves of it, by the P. and O. and Orient steamers from Melbourne. This weekly service, it is true, we now make prohibitive by imposing a double rate of postage; but the English Post Office does not, and it is perfeofcly well-known to business men that duplicates of letters posted from London to New Zealand via Melbourne frequently arrive here before the originals, despatched via direct or San Francisco route on the same day. The San Francisco mail is now as distinctly apolitical mail as certain railways are political railways ; and all the sophistry that is talked about it in Parliament will not deceive the country as to the real motives for its retention, nor satisfy the farmers that the taxation wrung from them by a Protective tariff, in the benefits of which they cannot share, is being justly expended in helping Californian speculators to keep down the value of New Zealand grain.

It .will be remembered that a few months ago a criminal named Kemmler, condemned to death for murder at New

Electrical Executions.

York, was sentenced to be execnted by electricity ; the law of the State of New York having recently provided that all future judicial executions shall be effected by that agent. The execution was fixed for the 20th of last June ; but before that date an appeal against the sentence had been lodged by the prisoner^ counsel, on the ground that the Constitution of the United States prohibits punishment of a" cruel and unusual " character, v and that therefore the State of New York had in reality no power to pass the law in question. Mr Bourke

Cockran, who is described as one of the most brilliant of the younger members of the New York bar, took the prisoner's case in hand, and argued it before the court on June 25, taking the above as his principal paint, in support o£ which he quoted a curious precedent in English history, namely, the case of Feltour, who murdered the Duke of Buckingham. The question had arisen whether the hand of this murderer could be cut off as a punishment, when the judges held that -the right to inflict torture had no place in English jurisprudence. Mr Cochran insisted that experiments upon dogs and other fourfooted beasts, whatever their results might be, could not possibly be held to show conclusively that a human being under the application of a fatally powerful current may not suffer the most exquisite torture. " The State," he said, " should not experiment with human life." The Attorneygeneral of the State replied, and the court decided that evidence as to the effects of electricity was necessary to enable it to decide the question; the hearing was adjourned to enable such evidence to be taken before an expert referee. The drift of this evidence up to last accounts had been to the effect that though a good deal had been done in the way of experiments on animals, the effects of currents on human beings were as yet imperfectly known; and the general opinion was that the murderer must get off, and the sensational law be -repealed: Meanwhile the insatiable spirit of advertising which characterises everything American had entered into the case, and had vastly stimulated the strong competition between the manufacturer of " direct woiking " and " alternating current " dynamos respectively. The authorities had at length shown afinal leaningtowards adopting! or the prisons the Westinghouse electrical generator, which gives an " alternating " current ; whereupon the direct current manufacturers, recovering from their first- chagrin, promptly pointed out that this was conclusive evidence of the greater danger attached to the use of the rival plan, and that it shewed that alternating currents should not be permitted in the streets or in private houses 1 The Westinghouse people now want to get out of their contract for supply ing their apparatus to the State prisons ; and so inextricably are these business questions mixed up with the grave issues of life and death involved that Mr Cockran had to expressly disavow before the court any connection with that enterprising firm. Nowhere out of America could so singular a jumble of law and business have taken place.

Monaco, the centre of the gambling world,

has undergone the loss of its

a iioyni Prince, a calamity which it Houbo of cards. m ight have survived. Ac-

cording to the week's cablegrams, however, the little principality has met with a heavier reverse, in the shape of the accession of another Prince, who has determined to abolish gambling in his dominions altogether. If he means it he may as well abolish himself at once; for Monaco without the Casino de Monte Carlo would be more insipid than the play of "Hamlet" with the part of the Prince of Denmark left out. Monaco has for many a year been the Mecca of the fashionable gambler, and, indeed, of a great part of the fashionable world ; and the news of the abolition of the famous tables will spread consternation in half the palaces and castles in Europe. The name of the new and reformed Prince is not given, but he will scarcely hand'it down to posterity as that of the author of a great revolution. His dominions altogether would barely make a respectable home paddock on one of our large sheep stations, and the population of the capital city does not greatly exceed that of Caversham or the Flat. Greatness eludes the reforming statesman who deals with such lilliputian kingdoms. Those who want to know all about Monaco and its Prince had best avoid the encyclopaedias and consult an exquisite little hrochii/re of the year 1874, entitled "The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco : By Himself." This Prince Florestan was at Cambridge, finishing his university career, when a telegram reached him informing him that the infant Prince of Monaco had been thrown out of a carriage and killed, and that he (the Cambridge undergrad.) was now the reigning Prince. Somewhat reluctantly, the new ruler proceeded to his dominions, the internal economy of which he amusingly describes in in the succeeding pages. Among other things he received, according to previous custom, a weekly report on the affairs of the principality. Here is an extract from the first that reached him: — "On Monday night a man named Marsan called the Carbineer Fissori a fool. He was not arrested (see order No. 1142 and correspondence 70, 10, 102), but a private report was addressed to the Council of State, on which the secretary-general decided to recommend that Marsan be watched for a week. Kef erred to the sub-committee on public older." The multiplicity of offices was startling, but, the Prince comically adds, " many posts were filled by one man, a plan which' has its advantages as well as its drawbacks—the advantages predominating in a country where there are 1160 posts to fill and only 1300 grown male inhabitants." Florestan tried his hand at reforming, with the result that there was a miniature insurrection, and he left his dominions in his steam yacht and went back to Cambridge. Whether " The Fall of Prince Florestan " is authentic or no, it is amusing, and gives us a capital idea of the economics of the only State in the world which is " run " entirely upon the profits of gaming.