The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 1597.) THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2260, 24 June 1897, Page 29

The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 1597.) THE WEEK.

" Nunqunm aliud natura, ahud sapicntia dmt." — Juvenal. "Good natun' and good seuae must ever join." — Pop*. Although the Record Week is now only half over, our colamns already ' God Save bear testimony to the unique the scale of the Diamond celeQueen! bratiocs, both locally and > throughout the empire. The words unobtrusively placed in the top corner of this note have reverberated literally round the world, and have moved tens of millions of British hearts to deep and strong resolu- ' tion — resolution to make Britannia's bulwarks impregnable, and the name of England a passport everywhere to the world's respeot. That is the true end and aim of this national j day ; for though its first obvious purpose is j to honour the Queen, the honour is bestowed ' upon her as the worthy representative of a [ vast empire which is hastening to a splendid goal, and will this week make giant strides towards its final attainment. We find no fault with the hundreds of speakers who in their Jubilee addresaes have lauded the Queen as woman, wife, and mother. Their praises I are trne, and belong fairly to the matter of j their addresses. But these qualities the Queen shares — as she herself would- be the first to admit, and indeed to claim — with millions upon millions of the women she rules over. It ig not for her goodness, but for her greatness, that the nation raises its voice in cheers to-day. The Queen is the Empire, and the Empire during the Queen's sway has become a noble heritage of our race in a sense never approached before Victoria ascended the throne. A great era in our history is closing — the Queen is frail and 78 years old: a greater one is opening — the Empire was never more grandly powerful than now, when we. are all uniting to celebrate the wonderful 60 years which have made it what it is. It is true that those 60 years have not, as one enthusiastic local poet (in an otherwise admirable outburst which we should be the last to, belittle) takes the poetic license to assert been years of peace : far from it indeed. Sat they have been years of unique development in the arts of peace, and of still more wonderiul development in the extension of , British power. Pride, if it is ever pardon- i able, is surely pardonable in the British - citizen of 1897 when he looks towards the throne whose single occupant in 60 years has waved her sceptre over so great a share of the lands and seas of the globe, and whose subject people have all the time grown in ', freedom and in enjoyment of the rigbts-of man. It is a " Record Reign "in more than length ; and that it is 30 hailed by our race is amply shown by the cascads of magnificent displays which ie deluging the surface of half a planet in this wonderful week. The two murderers of whom in due course of law the hangman will shortly ** The Last rid the earth are both typical Tenuity. criminals, belonging to the ' class that, according to all experience, is utterly beyond reform. Religions axioms alone contend for the amenableneas of such creatures to saving grace — human reason and conviction are dead against the possibility. The lesser ruffian of the two has been bad from boyhood, and has finished his criminal career by the perpetration of a fearful crime, of the kind that excites the utmost degree of loathing and horror in the ordinary mind. A small and peaceful rural community could not suffer a more terrible shock than befell the quiet people of Amberley when they learned that a young schoolgirl, in her early teens, whom most of them in all probability bad known from babyhood, and who never in all her brief years had harmed a human son), had fallen into the power of a human brute, and after a brief period of agony and horror, bad been cast a bleeding corpse by the lane Bhe had been merrily tripping along. Far be it from us to pile up epithets or lash the popular indignation against the wretch who now awaits his righteous doom. He goes from the world paying the penalty prescribed, and there is nothing more to be said. But for the bright young 'life he cruelly took, and for the other lives he blighted for ever by the memory of his unspeakable deed, there is no real recompense known to the law, no real compensa- • tion and relief on this side of eternity. If there be degrees in murders, then murder for gain is a greater, as it is also a far more common, crime than murder as the result of lust. Perhaps because it is common it excites j less the ordinary mind than does the other '• horror. It is only when it is done on a whole- ! sale scale, as by such creatures as Deeming, j Hall, and Butler, that a community is stirred to its centre by a passion of revengeful fury.Butler is one of the most despicable criminals that ever lived. There is no romance, and thero was no virility, about the series of cowardly and sordid murders of which he ' virtually stands convicted. His motive was gain, however small : a five-pound note was worth to him more than the sparing of a ■ human life. His method was to sneak behind '

his friend's back and smash in his skull with pick or with bullet. The finish of each crime was a ghastly burial, evidencing iv its d9tails the hideous callousness we only associate in thought with suoh foul monsters as the python and the octopus. For the stain of each successive victim's blood he cared no more than the wolf cares for the cloyed rednegß of his reeking chops. Oat of the world he too goes, leaving the air purer for the rest of sinful mankind. The third and, it is to be hoped, the most drastic " reconstruction " of Restored to the New Zealand Loan and Life. Mercantile Agency Company has just been announced, and has attracted this time singularly little public attention. The less the better, no doubt : not for the reasons for which such a remark might have been made when the company first came down — for this time there is no reason to suspect the existence of the incredible irregularities revealed two or three years ago— but merely because, since the thing bad to be done, and has been done, criticism of the event is more or less a waste of time. The course of the company's affairs leading up to the present readjustment of its debts has not been indicated in detail ; but no one who has paid any attention to the periodical' reports of the directors since the original reconstruction can affect surprise that a difficult and dangerous finance of the kind has already become impossible. It has become cußtomary when a financial company reconstructs (which has of late been an occurrence quite sufficiently common to generate settled customs of its own) to assume that the process has cleared away all difficultiep, and that the concern affected has necessarily entered upon an unburdened and highly prosperous career. Flattering generalities appear in all the papers, together with vague references to the bygoneness of bygone?, and unreasoned " best wishes " for future prosperity. But all this means very little, save that the writers are anxious to" get rid of a disagreeable subject, in an agreeable, if not very responsible, way, and that, knowing that " reconstruction " in the affairs of an individual generally does involve a real good-bye to unfortunate creditors, they suppose the same process in the case of a public company implies the same result. Business men, however, generally have a fair idea whotker and when the public has been allowed to get to the bottom of things in these cases ; and it -is as well to say frankly that we were nearly as certain to Hear from the Loan and Mercantile Company again after ths original reconstruction as we were to be bailed up by the Bank of New Zealand after the " absolute an«l unimpeachable safety " of that institution, which was announced as the result of the disastrous bill of 1894. Fortunately the directors of the company, in announcing their difficulties, have been able ro announce simultaneously that these had been tided over; and if it were not for an unpleasantly suggestive exception about the effect of droughts in the official assurance of the completeness of the readjustment, we should be disposed to join to a moderate extent in the very sanguine views expressed by the board. As it is, we do not disbelieve them, but we think the responsibility for ultimately justifying them should be very definitely laid upon the board. By far the most important fact to be gathered from the recent announcement is, however, not the special relief to this particular company, but the indication once more given that liquidation is the very last thing that London financiers intend to allow in the case of distressed colonial institutions of any magnitude at all. The debentureholders fully realise that, in most cases it will pay them to supply the necessary props ; and they do it, on the whole, with remarkable good grace. We don't quite know whether it is altogether a good thing or not, but tha fact seems to be that such institutions can pretty well rely on gettiDg the money they want in London as often as they like to come and demonstrate a real need for it. The Private Benefit Societies Commission has at last struck something Fodder that may be called interestAt Last! ing- It has unearthed the existence of a sweating society run by the Government itgelf, or, in other words, "by the Bank of New Zealand. This achievement is not at all wbat was expected or intended when" this notorious commission was set up, and it will doubtless be held by the -benevolent- authors of the comiaaisßion's being that it has adopted a most ungrateful method of earning its wages. It was invented to curse the Union Company and some other capitalist concerns, and it has only blessed them continnally (not that the commission will say so, but we are speaking of what the evidence establishes). Not only that, but it has turned and rent the Government itself, which, having assumed the responsibility for the management of the Bank of New Zealand, and having now carried ife on for two or three yeara, must be held primarily responsible for the continuance of the undesirable state of thing* which has been found to exist in connection with the bank's benefit society. The commissioners, however, are far too short of crumbs of comfort in their farcical career to be able to afford indulgence in the suppression which would doubtless be bo convenient to their employers in this instance. They look upon these Bank of New Zealand revelations as their one little ewe lamb — their only hope of effective reply to the universal and too-thinly-veiled contempt with which they i have been received by a discriminating public wheresoever they have set foot. Mr Fisher especially seems relieved beyond measure, and expressed himself in terms of unrestrained ecstasy at the sniff of real evil which he bad at last and so unexpectedly obtained. There was no thought of regret at its discovery or Sympathy for the victims of the alleged maladministration : delight at the mere existence of the evil was evidently the guiding sentiment of his remarks. All the same, we have no doubt that before the time comes for reporting this part of the coming document will be carefully prepared for the commissioners' signature — and not ie the commission's office. The members will be compensated by being turned loose with guerilla orders on the Union Company and. tha others. One of the last items cabled before we went to cress lftifc weak was the salo'icte of

" Barney " Barnato, the South African mil* lionrire. He had .evidently, been suffering for some time frqjn suicidal mania ; and in the end, to use an expressive Americanism, " got there," as all such unfortunates sooner or later do. The strange story perhaps lends itself more suitably to a sermon than J to a newspaper article. There are such obvious " lessons to be drawn " by those people (if there are any) who do draw lessons from current evento. The ordinary man will concern himself more with the strange events of " Barney's " life than with the manner of his death and the bearing of his fatal delusions on the philosophic status of the modern millionaire. He is said to have been a clown in a circus. The spangles he wore probably dissatisfied him owing to the fact (which the attenders at circuses are not supposed to suspect) that they were not genuine brilliants, and ha transferred his energies to the place where those things nowadays mostly grow. He was soon in a position to return to his old profession,, arrayed as Solomon in all his glory never dreamt of being — in% harlequin robe glittering with real diamonds. Needless to say ha did not do so, but got into finance, and .ultimately into that goal of the modern par.ve?iu, London society — in a degree, of course. He then founded a bank and one or two other similar things, which were sneered at by the Stock Exchange, but rushed by the public; he helped to " run " an abortive revolution, and afterwards did his fair share of paying the piper ; and having by this time developed a maniacal belief that he was hurrying to a pauper's grave, .he watched his opportunity, and put bimßelf swiftly and surely into the Atlantic Ocean, thus satisfactorily escaping in the generally accepted sense of the word, any grave at all. He seems to have been a bluff, blundering, illiterate, and altogether ordinary man, and if his shareholders doynob suffer by his death the rest of South Africa will get along without, him, while tho moralists must almost feel that his leap' into the sea was a providential arrangement for providing them with a positive plethora of working capital.

A cablegram was received by the ActingPremier on Tuesday night announcing that the Premier had been mud a a member of the Privy Oounoil. We congratulate the Right Hon. R. • J. Seddon upon the honour conferred on him by her Majes'y. It ia presumed that the whqle" of the colonial Premiers visiting England have also been appointed members. The cable signal which was to have announced the beginning of the thanksgiving service a.fc St. Paul's Cathedral, London, onTuesday — expected here, about 11.30 p.m. — did not; come to hand. A cablegram was received and communicated to the authorities as follows : — "Anthem signal officially disapproved, and idea therefore abandoned." As no Bpecial demonstration had been arranged here the change caused no disappointment. At Wellington . it had been arranged that as soon as the signal was received the m sewed bands and the thousands of spectators should lead off with the National An them. ? . The railway passenger traffic to and from Dunedin on Tuesday was remarkably heavy, the number of passengers being undoubtedly greatly in excess of the' traffic on any other occasion. As the booking was from country stations to Dunedin, thn exact figures cannot be obtained, but folly 5000 persons must have reached the city by train during the day. j Mr D. T. Kelly, who has been promoted fca ' the charge of Wnikouaiti railway station, was entertained lasb week beforft leaving Glenavy (Wailaki) at a dinuer, when the chairman, on behalf of the residents, presented him with a gold watch, suitably inscribed, and Mrs Kelly with a gold bracelet, in recognition of the courtesy and friendly feeling which had been experienced. On leaving the next day the station was lined with people, and three cheers were given as the train moved off. A Waikouaiti correspondent writes :—": — " By Saturday's express we witnessed the departure of our worthy and esteemed stationmaoter, Mr John Sbewarfc, who has been transferred to Waimate. Previous to leaving he was waited upon by a deputation of the railway employees, who presented him with a massive gold chain and Maltese cross, suitably inscribed. The recipient, in au appropriate and feeling speech, thanked the deputation for their testimonial, and- expressed himself extremely "sorry at having to leave so many old friends. Mr Stewart has been 10 year* in Waikouaiti, and daring that time he has made many friends— nob only in his official capacity as stationmaster, but in various other ways. He is a P.M. in Freemaaonrv — an energetic .worker,— and his loss will be severely felt; iv Lodge Waikouaiti." • - George Osmond, eight years of age, living afc - Highcliff, was kicked on the head on Tuesday by ahorse. He was following -the animal,, which was being led by a man, and on hitting ifc with a. B tick it kicked him, fracturing the skull and producing concussion of the brain. The boy lies in a precarious state. Of the late Mr H. Sinclair Thomson, tho Timaru Herald says :—": — " The deceased gentleman, who was born in Dunrobin, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, came to the colony about 4-3 years ago, and took up Wanaka West Station, Lake Wanaka. He spent about 25 years on the station, and then joined the staff of the Stock department as a rabbit inspector. Later on he was promoted stock inspector for the Mackenzie Country, and when Mr Douglass, the inspector for Timara, died, the late Mr Thomson was transferred to Timaru. This was about the cod of 1893. A few months ago Mr Thomson's health gave way, a serious affection of the heart being the chief cause, and he resigned on compensation. He then retired into private life, bub did not long enjoy his well-earned res^, for he became dangerously ill about a. week ago, and breathed his lasb at 3.30 a.m. on the 17th. The deceased gentleman was a zealoui and conscientious officer of the Stock department, and was greatly liked by all he came ia contact witb, and his death will also be -much regretted by a wide circle of friends in Canterbury and Ofcago." Two sword bayonets taken at tho surrender of Metz, by the German army, have just been deposited in the Masterton Museum by Colonel M'poonell. TKose of out readers who may find a hair colourrestorer a matter of necessity may be glad to know that " Condy's Fluid " makes a mosfr,excel' lent hair stain, producing almost any desired shade, from light to dark. The non-poisonoug and perfectly harmless properties of "Condy'a Fluid" give it an immense advantage over ordi. nary and more expensive hair dyes, which nearly all contain lead or some other metallic poison, injurious alike to hair and health, while it is claimed for thi3 Fluid that it restores healthy action and thereby promotes the growth of thi hair. The price, too, bringg it within the reach of all, a Is bottle containing sufficient to keep the hair in colour for a year or ta.w&*