PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VIII, Issue 1404, 20 August 1881, Page 2

PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING

GISBORNE: SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1881

If the week which is bringing us to the end of our six days of toil and worry has not been an eventful one there has been not a little which will admit of reflection and comment. We need go no further back than to what appeared in the columns of our last evening's issue : To begin then.

Our telegrams from Napier told us last evening that Mr. W. L. Rees had addressed a large public meeting in the Theatre Royal, re the Native Land and Settlement Company. He was, so says the message, well received and much applauded. A resolution was carried, with only one dissentient voice, that the proposed plan was good and sound, and well worthy of support. A few evenings back Mi*. G. M. Reed addressed a public audience at Dunedin upon the same subject, and with a like result. What we have to complain of ia this : — The Land Company having been pronounced a good thing at Napier and Dunedin, why should the people of Poverty Bay not be allowed to participate in it I We of Gisborne are quite as fond of good things as other people. Yet neither Mr. W. L. Rees nor Mr. G. M. Reed has told the people here what these good things consist in. We have seen a prospectus, and so hare others in different parts of the Colony, which, like all other prospectuses, does not fully explain itself. Then we ask the two gentlemen why Gisborne has not been addressed from the platform 1 Why should Napier and Dunedin be favored and we, who must naturally feel deeply interested on the subject, be left out in the cold, and quite ignored ? It is not kind of the two gentlemen, and shows want of generous feeling and thoughtful consideration.

Here are more things from the telegrams ; — Some gentlemen connected with the Company formed in Melbourne to work White Island, are now inspecting the sulphur. This is another instance of New Zealand's natural products attracting the notice of outsiders. We have no objection whatever for foreign capital to be introduced into the North Island, We cannot have too luuoh of it, although We might have fancied that there should have been sufficient money even among our very small capitalists to embark in an enterprise which promises, with so little risk, to give profitable returns.

AT the Auckland Resident Magistrate's Court on Thursday, an old man aged 63, sued his three sons for maintenance. The old man is allowed to starve or subsist on charity because his three sons were bom before their mother obtained a marriage certificate. The law, said the magistrate, does not recognise illegitimate children. Now the law as we think is, or should be, quite the contrary of this, if it may so please your worships. A man is compelled to support his illegitimate children or go to jail. Then why when necessity calls should not illegitimate children be compelled to contribute towards the support of an aged parent. The want of a strip of paper signed by a clergyman or a registrar does not make the old father and his sons less of one flesh and blood. Either the magistrates are wrong, or the law is a very bad law.

The Bishop of Waiapu has been lecturing for the benefit of the good people of Taupo on the " Manners and social habits of the inhabitants of British India." We think the subject would have been better chosen if our most excellent and worthy Bishop of Waiapu had discoursed on the manners and .social habits of British New Zealand, where the young British New Zealanders are very deficient in manners, and have acquired very bad habits indeed. There is among the rising generation rery litt)e respect paid to our elders and superiors, or to women. As an instance to illustrate our meaning : A young lady passed up the GladBtone Road a night or two since, walking quickly and quietly in the direction of her home. Some five or six lads stood beneath a verandah. "Joe," says one of the lads, "there goes Snobby's young woman. Shouldn't you like her." And then upon this remark having passed, '• Snobby's young woman " received a handful of shells on her hat and shawl. Three of these lads were smoking— two in possession of short pipes ; the third

of a cigarette. Here, in these youths, was a combination of b*d manners and bad habits. But in comparison to other bad manners and habits indulged in by young New Zealanders the instance mentioned is rather a mild one. Charles Augustus, on Wednesday, was arrested in Dunedin on a charge of brutally assaulting his wife. The miscreant had commenced his atrocities three days after his wife's confinement, which were continued for some days after until she was removed to the hospital, where she died. Had this have happened in some of the American States Mr. Cuakles Augustus would not have been allowed the privilege of being taken to jail. He would have been taken to the first tree or lamp-post, when a long rope and a strong pull altogether would have ended his career — with a general verdict of " Served him right." Sir George Grey has given notice that he will introduce a Bill authorising anyone to practice in the law courts when duly authorised by any party to a suit. Should such a measure pass, what a grand opening it would be for the army of uncerfcificated loafers and tipplers. Has Sir George Grey no friends who will take charge of him ; and so preventing the " old man eloquent" from making a silly-billy of himself in the House? Sir George, if he does not know that such a Bill, when introduced to the Assembly, will be laughed down, then must he indeed have gone very far in his dotage. It is surely a sad sight to witness what was once such a grand man and great statesman ; a bold Governor, the terror of the Boers, and a man of finely cultivated literary tastes, being allowed to lose all the old well-earned respect which is due to a past life of great usefulness.

A bill is to be introduced by Ministers to allow postage stamps to be used for duty purposes. This should have been done long since. The present system is as absurd as if one set of coins were made to pay butchers' bills and another for the settlement of bread bills.

Landlords in future will have to got their rents just as tradesmen get their accounts. They are no longer to be allowed to take the law into their own hands by rushing a bailiff into a man's house and selling off its contents, even to the wife's bed and her wearing apparal. Such a law should long since have been blotted from our Statute Bdbks.

A Representation Parliament under a British constitution has been aptly compared to an elephant which with its trunk can root up a tree or pick up a pin. The saying is well illustrated in the doing of our Assembly. Parliament has been asked what action has been taken in the matter of a Government official charging sixpence for the inspection of a survey plan, while the next business that follows ia a no-confidence vote on Ministers, by which, should it have been carried, would have upset the legislation, of the Colony for probably a year. " These are queer times we are living in, my masters. "