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South Canterbury Times, Issue 5020, 30 May 1889, Page 4

The morphine habit has seized hold of San Francisco. “ Morphine fiend ”is a slang phrase imported .into its vocabulary, and can be applied to a wide section of miserable looking living beings. No leas than 60 per cent of the petty offenders sent to the receiving hospitals of the city prisons are victims of the terrible habit. For many years Sir John A. Macdonald has been virtually the ruler of Canada, says a writer in Harper's Magazine. He has had the ability and skill to keep his party in power, while all the provinces have remained or become Liberal. I believe his continuance is due to his devotion to the national idea, to the development of the country, to bold measures - like the urgency of the Canadian Pacific Kailway construction —for binding the provinces together, and promoting commercial activity. Canada is proud of this, even while it counts its debt. Sir John is worshipped by his party, especially by the younger men, to whom he furnishes an ideal as a statesman of bold conception and courage. He is disliked as a politician and cordially by the opposition, who attribute to him the same policy of adventure that was attributed to Beaconsfield. Personally he resembles that remarkable man. Undoubtedly Sir John adds prudence to his knowledge of men, and his habit of never crossing a stream till he gets to it has gained him the sobriquet of “ Old To-morrow.” He is a man of the world as well as a man of affairs, with a wide and liberal literary taste.