TOPICS OF TALK.

Colonist, Volume XV, Issue 1502, 16 February 1872, Page 6

TOPICS OF TALK.

[BrTJffEi Editor.] , The lawyers of Nelson are enjoying a ten day*' holiday; their chambers, by common consent, are closed. Let us rejoice; but what a mistake. Ten 'days' without, legal advice; ten days durirg which disconsolate or irate litigants, or would-be litigant?, cannot dispose of six nn\ eightpences ; but go sadly from portal 10 portal only to find the " oak sported," and to abandon all hope of a law suit; ten days j during which ho threats of " legal proceedings" can be sent to disputing debtors; no writs issued; no adripe obtained that each side is sure to win. Thus the fly gets no admittance into the parlor of the spider, and has time to cool and think better of his purposed lawsuit; and the momentary bitterness uools and subsides. Our Courts are deserted, peace reigns in our streets, personal rancor has changed to brotherly love and general affection, even political animosities are softening under the benign absence of the legal element, for the lawyers are having a ten days' holiday! Let us rejoice, for great is their reward—elsewhere. It may be that experience of the glow of human kindness which, like the warm weather, has spread over the whole place daring that blessed decade of legal cessation, will induce people to dispense with law altogether; aud there lay the mistake of the lawyers in giving the opportunity of allowing themselves to be done without even only for ten tiaya. Do without lawyers! Perhaps, when the millenium comes; for, as human passions and instincts lie at the base of human laws and Governments, so will the influences that awaken disputations and produce vice necessitate the legal element ta pluck the feathers from law-loving and law-breaking geese. ' No; this is not abuse of lawyers, it is a jest at the love for litigation, at the heavy costs, and at such events (if such ever occurred) as lawyers urging on fat-pursed clients to fight cases certain to pay — the lawyers. Certainly :—present company always excepted, for no one evet heard it whispered of any lawyer in any town where this is read acting as U here indicated. Moreover, jesting apart (and a jest about lawyers, and their Plutonian parent, is, admittedly, very stale), the real lawyers, of the old family type, are men who will discourage litigation and advise compDaiise and peaceful arrangement; men in whose hands rest the wealth and reputation of hundreds of trusting clients, who, notwithstanding the many temptations lawyers undergo, rarely suffer from any breach of confidence or trust reposed in tho much abused but wideiy trusted legal brotherhood. Hapjpt thought.—lf only one-fourth of the amount men freely spend in the gratification of vices'and useless luxuries were applied to the cultivation of borne virtues, what a large increase of domestic and other happiness would accrue.—lt is a " gloomy" thought, after all, because it is uot practised; for outlay in behalf of sober-colored virtue is made "grudgingly and of necessity," while flaunting vice or flashy waste offer seeming attractions, which though soon discovered to be in a great degree fanciful, yet often remain effective for evil through the force of habit. There is mor9 of the goose element in vice, for in the aggregate, it is far more costly than the legal mania. Cherished vices pluck the man more effectually than the shrewdest Dodson and Fogg firm. TOUCHING- geese, those rare bird*, which are " Uncommon common on a common," — it is worthy of remark that the late Dr. Macntsh, the " Modern Pythagorean," and author of the Philosophy of Sleep and Drunkenness, says that the County of Caithness, one of the least wooded, and furthest north on the main land of Scotland, is tbe beat County for producing geeiO, which is very probably the fact; for the goose is a very intelligent bird. [Reference to the saving of the Roman Capitol is here specially avoided]. But, Caithness has a far greater distinction .than this. It is, I believe, the best educated County in all Scotland, and has given many able men to the Southern parts of the country, and not a few to all Britain's Colonies. The people are hardy, hardheaded, enterprising, and possessed of steady, perse- ' vering energy; and men and women from that County would make some of the best settlers for this that Colony could be found ia all Europe. Thr reasons for the superiority of the education of ihe youth of the County of Caithness are various. The first is, that there is an ample supply of excellent schools costing very little for fees, and having a welladvanced curriculum, wry much higher than the common schools of which, perhaps, we in Nelson are a little too apt to boast somewhat. There is comptmtively little work for boys in the County which, is prolific in children; wages are very low, and living is cheap. Parents strive their uttermost to keep the children at school as long as possible ; the nights are long and so is the winter; reading and study.are favorite occupations. The result Ua, good grounding in the English language, and it is a common thing to find a printer's boy, of fourteen or fifteen, entering an apprenticeship of seven years at 2s. 6d. or 3*. per week of wages, advancing to 3s. 6d. in the second year, who ts not only a good English grammarian, knaws English composition pretty well, by practice and plentiful read ing,but also knows something of Caesar's Commentaries in the original. Thus, the ordinary working man in that County lays foundations for future knowledge and ability. The latter, replete with terse effective Anglo-Saxon, and rich in illustration and good argument, which appeared in ; the last issue of this paper froji the pen of Mr. Donald M'(Jregor, is the writing of a man educated in that County; and he is by no means a solitary specimen of the studious working man of Caithness who can reason well, and clothe his reasoning in the weft and woof of well chosen and vigorous English. One who was a printer's reading-boy in a Caithness printing-office is now tbe printer and manager of the Melbourne Argus; another, while yet a mere lad, was an excellent naturalist, and was before his death fo,* years a well-known correspondent to the natural history columns of The Field newspaper. Another isj editor of a popular Scotch journal; a fourth edits ai daily paper in Yorkshire; and others are in the Oforth American colonies, and have left their mark more or less distinctly. All these and more of considerable ability, were known as boys to the writer ot these lines ; and it is a remarkable, fact to find one lijttle printing oßico, considerably within a score of years, produce so many who have made their way to something like distinction. j What a very queer parson the Rev. Mr. Sutherhind, of the First Presbyterian Church, Dunedin, must be! He has quarrelled with the office-bearer* of his congregation. He proceeded devoutly to pray for those office-bearers, who, as he confidingly informed: his Maker, were scattering dissension in the congregation, the fact being that ha was the cause oi dissension, by his over-bearing and repeliant manners. Filthy lucre, it appears, was largely at tlie bottom of it all, for at a social meeting of the memuera of the congregation, Mr. Sutherland thus, aildressed the people:-— >-^■;■•'■• <" I wish to mention a matter which has not been touched upon by any of the office-bearers—relating more partioularlv to myself, and the position in which I am placed financially. L think that I ought to be placed in at least as good a position in this respect as any of1 my brethren in the city, aud certainly £500 a yenr would not be too much for you to piy your iniuister. jLn,thesj days talent always coinuiauds a' High vrhe, aud if you do not pay ,me. this sum -you * will have to pay it to my sucoewor, and'that is very plain speak ■ in?. If you wish to have talent you must pay for it, and, if I you do not do so, you will find that talent will not remain among you,1 *

Whateveb talrnt this reverer'd gentleman pot »e?»e«,—and he ]p]»mly imp'ifl tnat he lias' a~ larg» r Biupply of tliat article, whi<h \e rjither rare in ttow,. ee»B,—lie evidently does rot priseeis flt6*e 'useful adjuncts of talent, good taste, and sound judgment, of his fellowmeti. Ht* wmk then'recervirij; £10t) a year, while the lute Bey. Dr. Burns also was receiving £300 from the same congregation Mr. Sutherland appears to have been very well paid, although he, did'not particularly manage to exhibit that capacity for permeating hiß congregation with brotherly Jore, which is the bond of union in a Christian flock, nor that meekness and unworldliness which were his Master's, marked attributes. The Synod of the Presbyterian Church was of a similar opmon, and udopted a report' of acommiitee requesting Mr. Sutherland to'resign. Mr. Sutherland will posiibly have the opportunity of studying the incompatibility of assumed"talept, which thinks of talents of gold and silver, to'perform' the [work of shedding peace and good agreement among a congregation.