Local and General.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 523, 22 January 1870, Page 2

Local and General.

■ . , --__ — _^__ ._ The CißCus^-^There was again a good attendance at the circus last evening, considering the rain, and the performances, which were mainly a repetition of those given on previous evenings, were highly applauded. The; Northern committee appointed at a public meeting held at Saltwater Creek on "Jan 6, for the purpose of considering what steps should be taken to advance the Northern Kailway scheme, have issued a -circular to the members of Road Boards and others, with the view of urging the Government to take active steps for the speedy construction of the line. The Late Mb Balfour, C.E. — It is proposed to place a stained glass window in the church at Timaru, in memory of the late Mr Balfour, j C.E. To enable all classes to join in this appropriate*, expression of esteem for a valuable pubiic servant, subscriptions are limited to 10s 6d. All persons desirous of coritributing, I cari<pAy.'their donations into the Bank of New Zealand, to the Balfour Memorial Fund. ._ All the -seaport-~towns in the colony hawheen^inf ited to assist; i RrvER- ; eHT7RCfir;«iThe church built by the Maoiis at Tattle River, at a cost of £200, wasvybpened last Wednesday by the Rev J. W. Stack. The church is built on the sideof;-a hilh;nearlyjonpoßitfi;tbe/Steam ( saw mills. of Mr White, Jtod7totaos.?aiplea3ing object in the landscape. It is very nicely finished inside, .all the work having been, most carefully done by the builder, Mr Noah Walters, who seems to have thrown his heart into it. The opening services were in English and Maori, and were well attended. The collections amounted to £17 14s 3d« During the day, the Maoris hospitably entertained the residents in the valley In : a i large booth erected near the bkrik of the river.

The Outgoing Mail.— We direct public attention to a mail notice which appears in our columns, giving an extension of the time for posting English letters.

Banks Peninsula Quartz Mining Company. — The one-stamper machine ordered by the company from Melbourne has arrived by the Tararua. It will be erected in Mr John Anderson's foundry yard, and will be available for quartz-crushing generally sometime during next week, w^ Provincial Accountk — The Provincial Treasurer's accounts for the quarter ending Dec. 31 have been issued. The receipts on ordinary revenue account amounted to £13,145 7s, and the expenditure to €20,855 ls lOd. The principal item on both sides of the account— £9227 15s 2d receipts, and £8978 3s 7d expenditure — relates to the railways. The receipts on land and works account are set down at £7933 ls 3d, of which £7211 7s 4d is derived from land sales, and the expenditure at £6999. The receipts on loan account are represented by the balance of £51,571 8s 4d brought forward from Sept. 30, and the expenditure under this head amounts to £3194 lis 4d. The actual total receipts for the quarter amounted to £21,078 9s, and the actual total expenditure to £31,048 13s 2d. Humanity. — Every one remembers the unfortunate fate of the crew of the Italian ship at the battle of Lisa, who went down with their vessel vociferating Viva il Re. No one will dispute that the loss of life on this occasion, after the ship was silenced, was entirely unnecessary. That such occurrences may come to pass again, or, at least, that vessels may be completely disabled, is possible and even probable. At. the late international congress of the military societies, it has been proposed by Dr Steinberg, chief surgeon of the North-German navy, that the great maritime powers should adopt a flag which, when hoisted by a burning or sinking ship in action,, should be accepted as a signal for the societies' rescuing steamers to come to the relief of the crew. France has been one of the first to adopt' this suggestion, and has offered to place at the disposal of the society for this purpose several swift steamers, useless for present warfare, but admirably suited for purposes of rescue. A Matrimonial Advertisement fbom the Fab West. — Ka-besh-co-da-way, an Indian chief, is in want of one more wife, having now but three, and offers the foUowing inducements through the Chicago : Tribune •. — " He said that, in case we should hear of any worthy white lady who might be at all disposed to consider the propriety of becoming one of his better halves, we might say to her that he has a good, large, warm house, built for him by his Great Father ; that he has always been kind to and has never yet struck any of his present wives ; that he would treat a white wife very kindly and considerately ; that he would divide with her his property, and that he and his other wives would give her the very nicest and best of everything that conld be had to eat, and that they would all do everything in their power to make her contented and happy in ber new home. In reply to another question of ours as to whether he considered that his stock of love was large enough to distribute, to a good advantage, among so many wives', he simply said, ' Ka besh-co-da- way's heart is big.'" Does it Do It ?— The New York Herald has the following : — For nine years now the people of the United States have borne the burden of the heaviest taxation on all manufactured articles tbat was ever imposed since the beginning of the world upon any people under the sun. All this while, and for the matter of that, for a quarter of a century past, the protection plunderers have been telling us, give us time, only give us time— the leeches! — and our manufacturers shall not only supply you with better and cheaper goods tban you can import, but shall compete in all the markets of the world with the manufacturers of any country. For nine years the people of the United States have listened and consented to their plundering, and what now has come of it ? Every article they use — clothing, household furniture, building materials, the implements of all industries, and whatever else — are this day from 50 to 100 per cent, dearer here than in any other part of the world. And how aboat onr competition in foreign markets with the manufacturers of other countries ? Has the tariff of from 35 to 150 per cent, created the magnificent export trade which was promised us ? It has ruined it. The Statistical Bureau bas just printed the returns of commerce and navigation for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1869. That tells the whole story. Our total exports for the past year, including American manufactures and home produce of every sort, amounted to 4 13,869, 1 82d015. The greater part oi this export was as follows : — Breadstuffs and hop's, 57,788,457d01.; cotton, 162,633,052d0L; naval stores and petroleum, 39,284,722d01.; provisions and tallow, 30,435,539i01.; tobacco, 23,334,958d01.; bullion, 42,01 1,20 Idol.; tota.l, 355,487,930d01. '1 his leaves a beggarly balance, possibly due to exported manufactures, of 58,381,25 Idol. But not all due, tor we exported -11, 000.000d01. worth of boards and staves which deserve to be chiefly rated as a product of the soil, 2,000,000d01. worth of furs and 'skins, which aie certainly a raw material, to say nothing of 900,000 dol. worth of quicksilver. In short, American manufacturers can claim no more than 45,000,000 dol. worth" of their wares, sent forth to all the markets 'of the globe. Is this the entertainment to which ibey were invited ? 7 :|>: . The Chinese Coolie Tbadb. — Th^e St, Helena Guardian relates a sad story, perhaps, the 'saddest that has' ever been recorded:, ia '- connection -.With --this traffic in human flesh. The French barque 'T&maris, Captain' Ramie, left Macao on the 6th Febraary, 1869, -with -300- em{ grants, a Chinese docter,-and a Portuguese [ ;iiiterpreter, ; 'Wsi^eß.., eighteen 7*>i „£'•' 'crew. 1 /According' to^fis.-V;a6Jcibiknt 'ibfiyfiaosp- of the

seamen who are etill on board of the Tamaris, everything passed on pleasantly until within about 270 miles of the Isle of Java. A revolt broke out among the free emigrants, who seemed to have got thebest of it, the crew taking to the boats, deserting tbe ship, and leaving their unfortunate captain, who either did not wish, or was not able, to abandon his ship, a ready prey to those enraged semi-savages. What happened to this unfortunate captain we cannot learn for certain ; according to the interpreter on board the Tamaris, he was cut up and thrown overboard. Thirty days these savages remained in possession of the ship, when they were captured by a Dutch man-of-war, which had been sent in pursuit. The Dutch found a Chinese installed in the late captain's quarters, but could not discover the slightest trace of Mr Ramie. They placed him and the other leaders, of the revolt in irons, and took the ship to Padang. At Padang the remains of the former crew who had landed in Java rejoined the ship. A new captain and chief officer were appointed, and the ship started in - pursuit of her destination on the 15th June. By this date the number of coolies had been - reduced, by arms and disease, to 245. Out of this number scores jumped overboard and committed suicide, when they found that they were to proceed on their voyage. Scores of others have died of wbat a coolie ship captain phlegmatically would call the effects :of opium. There now remain on board the Tamaiiß 75 emigrants alive. Much as we must abhor the murder and wholesale loss of lives on board this ship, we would almost hail the occurrence as a blessing to humanity were those who are now engaged in this horrid trade to take a lesson from this story aad abandon it for ever. If the charterers of this ship are not inclined to. profit by the moral lesson of the story of its voyage, they wil most probably have to learn by the pecuniary one it teaches them. Historical Manuscripts. — The Historical Manuscripts Commission, appointed a short time ago, for the purpose of ascertaining what amount of information bf this character still remained ungathered, has made considerable progress. "No less than 73 noblemen and gentlemen," says the Pall ' Mall Gazette, <? possessing valuable collections, have opened them to the inspection of the-commis-sioners; and upwards of 30 corporations, ecclesiastical and lay, have done the same. Offers of .assistance bave atso been made from all quarters. An important collection made by Dugdale has been come upon, illustrating the history of. the ninth and tenth centuries ; papers bearing on the Peririri Warbeck episode, letters riew to history from Henry VIL, Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII.. Katharine of Arragon, Cardinal : Wolsey, See, have also been found as well as a large mass of papers relating to tho gunpowder plot, quite unknown to the historians. Light ia thrown on the reign of Wm. 111. by letters of Creseett and Cardonnel relating to transactions and political events at the Hague arid in Denmark, and also by a paper in the handwriting of Lord Halifax, giving an account of various conversations between that nobleman and William' lll. There is also a large collection of letters which was seized in the King's cabinet at the battle of Naseby, and brought in great triumph to London, to be perused by both Houses of Parliament. Oat of the 300 letters captured by Fairfax only abont so, which were considered as the most damaging to the King, were ordered to be printed. The remainder, being too much in favour of the unhappy monarch to be made publio, were suppressed:- Many of -the letters which have jast been brought tb light are in cipher in the King's own hand, and are addressed to the Queen. Newly discovered documents bearing on the last illness of Charles 11. confirm the narrative of Father Huddlestone as to the conversion of that prince to the Roman Catholic faith. In another collection have heen found nearly 100 unpublished autograph letters of Prior, the poet, and double that number from his friend George Stepney, tiie ambassador, who is buried in Westminster Abbey. In one muniment room thereare no less than 5000. private letters from scholars, wits, and politicians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." A Critique.— The New York Nation gives this clean cut notice of Mr Horace White's translation of one of Bastiat's best works :— " Mr White's part of the work is exceedingly well done, and not the least valuable portion of it is his preface, which is a very useful introduction to Bastiat. Of Bastiat, it. need only be ssid that he has never been answered, and that he is unanswerable, and that he has produced one of the clearest and most telling statements in existence of t the free trade theory, or, to put it more correctly, of the laws ' of human nature which regulate the interchange of human eervicea— a statement in the presence of which protectionists areas helpless as savage spearmen, opposed to a civilised army bearing breech-loaders. The discussion, as he conducts it, ie hardly esciting. It is not a combat, but slaughter ; and any body wha wants to know what free /trade doctrines are, stripped of all excrescences in the shape of figures, anil set Out in a style so sparkling that it reads almost like a varidSvUle, cannot- do-betterihtm--Btudy-the-^S^hisniß.' Mr White, by the way, expresses in his preface his wonder-how the protective system ever eaine to be called ; the 'Amenoan system.' The explanation is simple, enough. The Neuf'-Vbrk Tribiaie 1 . has 'pjßrstfaded hundreds of thousands that •ft"'- was invented by..:; Henry ; •C. GCarey; . CftnA is now being taught: by r bim to benighted foreigners, and that Jlehry Clay first <m« bodied it in legislation so that people havo got up a kind of patrlotie-Mtachment 1 to it as a, native product. TheTfact is, as Mr White points out, that it i&-a-piece of old European machinery, in . use. .there, T in . ope form- or ianSther, for; four '-'6tAs6 &£jrly as much oriposed to'j^retvr idea .-which j^«n fairly be called AmsH6a'n as ( the doctrine of the divine, right^of kings, or , the patria pqtesta of ih^diarilaw."'!: 7"': 7\ ' /.-. 7 T '"-. 7.77