NEWS IN BRIEF

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1792, 6 May 1891, Page 5

NEWS IN BRIEF

In a retiring address to the lectors of Te Aroha, Mr W. S. Allen expressed his annoyance that leave of absence had not been asked on his behalf during the late session. Reference was made to the petition, which he considered quite within the right of Colonel Fraser, and the failure of the petition on each point, excepting that of the appo : ntment of Mr Hammond as paid agent, an illegal practice he was assured few members of the present House had not been guilty of. Without detracting in any way from the wisdom of the judges who tried the case, he believed their decision had been induced more by apparent facts than real facts. The large amount spent in his election was utterly unknown to him until his arrival in the colony, and he feared this expenditure had cost him his seat and his candidature at the present juncture. Mr Allen then gay his views on the leading questions asm elector having a stake in the country. He was strongly averse to further borrowing, and thought that railways should remain the property of the State and be worked for the benefit of the settlers. He was in favor of the education system, which, he considered, should remain free, secular, and compulsory. The Government, in view of the small area of Crown land at their disposal, should confine the sales to small holdings, and to bona fide settlers. He disapproved of the policy of the Government in opposing freehold tenure, and thought that great evils would arise through leases under a perpetual lease system. He believed in the abolition of the Property Tax in favor of a land tax, but he disagreed with Mr Seddon that it should be such as would break up all large estates. He agreed that estates of absentees held for speculative purposes should suffer, but not the estates of those who had expended large sums in improvements. Such a course as the latter would drive capital from the colony. In conclusion, Mr Allen averred his strong faith in the future of the colony. The census returns for the city of Sydney give the population at 386,000.

The question " Are rabbits a nuisance ?" is answered in the negative by Mr_Weddell, of London, who informs the Marlborough ' Express ' that, having gone into the figures, he finds that they afford more labor and bring in more money than if the same land were used for sheep breeding. The following "par" occurs among the chit-chat in the columns of the ' Glasgow Herald ' of March 7 : — " I have just seen a letter from J. L. Toole to a Scottish friend, in which he mentions that of all countries on the other side of the world he likes New Zealand best."

At auction in London on March 10 ft pound of tea leaf from Ceylon was sold at' the rate of 212s per lb. The precious " golden tips," as the extreme ends of the small succulent shoots of the plant are called, came from Gartmore, and were disposed of by Messrs Gow, Wilson, and Stanton in the Commercial Tea Sale Rooms. The first offer was LI Is, but the price and excitement of the dealers soon rose, until the latter reached the point of fever heat, - and the former the unprecedented figure of LlO 12s 6d per lb, at which it was purchased by a Ceylon tea company in London. Mrs Worth, wife of the great Parisian dressmaker, dresses as plainly as a Bibleclass reader at a Martha's vineyard camp meeting, and looks as quietly innocent as if she never saw a fashion book or read the dry goods advertisements in the papers. The Napier • Daily Telegraph ' says that the new member for Egmont is known by the respectable sobriquet of "Felix Macworkumpoint."

Mr Justice A'Beckett (New South Wales) had recently to define the term " habitual drunkard," as used in the new Divorce Act in that colony. He said that it must be clearly understood that these words did not relate to a case where a man ordinarily sober occasionally got drunk, lost his situation, and became less able to support his wife. They did not refer to a case where a woman unfortunately married a drunkard, that is, a man who did his best to work, but occasionally broke out. He was not an habitual drunkard. That man, however, was an habitual drunkard who habitually left his wife without means of support. Apropos of the eccentricity of Mr Justice Stephens, which led to his retirement, a London paper says :— " An instance occurred at the Guildford Assizes recently. On counsel telling a witness to go slowly, and await the judge's pen, the judge threatened to commit the counsel to gaol for contempt of court, saying that it was the grossest insult that had ever been offered to him, and he began summing up the case until he was reminded that the jury bad not heard the defence. The persons who are moving for the release of Mrs Maybrick urge that the snmming up of Mr Justice Stephens to the prejudice of the accused was owing to his unstable mental condition."

The following extract from the Melbourne 'Telegraph' strikingly illustrates the ups and downs of colonial life. At the last meeting of the Benevolent Asylum a number of applications for admission to the institution were dealt with. The case of one of those admitted is peculiarly interesting. The name of Sydney Ricardo was formerly well known in the colony as that of one of the leading agriculturists and most enterprising farmers in Australia. Mr Ricardo many years back was a member of the Legislative Assembly, and when the enfeebled old man came before the Committee with the request to be housed in the asylum of which for many years he had been a life governor, he produced the old-fashioned gold railway pass which used to be granted to members of the House. The world has not dealt kindly with the once prosperous farmer of Heidelberg, and at seventy-five years of age he is without support.