TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8230, 6 September 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

At the London Criminal Court recently there has been an exceptional number of charges of making and uttering counterfeit coin. At the oonolusion of one of the oases the foreman of the jury asked the authorities if they would take a suggestion from twelve business men who during the year had to deal with considerable sums in silver coiu. There was a most simple test for the detection of base coin, It was to sharply out the milled edge, of a good coin against the milled edge of the suspected coin. If the suspected coin were a spurious one the metal would almopt immediately begin to shave off. It was, he added, a teat that -could be carried out anywhere, on the top of a bus or in a stoop, and the public ought to be aoquaiuted with it. After making a personal test, the Common Sergeant said he quite agreed with the euggesion of the jury as to the usefulness of the test, and said it ought to he made known, 'iho foreman added that be had written to three Chancellors of the Exchequer, pointing out that they ought not to deprive the publio of this simple test by issuing crown pieces and threepenny pieces without milled edges.

Following the example of their comrades at Manchester, a band of

unemployed seizeda vaoant allotment at Plaistow, in tne Bast End of London, and established a oamp there. From its stfape the plot of land was styled "Triangle Oamp," and the tarpaulia camp in which the men slept at night bore the legend "Tne Triangle Hotel. Manager, Councillor Cunningham." The attitude of the authorities towards the campers appears to have been one of benevolent indifference. The land had been lying idle, no plans bad been formed for putting it into immediate use, and the tilling of the soil by the campers would rather improve it than otherwise. So every day Councillor Ben Cunningham and his thirty followers went forth to labour in their, cabbage patch, and every night they sat around the camp-fire and lifted ud their voices in song and speech, or listened to the soothing and melodious strains of a gramaphone lent by a sympathiser. Iu reply to .the Mayor of Plaistow's formal letter uf protest against the seizure of the land, the leader of Miecampera wrote ~-"I do not consider that I have acted illegally in takitigposaession of disused land, which rightfully belongs to the people." Mr Jack Wiiliams, the Sooial Democrats' orator, journeyed down from Manchester to inspect the oamp. He expressed the opinion that the movement was "all right in its way," but that it was "a very slow protest.'.' He added, "The same amount of energy put into a movement tn capture the foodstuffs would do much more good in drawing attention to the unemployed problem."

Tbe Immigration Restriction Aot Amenlment Bill which has been read a second time by the large majority of 47 votes to 7, although opposed by the Minister of Justice, is one which ought to be drastically modified in committee, says the Auckland Herald, ns it stands it provides that no person shall be admitted to the colony earlier than three years after bdiug released from imprisonment for an offence whioh in this colony would be punishable by more than a year's imprisonment, political offenders and those who have reoeived free pardons alone excepted. This sounds very plausible. We may be satisfied tnat members generally voted for it with the best of intentions and with the idea that this colony should not be made the dumping ground for the released criminals of other countries and colonies. But in doing so they have, nevertheless, taken a stage towards the perpetration of grave injustice and towards tbe establishment of a harsh law which may in the end re-act upon ourselves. If the effect of the'Bill would be the exclusion of the bnbitual criminal and of the habitual criminal only —British, American, French or uth«r—-there could be no reasonable objection raised, any more than there Jan be any reasonable objection raised to the admission into any country of persons- who will immediately become a permanent charge upon charitable aid. But Mr Sidey's Bill denies to any released prisoner the right to go to another country, ana to begin there a life of industry and honour, removed from the associations that surrounded his fall.

Another of the blessings of both youth "land old age is imperilled by a series of the most determined attacks upon the novel. Miss Louise Willoox, writiniz in the North American Review, says that ?he novel has had itfi day, and mast uease. "It has," she says, "been overdone and cheapened until it is diffloult to take even the finest novels with seriouaneds. The external novel, the novel ihat lacks brooding and profundity of truth and force of emotion, is simply negligible; and the novel of mental process, la this age of tottering faiths and insecure philosophies, is apt to be too painful to convey the pleasure which should be given by a work of art." MrGuataveKhan, in La Nouvelle Revue, thinks that there is to be a renaissance of fiotion, and that the new writers will appeal to three; distinct types of readers. "There are," he says, "the reaaers who ask for a revival of the paradoxical or fantastical novel; others who want the novel which deals With exoticism, and which goes to show that a man changes bis nature with bis climate; and yet others who wish the past, whether ancient . or mediaeval, brought before their minds' in a new way." There is a marked disposition, according to this critic, to apply the psychological tests, which modern research has given us, to heroes of the past, to the motives whiob governed their actions in love, in religioo, and in the affairs of life. The result cannot fail to be illuminating, since it will afford the modern reader a much better insight into the character of his ancestors, and give him at the same time a better measure of the past as compared with Ihe present.