NAPIER

Waipawa Mail, Volume 4, Issue 377, 26 April 1882, Page 3

NAPIER

(from our own correspondent.)

1 hear it rumored that the claims sent in for land by persons who have served Her Majesty as volunteers, militiamen, Ac, have been treated to a very summary process of consideration, and that very low, if any, of the claims sent in from the Waipawa district are going to result in a grant of any kind. This is as it should be ; if the authorities were to give grants of land to old soldiers and volunteers of the rank and tile, for services rendered, how would it be able to keep in funds and billets the ignoble army of well-connected civil service loafers ? llow would it be able to keep in aflluenco and the power to be impertinent, the horde of much intermarried Taranaki sponges ? The thing is preposterous! If any of your readers waut to see a good instance of how public money is prostituted, and the public service mado a by-word, let them procure the parliamentary paper that was laid before the House last session, numbered H. < —3l. I could give no idea of it except by quoting, which could possibly be construed into libel, and can only say it is “ very extraordinary.” We had a funny little episode hero on Thursday last, on the Beach road, that might be fittingly entitled “ the lunatic and the lawyer, or the merry madman with a fist full of shingle and the inoffensive ‘ victim.’ ” It appears that an individual who is “ not quite there” was disporting himself in an artless manner on the beach, by the lire brigade station, when he happened to see Mr Lascelles approaching. This latter gentleman’s appearance seemed to fill the hitherto peaceful breast of the cranky one with the most murderous intentions. He tried hard to slay the object of his wrath by hurling epithets at him, but this proving of no avail he condescended to metal. Then ho condescended to go with constable Livingstone to the lock-up, and now has good quarters on the hill.

The breakwater agitation is not going to die a natural death, at all events, not yet awhile. There is another scheme to the front now, a scheme that proposes to utilise the money already thrown into the sea at the Iron Pot breastwork. Mr Blythe, the draper and haberdasher, i* the supposed author of the new scheme, although 1 hear it whispered that all in the scheme worth attention is from the hand and brain of a wellknown Napier Architect and engineer. However, be that as it may, and whoever is the author, if the plan will give us a harbor lot us have it. It is common talk that the plan was barely “ sniffed at” by the Harbor Board, the members of which appear to imagine it their most becoming duty to stand upon a dignity that no one is conscious of but themselves, instead of straining a nerve to help Napier to the possession of a port. There is very little in the way of news to chronicle. Wo have had the usual percentage of “ drunks” and such like petty cases, and on one day a rattling good gale of wind, but cl illness is the order of the day.