Miscellaneous Extracts.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1814, 31 March 1886, Page 3

Miscellaneous Extracts.

EMIGRATION TO NEW ZEALAND. The following advertismeot is clipped from an English paper : —The Agent-Gen-eral is prepared to entertain applications for assisted passages in direct steamers from farmers and agriculturists who are desirous of taking up and settling on land in New Zealand. Families receiving thirdclass passages will have to pay £\o for each adult, and £s for each child between the ages of one and twelve years. Each head of a family must show that he is possessed of I'ioo in cash, besides £SO for each member of his family over twelve years of age. Famines approved lor the third class may have second-class passages by paying the difference between second and third class fares. Application forms can be obtained at the office of the Agent-General for New Zealand, 7. Westminster Chambers, S.W., or from Mr A. Ottywell, 6, Shandwick-place, Edinburgh.

THE MORMONS. The Mormons are likely, says an exchange, soon to be removed off the face of the eanh, at any rate, bo far as the United States are concerned. The senate of the Unite 1 States has passed a Mormon Suppression Bill by the decisive majority of 38 toyvo.es. Tlie Bdl places the entue prop uy of the Mormon Church in the hands ut irustees, who are to be nominated by the i’resi lent of the United States; it forbids the pralice of polygamy, and it takes away from the female population of Utah their right to vote. It was on the last danse of tile Bill that the minority stood out. The Bill must come next before the 1 louse of Represen times, and it it is there approved, as is probably wid be, and if it escapes the Presidential veto, as it certainly will, it will then become law. Tlie next step will be to put the new law in force. Tins is bv no means the fust occasion on whicn the Legislature of the United States has made an attack upon the Mormons. Bins have been again and again passed pronouncing against 1 heir pecuuar practices. Various attempts have been made to bring the saints under the control of the civil power, but with incomplete resu las yet. The saints have stood out doggedly, and have defied interference, at one time with passive persistence, and at another wiih force of arms. It remains to be seen whether Senator Edmonds will have any better success than his predecessors have had in the long anti-Mormon campaign,

THE GREAT EASTERN. The Great Eastern is superannuated at last, bhe has found a refuge at Gibra.tar, where she is to perform duty as a coal hulk. The Czar s yacht, Livadia, not yet five years old, is employed in a similer way at .Sebastopol. The first was a war a product of the gold fever, built for the purpose of conveying intending diggers to Australia ; but the blue clay of Ballarat was exhausted before the Leviathan was launched, and her occupation was gone before it bad bien entered upon. The Lavidia was a monstrosity from her birth—one of Admiral Fopoff s failures-and had much difficulty in crawling along shore, in a noketty state from the Clyde to the Black Sea. She, too,

was never applied to the purpose for which she was built, the Czar’s advisers not considering that it was safe to risk his sacred person on board her. Nautically speaking, the Great Eastein was not a failure, but there was no room for her in commercial enterprise. The Livadia was condemned by nautical men before she was launched.