Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 25, 19 October 1883, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

The contributor of an article on Dean Swift to the A NICE smLte OF Quarterly Sevieic for July, gives us a sketch of the • THINGS. condition of Ireland at the time which is of con-

siderable interest, and may bo studied with advantage by those worthy, people who see in the condition of that country only the marks of a degradation brought about by tbe natural perversity of the people and their inferiority to the much vaunted Anglo-Saxon race. — Placed before them, moreover, as the view of things to which we allude is by an English writer, and one hardly to be suspected of Irish prejudices, they should find the food for reflection thus furnished them of no little bitterness.— " The condition of Ireland," says the writer between 1700 and 1750, was in truth, such as no historian, who was not prepared to have. his narrative laid aside with disgust and incredulity, would venture to depict. ... In the time of peace the unhappy island suffered all the most terrible calamities which follow in the train of war. Famine succeeding famine decimated the provincial villages, and depopulated whole regions. Travellers have described how their way has lain through districts strewn like a battle-field with unbnried corpses, which lay, some in ditches, some on the road-side, and some on heaps of offal, the prey of dogs and carrion-birds. Even when there was no actual famine, the food of the rustic vulgar was often such as our domestic animals would reject with disgust. Their ordinary fare was butter-milk and potatoes, and when these failed they were at the mercy of fortune. Frequently the pot of the wretched cottier contained nothing but the product of the marsh and the waste ground. The flesh of a horse which had died in harnes?, the flesh of sylvan vermin, even when corruption had begun to do its revolting work, were devoured voraciously. Burdy tells that these famiohing savages would surreptitiously bleed the cattle which they had not the courage to steal, and, boiling the blood with sorrel, convert the sickening mixtuie into food. Epidemic diseases, and all the loathsome maladies which were the natural inheritance of men whose food was the food of dogs and jackals, whose dwellings yrere scarcely distinguishable from dunghills, and whose personal habits were filthy even to beastliness, raged with a fury rarely witnessed in western latitudes." — A writer who writes in this tone as we said' can hardly be suspected of Irish prejudices. Gross, nevertheless, as his language is, we consider it useful to quote it as the testimony from not over-friendly lips to the state that the country had been reduced to. — "Not less deplorable," continues the writer, " was the spectacle presented by the country itself. ' Whoever took a journey through Ireland,' says Swift, { would be apt to imagine himself travelling in Lapland or Iceland.' In the south, in the east, in the west, stretched vast tracts of land untilled and unpeopled, mere waste and solitude."— And let us remark, in passing, it is to this condition certain friends of the country now seek to reduce it once more, or even to a worse one still. " Even where nature had been most bounteous, the traveller might wander for miles without finding a -sStele habitation, without meeting a single human being, without fceKblding a single trace of human culture. Many of the churches were roofless, the walls still gaping with the breaches which the cannon of Cromwell had made in them. Almost all the old seats of the nobility were in ruins. In the villages and country-towns, every object on which the eye rested told the same lamentable story." Much of this misery the writer attributes to the inhabitants of the country themselves and their various divisions, and his picture of the middlemen and the gentry especially we believe to be but little, if in anything, overdrawn.— •« The middleman," he says, was as a rule, entirely destitute of education ; his tastes were low his habits debauched and recklessly extravagant. Long familiarity with such scenes as we have described had rendered him not merely indifferent to human suffering, but ruthless and brutal. All the tenancies held under him were at rack-rent, and with the extraction of that rent, or what was, in kind, equivalent to that rent, began and ended his relations with his tenants. As many of those tenants were

little better than impecunious serfs, often insolvent and always in arrears, it was only by keeping a wary eye on their movements, and by pouncing with seasonable avidity on anything of which they might become possessed, either by the labour oi their hands or by some accident of fortune, that he could turn them to account. Sometimes the produce of the potato-plot became his prey, sometimes their agricultural tools ; not unfrequently he would seizs everything that belonged to them, and, driving them with their wives and children, often under circumstances of revolting cruelty, out of their cabins, send them to peri9h of cold and hunger in the open country. 1 ' So much for the middlemen. — The gentry, for the most part the higher race, let us remember, who had replaced the old Catholic proprietors, are thus described : "Nor were the Irish provincial gentry in any way superior to the middlemen. Swift, indeed, regarded them with still greater detestation. As public man they were chiefly remarkable for their savage oppression of the clergy, for the mercilessness with which they exacted their rack-rents from the tenantry, and for the mean ingenuity with which they contrived to make capital out of the miseries of their country. In private life they were dissolute, litigious, and arrogant, and their vices would comprehend some of the worst vices incident to man — inhuman cruelty, tyranny in its most repulsive aspects, brutal appetites forcibly gratified, or gratified under circumstances scarcely less atrocious, and an ostentatious lawlessness which revelled unchecked either by civil authority or by religion." — The writer, nevertheless, acknowledges that the Government was chiefly accountable for all the evil. " But whatever degree of culpability," he says, " may attach itself to the inhabitants of Ireland, there can be no question that the English Government were in the main responsible for the existence of this Pandemonium. It requires very little sagacity to see that the miseries of Ireland flowed '.naturally and inevitably from the paralysis of national industry, from the alienation o£ the national revenue, from the complete dislocation of the machinery of government, and from the almost total absence, so far at least as the masses were concerned, of the ameliorating influences of culture and religion." As to what the aspect of the religion was which the , Government strove to thrust upon the people while it made their own penal, we may obtain aa idea from what follows. The writer U speaking of the Protestant clergy, who, as a class, be says, " were a scandal to Christendom." •' Many of the bishops," he continues, <( would have disgraced the hierarchy of Henry 111. Their ignorance, their apathy, their nepotism, their sensuality, passed into proverbs. It was not uncommon for them to abandon even the semblance of their sacred character, and to live the life of jovial country squires, their palaces ringing with revelry, their dioceses mere anarchy. If their sees were not to their taste, they resided elsewhere. The Biehop of I Down, for example, settled at Hammersmith, where he lived for twenty years without having once cluriDg the whole of that time set foot in his diocese." There were, indeed, a few noble exceptions the 1 writer explains, but his conclusion is that " of this body it would not be too much to say that no section of the demoralized society of which they formed a part, was more demoralized or so completely ' despicable."

The effect, we are told, of the state of Ireland on SWIFT as A Swift was extreme. "It fevered his blood, it broke politician, his rest-, it drove him at times half frantic with

furious indignation, it sunk him at times in abysses of sullen despondency. He brooded over it in solitude ;it is his constant theme in his correspondence ; it was his constant topic in conversation. He spoke of it as eating his flesh and exhausting his spirits." He hoped, nevertheless, that a remedy would be found, and he looked, as we have seen otheis do in our own day, to the proper quarter to find it--that is, not to England, but to Ireland herself. «' And this remedy, he thought, lay not in appealing to the justice and-humanity of the English Government, but in appealing to the Irish themselves, to the landed gentry, to the middlemen, to the manufacturer, to the clergy. Throughout, his object was twofold — the internal reformation of the kingdom, and the establishment of the principle, that Ireland ought either to be autonomous or on a footing of exact political equality -with the mother country." His first political pamphlet, written for the purpose of promoting the end

referred to, and entitled " Proposal for, the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures," excited the alarm of the English Government, and Whitshed, the Chief Justice, was directed to take proceedings against its printer— the author being anonymous. " The printer was. arrested. The trial came on, and a disgraceful scene ensued. The jury acquitted the prisoner. The Chief Justice refuped to accept the verdict, and the jury were sent back to reconsider their' decision Again they found the man not guilty, and again Whitshed declined to record the verdict. Nine times was, this, odious farce repeated j until the wretched men, worn out by physical fatigue, left the case by special verdict in the hands of the judge." The result, nevertheless, proved to be a popular victory, for so great was the disgust occasioned by the affair that the Lord Lieutenant at length' granted a nolle protequi — a concession to popular feeling never before made by the English Government. Swift used his victory wisely, and refrained for the time being from following it up, awaiting a crisis, which he foresaw must occur before very long, and which actually did occur in Wood's contract for the supply of copper money. — A scarcity of such money had long prevailed, and on a petition's being presented to the.Lords of the Treasury in 1722, the petitioners were, nformed that their request would immediately be granted. " Such courteous alacrity had not been usual with the English Government in dealing with Irish grievances, and excited, not unnaturally, some surprise. But it was soon explained. In a few weeks, intelligence reached Dublin that a patent had been granted to a person of the name of Wood, empowering him to coin as his exclusive right £108,000 worth of farthings and half-pence for circulation in Ireland. As less than a third of that sum in half-pence and farthings would have sufficed, and more than sufficed, for what was needed, the announcement was received with astonishment. And astonish* ment soon passed into indignation. For it appeared on enquiry, that the patent had been granted without consulting the Irish Privy Council or any Irish official, nay, even without consulting the Lord Lieutenant, though he was then residing in London. It appeared on further enquiry, that the whole transaction bad been a disgraceful job, and that the person to whom the patent had been conceded was a mere adventurer, whose sole care was to make the grant sufficiently remunerative to indemnify himself for a heavy bribe which he had paid for obtaining it, and to fill his own pockets. The inference was obvious. As the profits of the man would be in proportion to the quality of copper coin turned out by him, and in proportion to the inferiority of the metal employed in the manufacture, his first object would be the indefinite multiplication of his coinage, and his second object would be its debasement." Protests were therefore made, but in vain. " Meanwhile the mint of Wood was hard at work. Several cargoes of the coin had already been imported, and were in circulation at the ports. Each week brought with it a fresh influx. The tradespeople, well aware of the prejudice against the coins, were in the greatest prplexity. If they accepted them, they accepted what might very probably turn to dross in their bands ; if they refused them, they must either lose custom, or receive payment in a coinage no longer current." Under such circumstances Swift undertook his series of Drapier'e Letters, by which he aroused the country againßt this great injustice. " The opening Letter is a model of the art which lies in the concealment of art. We have not the smallest doubt that Swift designed from the very beginning to proceed from the discomfiture of Wood to the resuscitation of Ireland, and on in regular progression to the vindication of Irish independence. But of this there is no indication in the first Letter. It is simply an appeal purporting to emanate from one M.8., a draper, or, as Swift chosea to spell it, drapier, of Dublin, to the lower and middle classes, calling on them to have nothing to do with the farthings and halfpence of Wood. In a style pitched studiously in the lowest key, and with the reasoning that comes home to the dullest and most illiterate of the vulgar, the Drapier points ©ut to his countrymen that the value of money is determined by its intrinsic value ; that the intrinsic value of Wood's coins was at least six parts in seven below sterling ; and that the man who was fool enough to accept payment in them, must to a certainty lose more than tenpence in every shilling. ' If,' he said, ' you accept the money, the kingdom is undone, and every poor man in it is undone. 1 " This letter, as it was intended, set the whole country in a blaze, and men of all parties and shades of opinion for once united to cry out against the insult and injury offered to them. "On the 4th of August appeared a second Letter from the Drapier. In substance it is like the first, partly a philippic and partly an appeal, but it is a phillipic infinitely more savage and scathing, it is an appeal in a higher and more passionate strain. This Letter was addressed to Harding, the printer, in consequence of a paragraph which bad three days before appeared in his newspaper." The paragraph being to the effect that while Wood was to retain the right of mintage, the amount coined was to be reduced to forty thousand pounds " But Swift saw at once that if the compromise were accepted, the victory, though nominally on the side of Ireland, would in reality be on the ' side of England . In essence England had conceded nothing. Wood Btill retained the obnoxious prerogative ; England still assumed the

right of conferring that 'prerogative. A particular evil liad' been lightened, 1 but the greater evil, the' evil principle, remained. But this was not all.' •We havia already expressed our conviction that it was Swift's design fromth'e very beginning to make the' controversy with Wood the basis of far more- extensive operations;' It had furnished him with the meats of 'waking Ireland from long lethargy into fiery life. l He looked to it to furnish him v^ith^fhel mean*. of elevating tier r from servitude to 'independence, from ignominy to honour." He" was afraid, then, that the spirit he had awakened would yield to the concession made by the English Government, and his second letter was written to prevent this. If preceded the Tepbrt of the Master of the Mint announcing the concession, and' this document was followed by a third Letted — addressed to the nobility and gentry. The contents of this Letter, wete a repetition in effect, but more emphatic, of those of the' second Letter, but its distinctive character was otherwise obtained — " It is here that we catch for the first time unmistakable glimpses of Swift's i ultimate deaign. , The words of the fourteenth paragraph could, have left the English Government in little doubt of the turn which the controversy was about, to take. i Were not the people of -Ireland,' aska the Drapier, «born as free as those of England ? How have they perfected their -freedom ? Are not they subjects of the same king? Am I a freeman in England, and do I bacome a slave in cix hou» by crossing the Channel 1 In another passage he adverts to some of the principal political grievances of the kingdom, sarcastically remarking that a people whose loyalty bad been proof against so many attempts to shake it was surely, entitled to as much consideration on, the part of the Crown, as a people whose loyalty, had not always, been above suspicion. The remark was as pointed as.it waa just.;, The events of 1715 and 1722 had left a deep stain on the loyalty of England, but Ireland had never wavered in her fidelity to the House of Hanover." In every other form of political literature Swift was at the same time working out his end. *' In every form which political literature can assume, from ribald songa, roared out by thieves and harridans over their gin, to satires and disquisitions which infected with popular madness the Common Boom of Trinity, and the drawing-rooms of College Green and Grafton Street, he sought .to fan the tumult into rebellion. He even brought the matter.into the pulpit. In a sermon, which Burke afterwards described as ' containing the best motives to patriotism which were ever delivered in so small a compass,' the Dean called on his brethren to remember that next to their duty to their Creator came their duty to themselves and to their fellow-citizens, and that, as duty and religion bound them to resist what was evil and mischievous, -so duty and religion bound them to be as one man against Wood and Wood's upholders.")— The agitation was, besides, kept up in every manner possible, and Walpole at length perceived the necessity of taking some decisive step. The Duke of Grafton was accordingly recalled, and Carteret came over as Lord Lieutenant in his place — having a discretionary power to suspend, and even withdraw Wood's patent as he judged prudent. " And now the fourth Drapier's Letter appeared. In this discourse Swift threw off all disguise. The question of the patent is heje subordinated .to the far more important question of the nature of the relations between Ireland and England. Contemp. tuously dismissing a recent protest of Wood 'as the last howl of a dog who had been dissected alive, 'he goes on to assert that fche Royal prerogative, the power on which, during the whole of the ■truggle with Wood, so much stress had been laid, was as limited in Ireland as it was in the Mother Country. He comments bitterly on the so-called dependency of Ireland ; on the injustice of legislating for her in a Parliament ia which she had no representatives ; and on the fact that all places of trust and emolument were filled by Englishmen, instead of being filled, as they ought to have been filled, by natives. But the remedy, he said, was in their own hands ; and in two sentences, which vibrated through the whole kingdom, he suggested it : 'By the laws oE G id, of Nature, of nations, and of your country, you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England. 1 Again : ' All Government without the consent of the governed is the veiy definition of slavery,' — 'though,' he added, with bitter sarcasm, • eleven men well armed will cj»* tainly subdue one single man in his shirt. 5 " In consequence of tfiis, Letter a reward of £300 was off .red for its writer, and Harding, the printer, was arrested and pat in gaol. But Swift now came forward boldly. He immediately presented himself at the Lord Lieutenant's levee, and upbraided him. il ' Your Excellency has,* he thundered out with a voice and manner that struck the whole assembly with amazement, ' given us a noble specimen of what this devoted nation has to hope from for your Government.' He then burst out into a torrent of invectives against the proclamation, the arrest of Harding, and the protection given to the patent." The Lord Lieutenant answered with the urbanity of a trained diplomatist, and the interview terminated. But the struggle with England now reached its climax. The Bill against Harding was thrown out by the Grand Jury, and the jury were dissolved by Chief Justice Whitshed, another being immediately summoned. " The Bill against Harding was again ignored, and, to complete the discomfiture of the Government the rejection of the Bill was coupled with a formal vindication of

the Drnpier. From this moment the battle was virtually won ; the Drapier had trimphed, and Swift ruled Ireland." Nine troubled months, nevertheless, had still to p--.es before the Lord jLieutenant announced, at the Autumn Session of 1725, that an end had been put to Wood's patent. All Ireland was then filled with exultation, and praise of the Drapier wa3 in every mouth. He was honoured in every conceivable manner. " When he appeared in the streets all heads were uncovered. If for the first time he visited a town, it was usual for the corporation to receive him with public honours. Each year as his birthday came round it was celebrated with tumultuous festivity, 'He became,' says Orrery, ' the idol of the people of Ireland to a degree of devotion that in the most superstitious country scarcely any idol ever attained.' Even now no true Irishman ever pronounces his name without reverence." Wfi are naturally anxious to extend our circuA splendid lation by all lawful means, and sixpence is as much opening fob us. an object of desire to us as it is to any one else — barring the regular miser of course. It is an encouragement to us, therefore, to learn, as we have learned recently fraun the Wellington correspondent of a contemporary that there is always a ready market within our reach, and that we have only to write a note on one determined subject to sell a copy of our paper without failure. What is more the sixpence to be gained by us will come from the Government, and that stould be a double recommendation. We do not know whether there is any intention of, all in due time, establishing a censorship over the Dunedin newspapers, but, we admit, it looks somewhat ominous to find that Captain Hume has given orders to the Dunedin Gaoler to buy a copy of every newspaper that publishes a word about the prisons, and send it to him post haste. The Captain may be going to gag us all, for aught we can tell, but, meantime, we shall endeavour honestly to give him value for this sixpence of the public money he holds out to our acquisition, and, where we fail, he must take the will for the deed. Is it true, then, that two of the Ly ttelton Visiting Justices have recently sent in their resignations because the Minister of Justice reinstated Warder Ferguson, who had been suspended by them and the Gaoler for a breach of discipline, and removed him to Wellington without further inquiry ? And how comes it, by the way, if this be true, that the Justices at Lyttelton appear so much more touchy than some of those at least in Dunedin seem to be, for Warder Nicholson who was suspended here for a breach of discipline by a Justice and the Gaoler, has been reinstated without further inquiry so far, and still the Justice keeps his position ?—? — Warders Nicholson and Ferguson, it will be remembered, were extremely active in collecting evidence for the late inquiry and were found very useful indeed to the Inspector. Here, then, are a few remarks that we would actually forward toJCaptain Hume for nothing if we thought there was the slightest chance of his explaining the matter we inquire about, but we believe that he would, under no circumstances, do anything of the kind.

A smashing of glass has been the occasion, within A merry the last few days, of an amusing action in the jest. Resident Magistrate's Court at Dunedin. — That is to say the action has been a cause of amusement to the people looking on, for we do not suppose the unfortunate plaintiff felt very much amused about the matter — although, perhaps, the defendant grinned a little in his sleeve, especially when he had got ofi scot-free, and, besides, he would appear to have been fond of his joke all along. — The plaintiff in the case was one Mr. Allan, who has a nursery garden in the close vicinity of the Dunedin Bowling, Fives, and Lawn Tennis Club, and the defendant was no less a personage than Professor Macgregor himself, one of our leading lights in mitters educational, and a Master of Philosophy capable of guiding into the paths of wit and wisdom a whole regiment of bourgeois gentil famines. The Professor, however, seems to have *%tsided Mr. Allan in quite a different direction, for that gentleman and cultivator of flowers has come before the public dancing mad on account of the way in which he has been treated. The balls, in a word, with which the game of fives is played, keep perpetually bouncing over the wall of the Club's alley, and descending on the glass of Mr. Allan's conservatories, through which they go as clean as a bullet. — The aggrieved gardener declares that from 500 to 600 of these balls have come into his premises in such a way, and he has actually 60 of them in his possession, which he preserves as curiosities probably, or it may be to rouse his spirits by looking them over when he feels dull, and out of sorts. — Professor Macgregor, however, appears to have thought it very wholesome for Mr. Allan to receive these balls, for he said "it was a common joke amongst the players to say, there goes another of Allan's panes of glass." — And we know the Professor never could have looked upon the matter as a joke unless he thought it likely to prove wholesome. — Harmless merriment, they say, as is very well-known no doubt to the Professor, may be reckoned among the most wholesome things

in the world.— lt happened ? then, lately, that' the Professor was engaged in the Fives Court, whether as a player or a spectator we know nor, when a ball flew over the wall, and, according to that merry jest, another of Allan's panes' of glass went. — Immediately the learned gentleman — perhaps desirous of ascertaining how the joke affected Mr. Allan, and taking observations in the cause of science as to the phenomena resulting from -a jest, went round to fetch the ball back. — It has not been explained, hbweverj why the Professor remarked, on hearing that the joke had actually been perfected and the glass broken,—" That is a pity.— We should have expected, on the other hand, that he would have proved, in a learned dissertation, and to Mr. Allan's full conviction, that the smasE had been a very merry affair, and one to give rise to mirth alone. — That it gave rise to a claim on the part of Mr. Allan for £34 IBs — the asserted value of plants destroyed by the frost's getting in thrdngh the broken glass, may perhaps be taken as the completion of the joke, since the plaintiff was non-suited — it not being proved that Professor Macgregor had been the cause of the damage, although, in the interests of science perhaps, he went after' the ball.— Sd much, nevertheless, we leain, that all kinds of little accidents are to be looked upon as matters for merriment. — When Professor Macgregor — a leader and authority on edncational affairs— and a pundit of the utmost weight, can bend his great mind to feel amusement at the damage caused by these stray balls, how loudly may not bar larrikins cry out in delight at such breakages as may occur in connection with their own peculiar games ?— There, for example, is the shanghai — a charming instrument for the exercise of youthful skill — why should it not be as delightful to contemplate the windows broken by means of it, as to contemplate Mr. Allan's glass smashed by the balls from graver hands ? There is a question here of somewhat deep import, and which we would gladly find explained by some philosopher or another— whether by one who has followed the stone driven into some drawing-room in order to investigate the effects of his joke or another.

The Hon. Mr. Dick's selection of Mr. Torrance as OTTR trNIVEHSAL universal minister, naturally inclines us to inquire ministeb. somewhat closely into the qualifications of the gentleman in question, so far as we have had any opportunity of judging concerning them. And it is, perhaps, our misfortune that we have not bad an opportunity of judging more intimately than by mere newspaper reports of what the gentleman really is. — Something, no doubt, there is about him to recommend him exceptionally to those who have reason to know him— -whether it be a superior skill in the decoction of tea, or something elsp, it may be of a kindred nature, for the powers that be, doubtless acting from their reasonable convictions, appear to have treated him in his character of gaol chaplain at least, with an unusual indulgence, and even to have found a breach of discipline on his part a mere trifle unworthy of notice—Mr. Torrance, however, we may remark in passing, has not been quite alone in this respect, for breaches of discipline on the part of Warders Clarke and Nicholson were also over* looked, and, in fact, Clarke has since been promoted from Assistant Warder to be Waider in Timaru gaol. — The chaplain, nevertheless, might naturally be expected to be a pattern, not only of all that is pious, as of course he is. — And what flowers of Godliness, indeed, have there not blossomed out upon the world from the surround ings of our contemporary the Dunedin Evening Star — whose very devils are rnora probably to be looked upon as cherubs in disguise, and needing, it may be, merely a quantum of soft-soap, or some such thing, of which, moreover, there Bhould be plenty on the premises — to bring out all their beauties, and prepare them for the part that is truly theirs. — Mr. Torrance wa«, possibly, so prepared years ago for the part of universal minister now about to be conferred upon him. — But in his character of gaol chaplain, as we said, we should not only have expected to find him a pattern of piety, but also one of all propjiety, and the observance of every rule. If, however, he broke the regulations, as he certainly did, for instance, in allowing Warder Clarke to bring him a message from Cummock, and in receiving a note from the same prisoner, we must still believe that the character of the man was sufficient to overbear every irregularity of the kind, and that what in another person would have been a breach of the rules, tending to the subversion of all discipline, was in this excellent chaplain an admirable piece of benevolence, fully approvel by the Government, which has allowed it to pass unnoticed and by their silence consented to it. — It would, however, be just as well were the Government (o explain to the public why it is that Mr. Torrance is deserving cf an indulgence not accorded as a rule to other people, for, as things are, we understand that certain undiscerning folk, and a good many of them too, not knowing the reasons why evidence that coming from any one else would be extremely reprehensible, when given by Mr. Toi ranee, is to be accepted as the straightest, clearest, and most creditable evidence possible, and feeling disgusted at the style of his testimony on the late inquiry have actually declined to contribute to the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society so long as he remains the Agent. Mr. Tor-

ranee, nevertheless, is very active in his efforts on- behalf of discharged prisoners, as well as on that of^ prisoners not discharged, an instance of' which, as' has -been already 'noted, we 'have seen in: Cummock's case. An example "of his great eagerness might, indeed, have been visible to all in town when on Saftirday last, in the company of two zealous females and a cab, he proceeded to the gaol for the purpose of conveying a certain girl, on her leaving prison, to the Refuge, and it was only with some difficulty the girl's mother, who was waiting at the gaol door, succeeded "in overcoming the anxious efforts of the pious trio, and obtaining permission for her daughter to accompany her home. On the whole, then, we are justified in concluding that, whatever else may have brought about the changes that have been recently made in the Dunedin Gaol, there has also entered into them the idea of leaving more room for the holy labours of this excellent evangelist, and exceptionally favonred chaplain who is so directly under the approving patronage of the more pious members of the Ministry, and who might even have been begotten in the Lord by Mr. Dick himself. — For whom, at any rate, Mr. Dick is ready to make matters smooth, as for a worthy associate in the unaided word. — They are, indeed, Arcades ambo.