MELBOURNE NOTES.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 314, 20 June 1889, Page 2

MELBOURNE NOTES.

[FBOM OTB OWST COBBSBPOKDXXT.J Th* imprisonment of Mr Daly, a solicitor * by the Chief Justioe of Victoria has, in a moat unpleasant manner, drawn public attention to one of the anomalies of British Jurisprudence. The barbarous relic of a barbarous ago is called “Contempt of Court.” What is contempt of Court! Probably the correct reply would be to say that contempt of Court is an act, the construction of which greatly depends, as many sentences do, upon what a Judge had for breakfast. Let the act be what it may, however, it is quite certain that it* construction, still leu Its punishment, should not be left in the hands of any one man. No Judge should be permitted to wield a power that is withheld from the ruler of every civilised country in the world. It is right and proper, it is just beosue* it is necessary, that the tribunals of the land should be hedged round with safeguards for the preservation of their dignity. But it is neither right nor proper, nor dust, nor neonssary, that one man, and he presumedly the offended person, should be left to say when those safeguards havs been trampled upon, and to mete out the punishment. Such an assumption is absurd now-a-days: but is unfortunately the law of the land. Mr Daly was indiscreet, intemperate if you will; he may be for aught I know overbearing in his manners, and impatient of control and contradiction ; but even if ho ba subject to all these human infirmities ho unfortunately is not the sole possessor of them. The Chief Justioe himself is not quite an angel yet. Hie published correspondence between the Commissioners of the Exhibition and himself proves that much. / His love of arbitrary power oomes ont there J plainly enough 1 and his petulance, others do not brook it, has been upon more than one occasion since that He might have wielded to-day the vice regal B sceptre but that -he refused to recognise the existence of a superior authority i and so the bauble was placed in the hands of a man who could better understand the social and political institutions undsr which wo live and flourish. Surely it is not mon of such imperious temperament who ought to be invested with arbitrary powers, against the exercise of which there is no appeal, Bather. - it is time that punishment for “Contempt of Court *' should be dealt with as punishments for any other off moe against the laws are dealt with—by regular indictment, fair trial, and by the passing of sentences which one could respect, There ars many stories told of lawyers who have nut troublesome Judges down, sometimes in a rather unceremonious manner. A few decades ago there was an English Judge who had a way of anticipating the conclusion of counsel's ramarks in a manner that was moat exasperating, and a Q.C. undertook to “ppt him down." The Judge was to hear aq important case in which the Q.C. led ths bar, and ths latter managed to 00 five minutes late. When he entered the court ho appeared breathless with the haste he had made, qnd proceeded to apologise in this m toner 1— "I nave to crave your ludship's pardon, bat I have been detained by a most distressing occurrence. I was crossing Smithfield market, and there a butcher was leading out a calf to be killed. He tied np tbe animal, bared his brawny arm, and held tbe gleaming knife aloft. Just as tbe blade descended a baautiful female child ran past, and, Ob I God, tbs butcher killed—" Ths child," interrupted his lordship. " No, my lud,” continued the law. yer, with a bow and a smile. “ Tbe butcher killed the ealf." IfXha i been that lawyer, and our Chief Justioe had sat upon that bench, I would not have ventured to adtninis, ter such a well-merited rebuke to him. Mr Trenwlth has just been presented with one hundred guineas. The post of secretary to the Trades' Hall parliament seems to be worth having, and the role of professional agitator seems to pay almost as well as that* of the professional politician. The secretary? ship, I presume, is tolerably wall paid for, and the fortunate holder has just received a substantial addition io the shape of HbOO a year from the Treasury us a member of the Legislative Assembly. Then oomes this purse of 100 guineas. It Mr T. desires to keep up a regular supply of tbese fat purses, he had better organic a few more strikes. ’ Only, the worst of it i*. in thee* “ strike" affairs, the operatives suffer, while the “officials "who organise them draw “full pay ” all the year round. Now, I think that strikes would be fewer if the officials who organise them wer*not allowed to “draw pay ”so long as the men were kept from work.

The excuse offered for the railway accident on the Williamstown line, involving loss of life, and the extraction of money from the public treasury tor compensation, is that the train was not provided with a break-yen in the rear as It ought to have been. A break so placed steadies the tail end of the train, and prevents •• wobbling." The reason why trains are ran upon Victorian lines without rear breaks is said to be a deficiency of that class of carriage. The protectionist policy of the country has deoreed that ell our rolling railway stock shell be manufactured in the colony. But the development of our railway system has been so rapid that all our local manufacturers put together are unable to keep pace with it. Ths Railway Department is short of nearly 150 break-vans at the present time. So there are presumably nearly that number of daily trains run in the oolony without a safeguard that is admittedly neoeaaary—the want of which has jqat entailed loss of life and uncalled-for expenditure of money. Yet to import vans would raise an outcry I to bo without them is to place the travelling public in peril. Here Is a fact interesting to farmers. Passing down Burke-sireet a day or two ago, I saw three sheep hanging In one of windows of Bennett’s butchers’ shop. Tterey were fine-looking muttons. They weighted, according to the labels attached. 110 165,, 124 lbs., and 180 lbs., respectively. The one hundred and eighty pound carcase had a breadth of back that was astonishing to look at. I have been often amused at a bachelor friend of mine—not a great eater, either— ’ who would buy a twelve pound roastiugpleoe of beef for his own dinner. Accused of the waste and absurdity of the proceeding he used to say" I like to lock at it: I like to tat with my eyes." If my friend had hap* pened to live a few thousand miles nearer Melbourne, I should have fait tempted to buy the saddle of that sheep at Bennett's for his Sunday dinner. A naw publication entitled Tbs Odd Fellow has just made its appearance and I send the first number, which may be intereating to the Fraternity in your diatriat. 1 am fold the second number will ba double the size of the present one. Perhaps you could draw attention to the publication. < Fashion has not played any unusual vagary thia week. She seems rather puzzled in the matter of the sleeves of ladies' dresses, and her priestesses—the moditUi— are sorely puzzled in grading tbs style of sleeves to the fashion of our grandmothers. The sleeves get fuller by degrees from the shoulder down* wards; but it is not fully developed yet, Those who remember the sleeves of fifty years ago know what that means. At the time referred to a properly out and finished dress sleeve was exactly like a Jargonelle pear. How. or by what device, the dressmaker kept it fully distended deponent sayeth not, be* cause he was not let into the secret. The servant girl of ths period was apparently kept as much in the dark. Else how cams she to abstract the goose feathers from the ben bed of her mistress, and fill out the sleeves of her dress with them ? The mention of the feathers reminds me that they are mow used for hate than ever. But the leading millinen endeavor to trim a hat, so as to produce a strikingly picturesque effect, solely with rib* bon, because, they say, artists of meaner taste can Jproduoe the earns results, with plenty of lace and fsathsrs,