Yesterday was the regular meeting day of the Inangahua County Council, but as there was no quorum of members pres* ent at the appointed hour, the meeting was adjourned until 2*30 p.m. toxday. We learn that tbe number of race* horses visiting the West Coast this year is greater than in any past time. The goody»goody monotony of Reef* ton on Sunday evening last was enlivened by a little ' fist flirtation ' in the vicinity of tbe fire-brigade building. About a hundred persons congregated ''■■>^urre^y on the ' lovely grass/ afid f;ljfg set-to was witnessed with great relish. People were just returning from church at t\o time so that the occasion was favorable for a large muster. The combatants having belted each other for some time withput interruption* finaily^artjotfrned ror'repairs. A most extraordinary occurrence is reported to us as having occurred at Soldier's, near Beefton. It appears that on Sunday evening last, two men named Brown and Gibson, were returning home from Reefton; to their :Jmt cjn JSoJplierfs Gully, and when about half a mile from the Grey road they saw ahead of them what at first appeared to be a small shrub on $re. As they approached it, however, it assumed the appearance' df a baty of bluish fire passing slowly over the bush at a height of five or six feet .from the ground. As the luminous ap» pearance passsed tbe travellers, one of them, Gibson, war struck by the bqdj on fbe side of the head with bo th vio» lence alto render the man almost insen* flible, and tbe light then vanished. The sufferer managed to crawl home, but for some hours was in such agony that his mate was several times on the point of leaving for medical assistance^ tii -Ih^ coarse of the night, however, tbe man recovered. Strange to say that no mark of any kind was caused by the contact. Thursday next was the day appointed for the next Magistrate's and Warden's Courts in Aeefton, but the sitting has been adjourned to Thursday, 24th instant. We learn that a small party of excursionists has been made up locally, for the purpose of visiting the Jiigbest point of the Paparoa range "during thj»> coming holidays. The distance is about twenty miles, and will probably occupy three days. The new plant for the Ljell Timen is expected Jo reach there in the course of a week. The paper is at present issued in the form of a single sheet, and tbe number of wholesome looking advertisements it carries would leave no room to doubt the success of Mr Smyrk's enterprise. It is said that Mr Metcalf is going to burn the torch of enlightment amongst the benighted inhabitant* of Colling wood, the plant going overland in a wheelbarrow. A petition has been numerously signed in Beefton, praying the Government to reduce the upset price pf unsold sections in the town of Beefton. Tbe monthly meeting of tho Hoapifal, Committee will be held on Monday next, at Mr Bowman's office. We understand that Mr F. Smith, who was so seriously anjured recently, is making good progress towards recovery. Tbe libel action, Aiken v. Campbell, is fixed for trial at the Supreme Court sitting at Eokitika on the 21st instant, before his Honor, the Chief Justice. Efforts have, we believe, been made to quash the action, but the negotiations in tbat direction have, up to the time we write, accomplished nothing, A legal argument of very great importance will, we understand, come on at the earliest sitting of the Supreme Court in Wellington. It is as to whether the act of merely filing a declaration of bankruptcy and not proceeding further with the insolvency is sufficient without actual adjudioa-. tion by tbe Court to shelter a debtor from his obligations. tTnder the existing Bank, ruptcy Act, all that 4 f debtor requires to do is to file a declaration of his inability to meet his engagements, and then haying got some friendly person to accept the office of { trustee, quietly rest upon his oars fpr a \ period of' three years, wheu his discharge issues as a matter of course. This at least is the popular notionrandactitfg under that belief numbers of persons have sue-* I ceeded by these bogus proceedings in baffling their creditors. Should the result of
the argument in Question be a contrary interpretation from the Judges, suffering creditors will obtain s key wherewith to qp*n the; door to a deal of rascality at present fjdaked under the laches of the Bankruptcy Act It is further said that in the;; event of an. adverse ruling upon the point . being obtained from the Supreme Court; -an omended Bankruptcy Act 'will be forced before the next Parliament, one of the provisions of which will be to give the pre« siding Judges full power to suspend the igiue, of discbarges to all bankrupts other than tijose wiose; affairs have been fully investigated by the Court. This will of coarse meet tho exigency equally well, and "ftithouglfi stone olijection would be likely in other cases to be; tak«n against retrospec- , tive ' legislation, in & case of this kind it would be for reasons which must^be obviout i In the face- of: snch a possibility as this, many of the selfconstituted bankrupts may find themselves .in.aiajter queer predicament, as all property aitqoikd by them, subsequently to the filing 'oftte declaration of bankruptcy would, of, course, be liable to seizure in satisfaction of the claims against it. The Nation (New York) says the present agitation in Ireland, horrible as some of its features ar|, has not been in vain. The Irish land question has in consequence of it j -tboYlugn' .dilpJttiooWatt ever before, This disotufrion will ijot be as useful to the Ministry in Parliament when they attempt to deal with the land quetsion next year, as it would have been had there been no outrages ; but, on the other hand,, there is much reason to fear that without the outrages the discussion would not have been so thorough. The Irishman had such abundant experience of the failure of his eloquence to bring Englishmen to an adequate sense of his wrongs, that he is under a constant temptation to supplement the speeches with crime, and urn fortune tely this d_ pep undoubtedly impress itie English public. They are not moved by the hyperboles and picturesque similes in which Irish grievances are usually dressed up, but murder and arson they understand and are aroused by. O'Connell sternly suppressed " outrages " and denounced all violence during the repeal agitation, but he accomplished nothing. Turbulence and violence have led to the righting of some Irish wrongs : nothing else has done so. Such .is |ne lessojn with irhich the; history of the country for the last cenjary has' furnished the Irish peasant, and it is not at all surprising that he acts on it. It is (says the London correspondent of the ''New Zealand Herald") a fact in connectioa with. .the colobies, that their ,de.«j votion to trade, and almost exclusively, as it seem» to observers in England repels every cultivated man from seeking their life and politics. There is so much to learn about; old civilizations like France, Germany Italy, Spain, they will say, that the life of the colonial farmers and merchants, unrelieved as it it by art or literature of any original and spontaneous growth, is dull and uninteresting. Under this idea many Of the liferarjiVclasses turn away from thouglits of the colonies altogether, 'and now they will acquiesce in the indiffer* tisnv of such men as Sir Charles Dilke, when it w. asserted that the colonies ought to bo standing on their own legs. In one of his recent speeches Mr Grant Duff made ah allusion that deserves J to be quoted in the light of that feeling I refer to—" After aD everything in these countries is, as com* pared with the Old World, merely of yesterday. The place were the great Meh bourne Exhibition now stands was a pathless' wilderness when some whom I am now addressing had already reached manhood. Is it strange that they should not yet have developed those higher literary and artistio gifts which make the poetry of national life, and live while all else is for* gotten j but there is -already promise; even of these. Certainly the most remarkable new lines I have come aoross for some time were some, by whom, I know not which were out out of an Australian paper by a friend of mine. • Who can the author of this be ?' said a foreign faiend of mine, as I was passing across the Continent on my way to India, putting into my hands a letter of quite extraordinary beauty. ' I have ndt the faintest conception,' I said, ' but I dare say I can find out.' I did find out in a few months, and the writer was the daughter of a tradesman in a New Zealand provincial town.' After, an announcement of that sort, from one highly placed in the Government, it is needless to say that a volume will be expected in due course from "the daughter of r a tradesman." V The default officers of Wellington under the compulsory edacation clause report that that there are only nine children in that oity of school age, not attending school. The amount of the property tax has, according to the Wanganui Herald, been ascertained to be about £270,000. The original estimate was exactly £470,000. The cost of putting the Act in force, apart from the ex» pense entailed on the general community, has probably reached the sum of £40,000. The total amount of the English National debt on March 31 was £775,755,608. but after deducting £30,500^000 for loans re~ poverable, £3,976,582 for t^e purchase money of. ;the Suez; Canal eharesj and £2,000,000 for outstanding loan to India, the sett total was £739,279.025, Teotoe, a Waikato chief of theNgatiapakura tribe, has died. He was one of the two 1 chiefs who accompanied Dr Hochstetjier, of the scjeritifib expedition, ; to -Europe.- ToeW was introduced to several sovereigns in Europe, and when in England, to the Queen. Qn his return he was despatched by the Government to the Waikato on the broaking out of the war, to endeavor to negotiate terms of peace with the rebels, but joined bis people. *' At tbe banquet | given to Judge Tfilliams by the members of the Dunedin Bar, at the instance of Mr Stout", was proposed, " Crimes, and our unfortunate Clients.' 1 without which
the cost and mechanism of the Supreme Court, and the whole legal profession as a body, from the Judge down ,to the Usher would hate no end or aim or existence. It was proposed by a prominent member of the Bar that the toast should be drunk in solemn silence, or to slow music, but the feelings of the guests got the better of them, and the toast was 1 drank with musical honours. The special attention of parents in several of the Coast towns is directed to an order of the Governor in Council, dated 24th September, 1878. This order is published in the New Zealand Gazette, Nd. 92, 26 th Sep. tember, 1878, and under it, the head teacher of every school is • bound to issue/ to each scholar who has passed a standard (after each -examination) a certificate showing that the scholar has passed' that standard. It is a duty which the parents owe to their children to ccc that these certificates are issued in accordance with the law. They are simply a receipt for work done and they are necesary to prevent a child who has passed a standard from being again placed in the same standard instead of a higher one. As we reprinted the Nelson Colonist's remarks regarding the alleged boorish conduct of members of the Australian cricket team, during their visit to Nelson it is only just that we should also give Mr Murdoch's contapdiotion. In a letter to the Nelson Mail the say»j^"Upon resiing the report of the late Australian cricket match in the Colonist of the 12ih inst, I notice some most uncalled for remarks made upon the conduct of our departure from the cricket ground and the wharf. It is a great pity that the person who went so far out of his way to write in euch an ungenerous manner about absent persons did not strictly confine himself to the truth, for if be did not or would not see it I can assure him and the general public of Nelson that the cheering compliment paid us was duly acknowledged by all of us inside the vehicle j not having such keen eyes as j some persons, X could not Bee throu.h the roof and notice what those outside did. In conclusion I must thank the person for his criticism upon us. and assure him that if I or any of my team want the finishing touches of a gentleman's education, if he will kindly furnish his name we will be most happy to consult with him." The Auckland Herald, referring to the visit of Major Atkinson and Mr Oliver to Invercargill, says : — " The Ministry are certainly not popular, and cannot ex* pect to bepopular with a certain class, and that a large and influential one, on account of the Civil Service reductions. They are looked upon without any affection, to say the least of it, on account of the property, tax ; but no one believes these were the causes of the Invercargill demonstration, and indeed the demonstrators themselves have taken care there shall be no mistake on the subject. The Minister of Public Works was the bete noi? of Invercargill, The mob in Auckland have had considerable reason to complain of neglect and delay in the Public Works pepa*tmgnj> and if Mr Oliver, was not groaned at here it would not be because we had sot had abundant reason to express disapproval, but because we are singularly polite, patient, and forbearing. Mr Oliver, perhaps naturally, put down all his un* popularity to his zealous efforts in the cause of retrenchment. He is laboring under a mistake, however. His colleagues will not grieve much when he leaves them. If the recent exhibition of feeling in Invercargill had been caused, by ' G-reyism,' the retirement of Mr would do nothing to appease the izritation. On the Levils estate, Timaru, there are 1600 acres in wheat, 550 acres in oats, and 2500 acres in turnips. At Pareora, south of Timaru, 1400 acres in wheat, 300 acres in oats, and 3000 in turnips. Wanganui held its first Harvest Thanks* giving Festival on February 25tb. The New Zealand Times referring to recent police prosecutions of two hotel keepers under a Wellington Licensing Ordinance, ; says : — " What is really wanted is an Act of the General Assembly, dealing with the licensing question of the whole colony. It is absurd that there should be one Licensing Act in Auokland, another in Taranaki, a third in Hawke's Bay, a fourth in Wei* lington, a fifth in Nelson, a sixth in Cans terbury, a seventh in Otago, and so on in other provincial district throughout the colony. Already ia Wellington the Sunday police crusade against the hotels has resulted in some of these sly-grog shops being established, and more of them will follow. There are few greater evils in a community than of ' sly grog shops.' Those who carry on such a nefarious traffic pay no license fees. Their stock can be bought on a Saturday night for a very few pounds j they have no extensive premises or furniture and as they conduct the trade with the greatest secrecy, their detection by the police is a work of almost insuperable difficulty,"
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/IT18810309.2.4
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 9 March 1881, Page 2
Word count
Tapeke kupu
2,628Untitled Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 9 March 1881, Page 2
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
No known copyright (New Zealand)
To the best of the National Library of New Zealand’s knowledge, under New Zealand law, there is no copyright in this item in New Zealand.
You can copy this item, share it, and post it on a blog or website. It can be modified, remixed and built upon. It can be used commercially. If reproducing this item, it is helpful to include the source.
For further information please refer to the Copyright guide.