Wanganui Chronicle.. and TURAKINA & RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. TUESDAY, 28TH JANUARY, 1868.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 823, 28 January 1868, Page 2

Wanganui Chronicle. . and TURAKINA & RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. TUESDAY, 28TH JANUARY, 1868.

To our readers who are interested in the Roman question, we can sum up the position of affairs, as disclosed by this mail, in a very few sentences. There is to be no European conference on the subject. The French Minister’s declaration is that “ Italy cannot go to Rome- by force.” We shall see. Meantime, Victor Emmanuel obeyed the hint of the French Emperor and withdrew from the Roman territory. “Victor Emmanuel,” says the Spectator, “at the last moment shrank back from the danger of war with France, and laid his country bound and helpless at the feet of Napoleon. No baser act has been committed in our day. It was base on both sides. The command of Louis Napoleon was cruel—he may live to find that it was impolitic ; and the submission of Victor Emmanuel was unkingly. The immediate result is, that “ order ” reigns in the Papal States. Garibaldi is a prisoner, and the “Red Shirts ” are all over the Border. So are the Royal troops of Italy, and French soldiers are the instruments by which the hour is ruled in Rome. There has been wild excitement in the Italian cities, and life has been lost in restoring “ order.” The Chambers are convoked, and we shall hear of fiery debates. There is one man at least in Europe who cannot but enjoy this embroglio, and that is Count Bismark. Louis Napoleon is weaker than lie was a little while ago, by the amount of the subtracted strength of two or three hundred thousand armed men. And not by that amount only, but by the subtraction of the gratitude and enthusiasm of the Italian nation. Nay !—by more and worse than that—by this injury and insult to Italy, the French Emperor lias made tlie higli-spirited, resentful Italians his bitterest foes.

Among the items of prominent and pressing interest ill the English news is, as it may well be, the food question. Bread and meat are dear and difficult to get (when was it otherwise with many thousands in the British Islands '!) and discontent always follows hard on the heels of hunger. In Turkey, they were wont, when a baker was caught making the loaf rather small or adulterating tlie staff of life, to nail his ear to the door-post, pour eneourager les autre s In Devonshire they have been smashing bakers’ and millers’ window's, and it w T as astonishing, says the Western Neivs, how large a proportion of persons who would claim to be called respectable, sympathised with the means taken by the roughs to procure cheap bread. Well, it seems very simple, but not very astonishing after all ; it is so painful to see people want bread when there is plenty of it all around. But manifestly rioting can neither cheapen nor add to the stock of wheat or flour. It is a mere blind unreasoning impulse which, the humblest of persons must see can do no good and may do much mischief. One source of cheapness is to be sought for in security— absolute security of property, and a chief means of averting the "worst evils of scarcity is to be found in perfect freedom to buy and sell, with the hope of making a profit on what may even be called exceptional transactions. The man who grows rich on the poverty and necessities of bis neighbours is not a man to be envied, but that is his own affair and we must find other than lawless means of combatting his selfish mode of doing business The butchers in the old country do not seem to lower their prices so readily to a falling market as they do in Wanganui, and the leading journal does not think it beneath its dignity to devote a leader to the subject. As bearing upon the commissariat of a population, tlie statements of the writer are full of interest: “It is really time,” we find him saying, “that house-holders should look to their butcher’s bills, and devise some measures in their own defence. Of course, it seems absurd at first sight to talk about ‘monopoly,’ when trade is open and anybody may sell meat who pleases, and wherever lie thinks fit. But we just beg the reader’s attention to a few authentic figures compared with prices actually current. Meat is now lOd a-pound and he is a lucky man who can get chops or Steaks even at a shilling. When we say this is the current charge, we speak of the dealings of ordinary householders in this city and in most midland and southern towns. In other cases the charge is strongly contrasted, and it is this very

difference which gives the subject its importance. If meat everywhere and to all customers cost lOd a-pound, there would be at least an antecedent presumption that this was a fair price for it ; but this is not the fact. In the north of England the finest joints of the finest mutton were selling last week at 7d and 7g-d a-pound ; for inferior joints or middling qualities the price ranged from 4-|d to 6d. A correspondent has written to us with an accou'ht of the tenders sent into certain Unions for the supply of meat during the ensuing season. One Union got ‘good beef’ at a-pound. Another got ‘thick and thin flanks, briskets, and rounds of good ox beef free from bone' at 6s lid per 141 b, or a fraction under 6d a-pound. A third got ‘good English wether mutton, consisting of legs and shoulders,’ at 6d to 6|-d a-pouml. Now, with this evidence before him, we think every father of a family has a right to ask in pretty peremptory terms why he is charged lOd, Is, or Is 2d for vvliat can be sold at just half the price.” He certainly has, and we wish him a satisfactory answer to his query.