i89i 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
3i i 
TIMELY TOPICS. 
The Commonwealth of Australia is 
the name just assumed by a confederation 
of the British colonies in that continental 
island. The constitution framed by the 
Federal Convention which has just com¬ 
pleted its labors in many respects resem¬ 
bles that of Canada, with several features 
like that of the United States. Yet Aus¬ 
tralia will not be far from independence. 
The new Constitution provides that the 
two Houses of its Parliament shall have 
authority to legislate upon all questions 
affecting the internal interests of the 
country, though, of course, it could not 
give Australia the power of forming trea¬ 
ties with foreign countries. During the 
sessions of the convention an overwhelm¬ 
ing majority were in favor of continuing 
the colonial allegiance to the British 
Government, after the example set by the 
Canadian provinces in the establishment 
of the New Dominion. The new Constitu¬ 
tion provides that Australia shall remain 
under British protection, that the Governor 
General shall be appointed by the Crown, 
and that, in judicial cases, the final appeal 
shall be to the home government. 
The new federation has an area nearly as 
large as that of the United States. The 
areas and population of the various colonies 
are about as follows: 
Date 
of Organ 
Area In 
Popula- 
Division. 
Ization. 
Sq. Miles. 
tfon. 
New South Wales.. 
1788 
823,487 
894,644 
Victoria. 
1851 
86,831 
1,102,346 
South Australia.... 
1886 
883,826 
224.630 
Queensland. 
1859 
678.000 
194,576 
Western Australia. 
1829 
973,0< 0 
75,000 
Northern Australia 
1874 
513,581 
15,240 
Totals. 
2,973,127 
2,506,436 
Immigration.— Since 1820, immigration 
from foreign countries to the United States 
has added over 15,000,000 to our population, 
and of that number more than half have 
arrived since 1870. During 1889, 444,500 
came, and in the first four months of 1890, 
92,862 landed at Castle Garden, as against 
74,454 in the corresponding months of 1889. 
Among those coming in 1889, 27,000 were 
Italians, many of the lowest class, brought 
in under the “padrone system,” which is 
a bondage, in some respects, as degrading 
and pernicious as the slave system of 
former days. While from Germany, Great 
Britain and Ireland and the Netherlands 
the number fell off 21,052 in ten months of 
1890, there was an increase of 65,000 from 
Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland and Rus¬ 
sia. More than one third of the total for 
the ten months came from these last 
named countries, and by far the largest 
part of this one-third were ignorant, de¬ 
graded and wholly unfit for citizenship. 
present all the taxes from invisible prop¬ 
erty come from a few conspicuously con¬ 
scientious citizens, from widows, executors 
and from guardians of the insane. * * * 
As regards paying taxes on this class of 
property, it is almost as voluntary and is 
considered pretty much in the same light 
as donations to the neighborhood church 
or Sunday school.” The same story of 
dishonest evasion of taxation comes from 
all parts of the country. 
The Effrontery of Trusts.— For some 
time there has been an extraordinary strug¬ 
gle going on in this State between the Sen¬ 
ate Committee on General Laws and the 
officials of the Sugar Trust, now called the 
American Sugar Refining Company. The 
committee has been investigating the 
affairs of the trust, and to its demand for 
the production of the books, the officials of 
the organization have returned a defiant 
refusal. They have treated the mandate of 
the investigating body with scarcely con¬ 
cealed contempt, merely alleging that to 
produce their books before the committee 
would “ expose the methods of the trust to 
rival refiners.” But the whole course of 
the monopoly representatives in the affair 
illustrates the attitude of these organiza¬ 
tions toward the body politic. They appar¬ 
ently hold themselves above the law. 
When the State attempts to investigate the 
system by which they roll up enormous 
yearly dividends they defy the State. Such 
a condition of affairs is fast becoming in- 
toleraole. It is not confined to New York 
by any means, though New York, as the 
wealthiest and most thoroughly commer¬ 
cial State in the Union, has a greater pro¬ 
portion of monopolies than other States. 
Rapidly Growing in Popular Favor. 
—Of all the measures of reform proposed 
by the farmers of the country, none has so 
rapidly won popular favor as the election 
of United States Senators by the direct 
votes of the people of the various States. 
The chief arguments still urged against it 
by a few bitterly partisan papers, are, first, 
that the present method of election ie “ one 
of the bulwarks of conservatism ;” because 
the Senate, as at present chosen, is less 
swayed by popular clamor than the House 
—a frequent fact which is as often Injuri¬ 
ous as beneficial to the public. Then there 
is the regular bugbear of all radical reform 
—the fear of centralism, paternalism or com¬ 
munism, likely, for sooth, to be advanced 
by a change in the method of senatorial 
election. Is any end to be dreaded which 
is advanced by a beneficial national re¬ 
formation ? Then again, it is claimed that 
corruption sometimes prevails in popular 
elections. True ; but it is easier to corrupt 
a close electoral district than a State; to 
buy a legislator or two than to buy a whole 
people ; and the easier the accomplishment 
of a crime, the greater the temptation to 
commit it. The man who is bold enough 
to want a seat in the United States Senate 
should also be bold enough to go before the 
people to get it. 
SPRING SCIONS. 
Sensible Qualification, Anyway.— 
Perhaps it is just as well that Massachu¬ 
setts is in the same boat with Mississippi 
in the matter ot restricting the right of 
suffrage to those who possess certain edu¬ 
cational qualifications. Otherwise it would 
be pointed out that this was simply a 
Southern device to disfranchise the black 
man. As things stand, the subject will 
probably be considered on its merits.— 
Boston Herald, (Ind.) 
And Her History Proves It.—A t the 
time the New Orleans regulators were kill¬ 
ing the assassins who had escaped convic¬ 
tion by bribery and perjury, the men of the 
life-saving station at Sandy Hook were, at 
the peril of their lives, rescuing the crew 
of 15 from the Italian bark Umberto Primo, 
ashore on Romer Shoals. America is he s- 
pitable to all men and creeds except those 
who teach assassination. Neither the life- 
savers nor the regulators asked the nativ¬ 
ity of the men, but they were moved only 
by the first instincts of human nature, 
which knows nothing of nationalities.— 
Louisville Courier-Journal (Dem.) 
Self-Protection is the First Law of 
Nature.— The lesson of the New Orleans 
lynching is that so long as the Federal au¬ 
thorities allow outcasts and criminals to 
take refuge in the United States after they 
are driven out of their own countries, so 
long will the independent American citizen 
enforce his inalienable right to protect his 
life and his property when powder and 
bullets are to be had. Possibly the Immi¬ 
gration Department at Washington may 
wake out of its long nap now and adopt 
such measures as will, by cutting off the 
right to land desperate and diseased for¬ 
eigners, make the United States the more 
attractive to native Americans and to the 
desirable class of foreigners who come here 
to engage in useful and peaceful occupa 
tions,—Rochester Herald. 
Keep It Before The People.— One of 
the most palpable outrages on the rights of 
the people is the manner in which money 
is squandered when a Senator or Represen¬ 
tative dies at Washington. The funeral of 
the late Senator Hearst of California illus¬ 
trates this very forcibly. The remains were 
sent to California with an escort composed 
of nine Senators and eight Representatives. 
Some of these patriots took their wives and 
a couple of Senate employees to look after 
the comforts of the party. Of course the 
family of the late Senator, his Secretary, 
and it is said several invited guests, wore in 
the party. They rode in palace cars, and 
were furnished with the bestof eatables and 
drinkables, wine and whisky included, and 
the dear people pay the bill. The cost of 
this junketing excursion will amount to 
$30,000. Senator Hearst was many times a 
millionaire. It was simply a bright little 
scheme to give a lot of Congressional scal- 
lawags a chance to take a pleasure trip at 
the public expense.—Husbandman. 
Readers of The R. N.-Y. will please the 
advertisers and benefit the paper by always 
mentioning it when writing to advertisers. 
How to Multiply Plants. 
How to Graft. 
How to Bud. 
How to Seed. 
How to Inarch. 
How to Increase by Cuttings. 
How to Increase by Layers. 
Howto Increase by Separation. 
How to Hybridize. 
How to Produce NewVarieties. 
How to Propagate over 2,000 
varieties of shrubs, trees and her¬ 
baceous or soft-stemmed plants: the 
process for each being fully described. 
All this and much more is 
fully told in 
The Nursery Book. 
A new book, by L. H. Bailey, 
assisted by several of the most 
skillful propagators in the 
world. In fact, it is a careful 
compendium of the best prac¬ 
tice in all countries. It con¬ 
tains nearly IOO illustrations, 
showing methods, processes 
and appliances. 
Over 300 pages. 16mo. Price, library 
style, cloth, wide margins, $1.00; Pocket 
style, paper, narrow margins, 50 cents. 
THE RURAL PUBLISHING CO., 
Times Building, New York. 
The Vedder Bill now before the New 
York Legislature provides for a tax of one 
per cent on all direct legacies of $10,000 and 
upwards. It supplements the Collateral 
Inheritance tax law of 1887, and thus se¬ 
cures the taxation of direct legacies. 
The lowest estimate of the annual amount 
which the new law will turn into the treas¬ 
ury of the State is $1,500,000, and the prob¬ 
able figures are about $2,000,000. Accord¬ 
ing to the last report of the Comptroller the 
Collateral Inheritance Law yielded $1,117,- 
000 for the year ending September 30, 1890. 
Accepting the lowest estimate for the new 
Direct Inheritance law, we have a total of 
$2,617,000; and, as the aggregate amount of 
money collected by the State during the 
past year from all sources was $18,200,000, 
It will be seen that these two inheritance 
laws will contribute slightly over one- 
seventh, or about 15 per cent of the total 
taxation levied by the State. The proposed 
law will prove burdensome to none. Small 
estates are exempted, and on large estates 
the rate is small. Moreover, while personal 
property may be concealed during the life¬ 
time of its possessor, it cannot escape when 
the estate of a decedent is submitted to the 
surrogate. 
Listing Laws.— The subject of a more 
equal distribution of taxation is engaging 
the attention of several of the States at 
present. The great difficulty is to compel 
property owners to make correct returns 
of their holdings. In Connecticut a com¬ 
mission investigating the matter, by com¬ 
paring a large number of estates, which 
were returned to the Probate Courts, with 
the lists of property during their lifetime, 
has found that the property was between 
four and five times more valuable than the 
listed statements Indicated. Moreover, they 
found that under the listing system the 
amount of money, bonus and notes, in the 
State, had shrunk from $18,000,000 in 1855 to 
$13,000,000 in 1885. In New Hampshire, 
under the listing system, the tax commis¬ 
sioners declare that three-quarters of the 
personal property escapes taxation. The 
West Virginia tax commissioners say: “ At 
Best Then—Best Now. 
Ten years ago we declared Buck- 
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now. It has never been equaled. 
If Buck-Thorn is not sold in your 
neighborhood we will ship it to you 
from the mill, all freight paid. Sam¬ 
ple and descriptive circulars to all 
applicants by mail. The Buck-Thorn 
Fence Co., Trenton, N. J. 
“ Eminently Satisfactory.” 
Rev. E. B. Snyder, Okahumpka, Fla., writes: 
“The Thickset Buck-Thorn I ordered from 
“you a few weeks since came all right. We put 
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“ One of my neighbors wants me to order 500 
“ lbs. for him; I enclose check for same.” 
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