The Metropolitan Fire Brigade Board proposes to spend a quarter of a million on fire extinguishing appliances ; will p<iy its chief officer £800 a year and per quisites, his deputy £250; employ 100 fire men permanently ; 200 as a sort of firebt igade militia, who will be paid a retaining fee and specially for services rendered. A similar Board has been created for the country brigades of Victoria. On what scale its emoluments will be framed has not yet been settled, but their secretary is to receive £300 a year. Over there the insurance com panies have to "dub up" for the support of the brigades—they are to pay one-third of the cost of the new service; the Government and municipalities providing the other two thirds. Most heads of households have no doubt voted the filling up of the census papers, with their rather involved directions, a nuisance, but it probably never occurred to them to view the matter m a more serious light, as irreligious or unpatriotic. Our forefathers, however, viewed the taking of a census m a very different way. It will be remembered that the first census taken of the Israelites is recorded as having provoked the wrath of the Almighty, as he had for bidden the numbering of the peop'e. On this precedent superstition seized to repre sr nfc all census taking as an impious act. When the first English csnsus was proposed a little less than 150 years ago, m 1753, a member of the House of Commons, Mr Mathew Ridley, whose lineal de scendant of the present generation still occupies a seat m that Chamber, opposed the proposal, which he declared he looked on as ominous, " fearing lest some public mh fortune or epidemical distemper should follow the numbering." Another member, Mr Thornton, who represented the City of York, still more strongly opposed the dread proposal, declaring he " did not believe there were any set of men, or indeed any individual of the human species, so pre sumptuous or so abandoned as to make «u# i a proposal—one totally subversive of the last remains of English liberty.jas a register of the people would acquaint our enemies abroad with our weakness." Times have changed since then, and men's opinions with them.—"Post.''

The Federal Convention

(pee press association.)

Sydney,, April 9. At the Convention to-day Sir S. W. 