A POLITICAL SERMON.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 179, 2 August 1887, Page 5

A POLITICAL SERMON.

A Gloomy View of New Zealand

Political Morality.

(by telegraph—own correspondent.)

Wellington:, this day. In the course of a sermon at Wesley Church, the Rev.- L. Mi Isitt, after dcs

canting upon • the general spirit of diplomacy which pervades all circles at the present day, asked how many .were there amongst our legislators, or amongst those who are now wooing the suffrages of the electors, who would dare to stand upon the platform and give their utterances upon public matters according to their innermost convictions, and not influenced by a desire to catch votes ? Why, he continued; our political dishonesty has become such a matter of course that it is a standing joke, and who is there that has not cracked his joke at the expense of the log-roller and axes to grind. No ;we were now so lost to all sense of political shame that in the capital of the colony a man dared to publicly assign as a reason why he was fit to represent the electors that he was prepared, in their interest, whenever there was a political swindle going on to bo in the swim. Instead of that statement calling fortha cry of indignation from one end of the land to the other, it hardly called forth a feeble protest, because every man who had brains knew that it was thoroughly in harmony with, and thoroughly consistent with, the existing state of political lite. As one of our leading merchants told him the other day, the man was foolish, not because he purposed thus, but because he gave public utterance to that which every more skilful politician secretly determined. The atmosphere of political life was so liberally charged with misrepresentation, deceit, falsehood, and fraud, that if a man who was incorrupt in his purposes determined upon a public life he needed all the strength of a giant, soul, and all the grace the Almighty could, give, to keep out of the swim when political swindles were being perpetrated. New Zealand to-day wanted not smart financiers, not glibe speakers, not clever politicians who think that they are serving the country arid constituencies, when in the game of grab they can secure the larger slice ior their own town or electoral; district ; but men pf honour,, men who are -■ determined to be true, whether they sink or swim, men who will dare to. tell the truth to those whom they would fain represent. The rev. gentleman asked those who aspired to civic or Parliamentary positions to determine that they would value truth more than place or anything else. If it were true, which he doubted, that we had reached such a state that a man could only obtain political power by lying words and actions, then in God's .name let them be true to themselves, and recognise that in the long run they would serve the country better by protests which they could individually put forth than if they occupied office for years as the result of moral chicanery., n . '. -.: '' ('• -