My Sentiments

Bruce Herald, Volume VI, Issue 484, 29 April 1873, Page 7

My Sentiments

. (By SmrDEit) - '■ (Erom the Auckland Weekly Herald.) It was in one of those long and solitary vigils of the night— -at an hour when all the outward world is hushed in silence, arid nought ouly but the music of the spheres is heard by souls attuned to sounds celestial, that, sitting in the solitude of my room,- burning the midnight oil, while communing with myself upon the illimitable and the_ immutable, I came to the conclusion thafc there was too much of vanity and vexation of spirit in this worlds and a great deal too little ready coin. I mused upon the hollowness of all things terrestrial, and, ascending to the empyrean ' of* chastened thought, I speculated whether fate and circumstances over which I -had no control would deny me, the ability to procure a pair of fowls a^d a knuckle of ham fco partake of for my Sunday afternoon's dinner in hospitable conjunction with French beans and mashed potatoes. It is a bard world, my masters, I sighed forth. If we are blessed by; no tain longings, if we are permitted to preserve the equanimity of existence by our relatives dying off in reasonable time and remembering us in their wills, there is sure to be indigestion or a disordered liver, or bunion* or bile, as a per contra to be written off to the debit of perfect bliss. Why should this be? A^ thing of beauty is a joy for ever. How is it that man, more highly organised than any of the marsupials, a puzzle to all but a Darwin or Huxley, should not be a thing of beauty and a joy for ever ? An ethereal and an immaterial essence pervading all space arid susceptible of the bdic forces ? Pondering upon these grand truths, and having brought myself to conceive that the pair of fowls suggested by a highly rarefied imagination was within the limits of a possibility, even to including the knuckle bone of ham, I threw myself upon my couch of eider— phormium tenax stuffed— arid penetrated mentally into the vista of the Inexplicable. How long my meditations lasted I know not, but turning my gaze to the opposite side of the table to which my couch was placed I noticed my friend the Colonial Treasurer and King of Financiers, seated on a chair, with one leg on another chair and the second leg on the table. He was smoking a cigar with serene imperturbability. I was 1 not the smallest bit surprised at what I witnessed. Indeed no one need ever be in the slightest degree imaginable surprised at what my friend the Honorable Julius has done, is doing, or intends to do. There he sat at his ease, legs up, as I have described, inhaling the fragrant weed which, in the course of our conversation, he told me had cost him —or he supposed the country, which was all the same— half-a-crown a-piece. The great financier had quite a jaunty, confident, pleased look about him, as if he had said or was ready to say, " I don't care two straws for any of 'em. Mentally I am a match for the lot; — one down or the other come, or the whole boiling at one Jfcime — it's all the same to J.V." *" Well, Julius," I said, " you haven't done* so bad since you left old Victoria, have you?" "No," he replied, •" I've done well and saved nothing, that's about the plain English of it." What then followed was so interesting that I have put it in the form of a dialogue, giving the words just as they passed between us. Snyder : " Then you don't think, Julius, your game will be played out in the next session ?" Julius : " Played out ! not a bit of. it ! I have a full hand of trumps left which I will bring out whenever I want the lead • but I am not the man to throw them away. What holds good in whist holds good in politics." Snyder : v What sort of a budget do yon intend to come down with at the next meeting of Parliament ?" Julius '. "My dear Snyder, I havn't the least ideia at present • bufc I suppose to please the electorates and put them in good temper, I shall haye to make considerable, reductions in articles which are now subjected to the tariff. I shall have to increase very considerably the staff of the Civil Sei vice, and I shall have to create a large number of new billets. You see, if you don't reduce taxes you don't please the people. If you don't create new offices to fill them up with your supporters, : there would be a noconfidence vote come down on you before one had been a week in session." Snyder: "But, Julius, my boy, how about meeting our liabilities— such as the interest ou our public debt, the carrying on of public works, and the like ?" Julius: "fWhy borrow more money of course. I suppose the London Stock Excbange is where it was, and there's any amount of money to be had out of it jet. Just .read what the * liondon Times* writeis^bdufc the prosperity of the Colony."' Snyder : Yes, I have read ifc. By the way, how the .correspondent pf that mighty organ did. lay on the butter in speaking of the prosperity of New Zea--land. I have wondered who it was that wrote, or rather who it was that inspired that letter. I suppose you have not the slightest idea, have you, my noble statesman ?" Julius ':-"' v Not the least/ (I fancied there was a wink in the; left eye of my friend when he said, : : -f c Not ; the > least," but it may -have been imagination on my. part.) Snyder: "But you do look upon that correspondent's letter, with the leader written on it by the" Times," as quite , equal to another five million loan on the fitOck exchange^do you not ?'' Julius: "You aro right ; and what is more, we shall want every sovereign of, it. There's eleven more lines of railways ■ to beasked for in the next session. These of course, won't lead to anywhere in particular • but we shall bare to accede

if we are to keep our ministerial billets - " Snyder : " I suppose there is no likelihood of the new lines being finished in our time after they are commenced ?'' Julius: "What does thafc matter? Members want them for their constituents, and it's our business to satisfy them. Where should we be if we didn't ? The momentum we have given to affairs must not only be maintained, but it must be. increased, or our constituencies would be demanding us to resign. Not, continued Julius thoughtfully, that we should resign; but then it's more unpleasant •to be asked to resign than it "is to borrow money, and so satisfy their clamour.'' Snyder : " Then, you think the policy of ministers in the next session will be to reduce taxation, increase the civil service staff, create new offices,' fill, appointments, inaugurate new railways,- commence large public works, and spend all the money you can borrow ?" Julius : " Just so.- Hand me a match." Snyder: " You won't try and raise a fund from the lands of the colony." Julius : ** It would never do. We should be out of office in ao time. Besides the provinces are parting with every - decent acre of land they have for sale." * Snyder: "You will not propose ah income tax ?" < Julius : " Not likely. We should be kicked orifeof . office upon the mere suggestion of such a thing." Snyder : " Nor a property tax ?" Julius : Not a bit likely. There are too many propertied men in the House. Personally, I should not object to such a tax. myself. On the whole I should prefer it." Snyder : " But you know you must have "a policy of some kind, if it's only • for .appearances. How do you propose to come before the House ?" Julius : All coleur de rose. I shall be able to show — by figures — mind you, that the colony was never in a more prosperous state than it is at this present time. ; How that all native, industries have advanced, the revenue increased, the expenditure lessened, and the efficiency of the service I strengthened. I shall propose to remove the import duty on wooden spoons, nutmeg graters, and cruetstands, so that the poorest family in the colony shall not have it to say that the state is against them possessing these articles of domestic need. But it. will be necessary, in order to equalisain some small degree the loss of revenue which will arise by admitting these articles free of duty, to impose a trifling increase of tariff on sugar, say a penny a pound, twopence on tea, threepence on tobacco, fourpence on kerosene, and so on, by a graduated scale on a few other articles, all of which being freely used by rich people they will have to bear the slight burden to be imposed, while the working man can luxuriate on free nutmeg graters and cruetstands. I shalljperorate as usual with an allegory. I shall mention how Jupiter once, pleased with Juno because she forsook Mars and swore by her Jove, that he commanded her to send forth the goddesses of Peace, Plenty, and Pleasure ; and that these should traverse the hemispheres of this terrestrial globe until they had selected a land in. which the gods might dwell when the lease of their reign on Olympus had expired. These went forth, and having explored with wings seraphic the fairest lands and the finest climates of the world, they returned with a branch of fern-leaf and informed Jupiter that he might give old Vulcan, the landlord of Olympus, notice of his intention to quit at once, as in Zealandia they had found a haven of rest and a heaven of enjoyment, which was superior to anything the gods — including Plutus, the most knowing of them all — had the smallest conception of. Then, said Julius, I shall perorate thus : "It is in this fair and favored region of a Southern hemisphere thafc I, as the Colonial Treasurer, have been permitted to submit to the approval of this honorable, enlightened, and unsophisticated House, the budget which is now before it, and which, in tbe midst of a blaze of prosperity," &c., &c, &c. Snyder ; And do you tell me you will say all this, 0 my Julius and friend of my earlier days ? Julius : I swear it, Snyder — but hold ! ' — my allegory ought to be intelligible, and excepting in a sort of Chinese sense, half my hearers will know nothing of the heathen mythology. Snyder : By the way, Julius, I have neyer had an opportunity of asking you whether your great speech on the life insurance subject, which you so successfully initiated, was not an exact counterpart of the speech delivered by Gladstone on the same question a few years before ? Julius : " Suppose it was — what then ? Don't you newspaper men . often extract from contemporary journals without ac-knowledg-roent or without thinking it any great sin ? Where is thp wrong in copy*ing from a good model, and what better than from one of Gladstone's ?" Snyder: "Right, Julius, them's my sentiments to aT, And so Stafford really did give you the idea of the great public worKs scheme you are carrying put — eh ?"■' Julius j Well ; then^ why did he not bring it to bear, and np£ aljow roe take the lead ont of his hand 1 An idea, if it is not worked, is as useless as a draught horse kept in a paddock and never put in traces to pull," - Snyder : '•* Look here, Julius j my idea of you is, that you are a devilish clever fellow,—devilish clever." Juliuß ; "Snyder, my boy, you do me proud ; but if you please we change the subject." ; ' Snyder : I was going to enquire whether you ever sought any remedy during your travels (or your deafness ?" Julius : Never. My deafness is intermittent* occasionally it is convenient in the extreme. A man you-know can't replj* ip uppliefl6ftDs j-e/narjfs or- answer dis&gree-

able questions if he don't hear them— can he?" ; Snyder : And about the anyidnis pectoris which . affects you ? Do you think you will ever get rid of it ?" . Julius: Never j — that is to say so long as people will;continue to ask me to had dinners and worse wine ; or ask me to meet deputations at which very unpleasant questions would be certainto be put to me?] ' ... - - - : Snyder : "And what about Waterhouse?" Julius : Well we couldn't help ourselves. You see he fpossessed. something which most people thought me and my colleagues were deficient in. So we took him in, and as he thought we were trying to do for him, he cut our company. As a politician he is a stick — and §1 will undertake to give him fifty in two hundred up at billiards for any sum he likes to mention and beat bim with the butt of my cue. And now, Snyder, as it is getting late even for me, I want to ask you a question which demands from you iv virtue of our long acquaintance a candid What do the people out ol doors think of me? do they take me ior- — for a — you know what I mean, although I can't exactly remember the word just now?" Snyder : " Julius, my esteemed and beloved, the people take you to be what you are— smart — very smart- — a little artful perhaps — but still smart, and there is .not a man in the colony but what if he was not himself would wish to be you. That's my idea of what people think about you." Julius : " Just one more question. Do you think that the people would prefer to continue giving me a thousand a-year as a Colonial Minister or a life annuity for double that amount if I would retire into private life ?" Snyder : " Upon my word, Julius, you put the question so suddenly and so plainly before me -that I should like a little time to consider before giving you an answer." "At chis instant, looking towards the door, I was startled by seeing a woman in white, who, however, I immediately recognised as my wife in her nightdress * but I was more startled on looking towards the other side of the table to find my Julius had slid." " Snyder," said that woman 'in white, " what do you mean by mooning there on the broad of your back like a used-up simpleton? Come to bed at once if you havn't had too much sleep already." "My love." I said "did .'you show Mr V. the door ? I don't recollect seeing him go out or doing so himself." "Snyder," was the reply, "you have now known me as your wife for over a quarter of a century, and I ask you did you ever know me see any one to the street door in my nightdress. Who your V. may be, as you call him, I havn't the honor of knowing. Come on now." "And I went to bed."