NOTES BY COLONUS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XI, Issue 1058, 5 November 1878, Page 5

NOTES BY COLONUS.

• TRUE BLTTEISM. I lately observed in the columns of this paper quite a plethora of outside communications on the subject of the AttorneyGeneral and his University Bill. lam not ver;, - well posted up as regards the affairs of our University, therefore offer no opinion on the vexata qucestio, but I did not altogether approve of the animus displayed by the true blue contributors, or of such a heap of rancoroua abuse being hurled at the devoted head of the Attorney, aud was therefore rather gratified to see, in the same number in which these communications appeared, the writers of the same get an admonitory tap over the knuckles from the editorial ferule. I should say, "Draw it mild, gentlemen, draw it mild, you have displayed such an excessive readiness to roast Mr Stout, that, if I am not mijtakon, you have in the culinary process rather burnt your own fingers." I don't think our Eobert is quite such a black sheep as you make him out to be ; he is not quite the incarnation of evil. Se may have his faults, he may, as the Editor says, be egotistical, he may be ricketty-rocketty, but I do not think he is such a bad hand after all. Rather too much addicted perhaps occasionally to make a parade of his learning ; I think, however, Robert is honest and desirous of doing well ; nor do I think that hia attempt to eliminate the ecclesiastical elements out of the matter of the choice of Professors for the University has been done altogether at the in stigation of the devil, as his true blue opponents seem to infer. And what about the ' Echo' 1 Is the revelation — new to me — that Mr Stout once edited that publication, to be considered a disgrace to him ? Our contributors, heedless of the grand old Latin exordium, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, bestow a most savage kick on the defunct carcase of that newspaper, thuswise : " The only thing this paper was remarkable for was its low tone, being, during the course* of its short and mis-spent life, amoral pest,"* and so on. A " moral pest," well, well t The publishers were kind enough at one time to send me the 'Echo' gratis, and I used to read it without being very much disgusted with it, and it never occurred to me that it was a particularly blackguard print. I may as well confess that I at one time contributed some half-dozen or so of my ' Notes' to it and I was rather sorry to hear the little thing had given up the ghost. Perhaps it waa occasionally a trifle too heterodox, too out-and-out. As regards its free-thinking proclivities, however, why it is the fashion to be free thinking now-a-days ; we aro moßt of us free thinkers to more or leas extent. We do not now cling to the skirts of old Mother Church with that pretty infantile helplessness and trustfulness we once did. For my part I prefer to see people exercise their right of private judgment, and not be always ready open-mouthed to swallow everything offered them by the Ecolesiastics, without so m_-2i as a wink, At the same time, I don't want to see human beings behave like fools and asses, have no reverence in thei? natures, btt i the deluded victims of their own ignorance, have no susceptibility ta the awful possibilities, a^ utterly ignoring everything \ eseepi, that which comes within the extremely f narrow limits, of their human experience— ;all, except what they can see, feel, taste, br smejrof, Nor.do I wish to see Religion, tha*-. great ameliorator, of humanity, eradicated! out of the world, but all the same J likes: to see people exercising their, jeaaoning faculties to- the full without fear ot<^dei-Uiation.