"CIVIS" ON BEQUESTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XIV, Issue 1840, 19 May 1885, Page 2

"CIVIS" ON BEQUESTS

"Pecunia noh olet"! remarked the .Roman emperor as he raked in his annual license fee 3 from the public stews — "Money, thank heaven ! savours not the hands it has passed through." The remark would hardly hold good of bank notes, but then the Romans had no puper money. " Filthy lucre" was with them not as it sometimes is with us, an evilsmelling physical reality, but a mere figure of speech. However, notwithstanding the fact that we have invented the malodorous bank note, most of us are clearly of opinion that "pecuria non olet. It must at any rate have been on that principle that the Baptist lady in Auckland tho other day solicited and obtained a subscription from the Hon. Hobert Stout. An incident like this throws all one's theological landmarks into confusion. Fancy the money of the Apoetle of Freethought going to build a Baptist Tabernacle ! w e shall have Mr Brunton next subscribing to the Lyceum, and Bishop ! Moran begging to be permitted to forward a small contribution towards the support of the Salvation Army. The exigencies of his political position — the urgent need that a Premier should conciliate all sorts and conditions of men — may excuse Mr Stout, who did indeed save himself to some extent by directing that his donation should go to the Baptist poor and not to the baptist building fund, though, as the reporter remarks, it will all come to the same thing in the end. It is not Mr Stout but the "devout Baptist lady" whose conduct seems peculiar. Evidently her theory wbb that it mattered nothing what heretical pockets the money came out of provided it went into Baptist brioki and mortar.