A MARTYR TO VIRTUOUS INTENTIONS.

Evening Post, Volume XL, Issue 147, 19 December 1890, Page 2

A MARTYR TO VIRTUOUS INTENTIONS.

Poor Mr. Colaman Phillips ! He is evidently a muoh misunderstood man. Really brimming over with the milk of human kindnoes, intensely anxious to make the whole of his fellow-men happy and prosperous as be ia himself, fertile in schemes for the improvement of human nature and its surroundings, and in faot a philanthrophiat of the first water, an unfeeling world declines to appreciate him as he deserves, and insists on regarding him as an unpractical enthusiast, with a particularly keen eye for the main cbance where his own interests are concerned. A callous and unsympathetic Board has gone further tban this, and aotually characterised Mr. Phillips as an exponent of the art of Dummyism ! No wonder Mr. Phillips is shocked, horrified, and wounded in hia tendoreat suEceptibidties by suoh an extraordinary aoousution. He did not even know the meaning of the word, and until the last fatal moment when the blow fell, had no idea that his transactions in laud at Dry Biver and Puketoi deserved anything else than publio approval. Was he not trying to do even moro than make two blades of grass grow whore only one grew before, aud is it not an axiom that the man who does this is a benefactor of his species and deserves the gratitude of the publio t He soncrht to make tho wilderness blossom as tbo rose, and to find employment for those who sadly wanted it And when legal technicalities interfered with the fall scope and oiecution of his benefioent scheme, what harm was thera in his enlisting the bjuipathotio and kindly aid of " his sisters and his cousins and his hunts," as he himself put itP None at all. Theidea-of wrong-doing never suggested itself. What possible harm could thoro be in itP Mr. Phillips' consternation on discovering that he had broken the law may well be imagined. He would not have dona suoh a thing knowingly for the world. His remorso was as keen as th« emotion of the plaintiff who burst into tears at the conclusion ot his counsel's address, and sobbingly declared be had never before known how badly he had been used. Mr. Phillips, in the innooonce of bis soul, the sicgloness of his heart, and the nobility of his purpose, never imagined he waß practising dummyism. The suggestion was abhorrent to his every instinct, and ho hastened to offer the fullest reparation. He humbled himself in sackcloth and ashes before tbe Bonrd, admitted everything they wished to know, unbosomed bis cool to its inmost recess -a, professed tho most virtuous desires, and pleaded eloquently that if he had inadvertently sinned it was with the best possible intentions and for the benefit of othors, not for hi' own. Alas, a Rhtdamanthian Board refused to heimproEse 1 , or to show the slightest sympathy with Mr. Phillips' agonies of aonsoienoe and of soul. Stern and implacable sat Mr, Commissioner Marchant, more saturnine than venal looked Mr. Maoarthur, Mr. MoCardle was firm as a rook, and not a sign of softening could ba deteoted even in the usually amiable conntenanoo of Mr. Fitzherbort. And so all the pains and penalties of dummyism were unrelentingly, inflicted on tbe most unhappy but bust intontioned proprietor of the Dry River Station. Such is life. Posterity may possibly do Mr. Phillips justice.