Striking Diversity and Strange Unanimity.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XIX, Issue 3289, 30 November 1892, Page 4

Striking Diversity and Strange Unanimity.

THE WORKING MAN'S MILLENNIUM. It is said that " Variety iB the Bpice of life," and that "it adds to its flavour." The poet (Igsac Watts, or Cowper, we forget which) was not very far wrong when he penned this couplet, for certainly if c -would be bat a dull monotonous thing were it not for its pleasing contrasts. In the animal world we have the graceful and shy deer, and the bold and ferocions lion, the huge elephant, and diminutive though destructive mouse; there is the plain, humble-looking thrush, with its rich song, and the beautiful humming bird whose musical talents (and he has sense enough • to know it) are conspicuously absent ; tt en there is the monster whale and the tiny shrimp on which it feeds. Whilst in mankind the contrasts are still more marked and numerous, for not only are their ''physical features," so to speak, different, but they differ intellectually and morally also. In some countries certain . acts are considered dishonourable and even criminal, and in others the same acts would be looked ttpon as legitimate and onourable In China and India, for instance, we believe, lying is a virtue— we won't say a rate virtue ; while among the Negroes of America chicken-stealing is considered one of the favourite nocturnal pastimes, and nerfeetly praiseworthy, too — provided they " don't get caught in the act." In this country our tastes differ, and our ambitions carry us higher. We don't believe there is a single bank-teller in the whole of the country mean enough to Isy violent hands on a poor unprotected fowl. As to varying opinions on political matters, they are legion, everybody has an opinion of some sort; some think that Ballance and his party are the willing instruments of the evil one ; others think them the only men capable of ushering in that era of unexampled prosperity termed by some enthusiasts the Working Men's Millennium; others, again, are loud in their praises of the author of the Public Works Policy, whilst others clamour for Sir Harry Atkinson ; but one and all are unanimous in pronouncing Buchanan's House of Commons Whisky "the Purest and Best in the Market."

J.H. M