Striking Diversity and Strange Unanimity.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XX, Issue 2320, 7 January 1893, Page 3

Striking Diversity and Strange Unanimity.

THE WOBKING MAN'S MILLENNIUM.

It is said that " Variety is the spice of life/* and that "it adds to its flavour. The poet (Insac Watts, or Cowper, we forget which) was not very far wrong when he penned this couplet, for certainly if c would be but a dull monotonous thing were it not for its pleaßinjr contrasts. In the animal world we have the graceful and • i,jO»y deer, and the bold and ferocious lion, ' ' *fhe huge elephant, and diminutive though destructive mouse j there is the plain, humble-looking thrush, with its rich BODgr, and the beautiful hnmming bird whose musical talents (and he has sense enough to know it) are conspicuously absent ; tten there is the monster whale and the tiny ■hrimp on which it feeds. Whilst in mankind the contrasts are still more marked and numerous, for not only are their "physical features," bo to speak, different, but they differ intellectually and morally also. In some countries certain acts are considered dishonourable and even criminal, and in otherß the same acts 1 would be looked upon ac ligitimate and ononrable Iji China and India, for instance, we ' v believer, lying is a virtue— we won't say a rare virtue; while among the Negroes of America chioken-atealing i 8 considered one of the favourite nootura&l pastimes, and perfectly 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 laelieve there is a single bank-teller m the whole of the country mean enough to ley 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 thiDk 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 m their praises of the author of the Public Works Policy, whilst others clamour for &r Harry Atkinson ; but one and all are ' unanimous in pronouncing Buchanan's - i» Howe of Commons Whisky "the Purest * ' and Beat in the Market."