Striking Diversity and Strange Unanimity.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XX, Issue 2339, 30 January 1893, Page 3

Striking Diversity and Strange Unanimity.

THB WORKING MAN'S MILLENNIUM. It Usaid that "Variety is the epice of life," and that "it adds to its flavour." The poet (lesac' Watts, or Cowper, we forget which) was not very far wrong when he penned thw couplet, for certainly if e would be but a dull monotonous thing were it not for its pleasing contrasts. In the animal world we have the graceful and ehy deer, and the bold and ferocious lion, the huge elephant, and diminutive though destructive mouse; there ia the plain, humble-looking thrush, with its rich son?, and the beautiful humming bird whose musical talents (and he has sense enough. to know it) are conspicuously absent; it 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 epeak, different, but they differ intellectually and morally also. In some countries certain acte are considered dishonourable and even criminal, and in others the same acts would be looked upon as ligitimate and onourable In China and India, for instance, vre believe, lying is a.virtue—we won't say a rare virtue; while among the Negroes of America chicken-stealing is considered one of the favourite nooturnel pastimes, n and perfectly praieeworthy, too—provided ? they '* don't get caught in the act." In this country our tastes differ, and our • junbitzons carry na higher. We don't believe there is a single bank-teller in the whole of the country mean enough to ley violent hands on a poor unprotected fowl. As to varying opinions on political nattere, 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 Home of Commone Whisky " the Pnrest And JBest in the Market."