Striking Diversity and Strange Unanimity.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XX, Issue 2395, 7 April 1893, Page 4

Striking Diversity and Strange Unanimity.

THE WOKKING MAN'S MILLENNIUM. It is said that " Variety is the spice of life," and that "it adds to its flavour." The poet (Issac 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 pleasing contrasts. In the animal world we have the graceful and

shy deer, and the bold and ferocjous lion, the huge elephant, and diminutive tnougn 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 ; tten 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 "'Dhysical 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 others the same acts rrould be looked upon as ligitimate and onourable - In China and India, for instance, we believe, lying is a virtue— we won't say a rare virfcue ; while amoDg the Negroes o£ ■ America chicken-stealing is considered one of the favourite nosturnnl 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 believe there is a single bank-teller in the whole of the country mean enough to Ify violent handß on a poor unprotected fowl. As to varying opinions on political 'matters, they are legion, everybody has an opinion of some sorb; some thiDk that Ballance and his party are the willing in-truments of the evil one ; others think them the only men canable 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."