THE Published Every Evening. MONDAY, JULY 12. 1886.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXII, Issue 162, 12 July 1886, Page 2

THE Published Every Evening. MONDAY, JULY 12. 1886.

MR FROUDE'S VERACITY.

_ * _ The groat blot upon Mr Froudo'a latest and most brilliant though by no means moat veracious book is his inability to aeo further down into colonial life than the pleasant surface. He knows all about Governors and Cabinet Ministers, woalthy squatters and successful land speculators, luxurious saloon passages and comfortable Club smoking rooms ; but of the inner life of tho people, who are not wholly made up of the rich, and amongst whom there are some who fed the struggle forexistenco pretty keenly, Mr Fronde knows littlo and cares to know leas. Aa the train carries him from Port Adelaide towards the South Australian Capital, he moralises— moved thereto by the excellent com- ' pany he is in— upon " a city of a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, ' noUino of whom has ever known, or

ivill knoiv, a moment's anxiety as to j the recurring regularity of \\\% three ' meals a day." Alaa for Mr Fronde's ' msc-colorcd spectacles 1 At that very tinvu tho Mayor of Adelaide was pestered out of hia life by mobs of starving unemployed. At Auckland tho greal historian rejoices that nearly all the houses cost on an average about £250. and are ocoupied by the owners, unaware apparently of the mortgages which hang like, millstones round tho necks of most of them. And he exult* ingly speaka of the laborers Crowding into the town, for the high wages, tho music hallu, and the drink shop 3, though a little enquiry m the proper quarter would have told- him that Auckland is the city of distress and homeless vagrants, and that the rate of wages is lower there than m any, other part of tho Colony. Auckland was the only centre of population that Mr Froude visited, and his rich and influential friends m that district ought to have allowed him to tell the truth about it. While they were expatiatibg on the architectural beauties of the Northern Club, they might have reminded him that there was a soup kitchen m the next street. He has left New Zealand evidently under the impression which the Hon Dr Pollen, himself an Auckland man and a Government pensioner, gavo utterance to m tho Legislative Council— that m the Colony tho " eight bob a day man is king." Listen to Mr Froude upon tho working man's luxuries. " There are grapes grown under glass for those who can only bo satislied with expensive luxuries. Those are three and sixpence a pound, and are resorved for the privileged classes. A poor clergyman's wife with a sickhusband was tempted by the handsome bunches which she saw m tho shop window. She laid them down with a sigh when aho was told tho price. The shopman pitied her. '"Tisn't the likea of you,' he said, ' that can afford them grapes ; we keep them for the working men's ladies." The skilful touch about tho aick parson and tho ungrammatical shopman is really good, and has by this time done duty at hnndredsof Tory meetings m England during the elections. Isut the story ia utterly ridiculous, and we wondor at Mr Fronde being so easily humbugged. Unfortunately he likes to be humbugged about such matters as class distinctions ; and it is tho peculiarity of his writings that the rich and powerful are nearly always right and the poor and downtrodden nearly always wrong. The defender of tyranny and cruelty m Ireland and the whitewasher of Henry the Eighth was m a congenial element when he was hobnobbing with Auckland land sharks and lamenting over the prosperity of the working man. All this could be forgiven m a book by Mr Froudo, for it is just what was expected of him ; but the Colonists of New Zealand are entitled to ask that he should tell the truth and that his anecdotes should not bo born of his imagination.