Shipping Intelligence. THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 1868.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 60, 12 March 1868, Page 2

Shipping Intelligence. THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 1868.

A tendency to hero-worship is a characteristic of the human mind, which has exhibited itself in all times and iu all places in sovereign fashion. It has assumed the form of a master passion, full of the healthiest instincts, and fruitful of blessings ; or it has been an infirmity, the creature of sentiment, and capable only of mischief. But in times past, ere printing was invented, and posts travelled slowly, the creation of a hero was a work of time. In days when the fate of a battle turned on the prowess of a leader — when the chiefs of hostile armies singled each other out to do battle in front of their hosts, and settle great controversies by the weight of their own swords — there was no special correspondent ' in tbe ranks, to tell the story to the four quarters of the world almost as soon as tbe deed was done. It was left to the rhymiug monk to glorify tbe hero in verse, and to the wandering minstrel to carry the tale throughout the land. The wars over, having once more turned their swords iuto reaping hooks, the deeds of the gallant leader were recited by many a winter fire, aud thus the popular hero, in the course of time, was created. In more modern days ihe process was still slow. Europe has seldom kuown her heroes until sho has lost them. She has little regarded them in life, and cQvered .their bones with splendid piles of stone. In the present age, some portion of this reproach has been removed, and we now recognise our heroes rwhile they still live and move amongst us. The popular instinct has fortunately taken a healthy direction. The heroes of the present day would have been giants in any age. Our Lord Clydes, our Havelocks, and our Napiers, have written their names imperishably on the scroll of fame. The instinct which leads men to set up their heroes, seems to have received some illustration amongst ourselves just now. We owe it, perhaps, to the generous influences of a genial climate, or to the paucity of great men amongst us, or to our isolation from the rest of the world, or to all three causes combined. The mischief is that we raise the cry of hero with a heat and fervor which do not always argue discretion. Our demonstrativeness, too, is not of themost consistent sort. We shout for a time with a perfect enthusiasm, and then we suffer those whom we have deemed worthy to be thus honored to drop into silence and forgetfulness as suddenly and with as little reason as we first glorified them. We mourn for them, bury them with ceremony, and vote mural honors to them ; and almost before the funeral meats have been consumed, pronounce the whole thing a bore. We blush to publish the fact, but it is not the less true, that the cost of erecting the monument to the victims of the Maungatapu tragedy, on the propriety of which all were at one time agreed, has never yet been defrayed ; the blaze of enthusiasm died out on the instant, aud has only left

a memorial behind which recalls what has proved to be rather a disgrace than a credit to the community. The monument, too, erected after a lapse of some two and twenty years, to the memory of the victims of the Wairau Massacre, in whose behalf it might have beeu supposed that public sympathy in this province would have been most actively aroused, is a tasteless and poverty-stricken structure, which, we are told, is, even at this early date, becoming dilapidated. Yet before we can be said to have properly acquitted ourselves in either of these instances, the passion for hero-worship invites us to erect a public memorial for others of our local heroes. It is proposed by Captain Rough that the sum of £317, originally contributed in Nelson to the New Zealand Patriotic Fund, and which have not been applied to that purpose, shall be devoted to the erection iu Nelson of a monument to the rat-mory of Tasnian and Captain Cooke, the discoverer and .primary explorer of New Zealaud. The Examiner advocates that the money should rather be expended on a more fitting monument to the memory of those who perished in the Wairau massacre, whilst the Colonist accuses the people of Neison with having neglected a public duty, which may yet be atoned for by devoting the sum in question to the erection of a monument to the memory of the late Mr. Superintendent Robinson. We are of opiniou that each of these propositions are uutenable, but it is with the last which we propose especially to deal at the present moment. It is at ail times an ungrateful task to canvass the merits of the departed, aud in the present instance it is rendered doubly so by the painful circumstances under which Mr. Robinson met his death. But truth and common sense both combine to dispute the necessity which the Colouist seems to have discovered for the erection of a public monument to his memory. That our late amiable Superintendent possessed the esteem and respect of a large portion of the community no one will deny, for he was a well-meaning and sincere man, honest in his dealings, as faithful to his political party as could be desired, and in domestic life a model of propriety. But he was nothing more. His assiduity and his good fortune led him up the steps of the political ladder, but genius not having supplied in him that power of mind which education and reflection might have given him, if fortune had more favored him in his earlier days, he was incapable of originating a policy, or striking out an original path, or benefiting the province by the soundness and wisdom of his measures. He was never tried by a fiery ordeal, and his inaction, at best a negative virtue, upon which our contemporary sets such store, was never even ' masterly ' in its character. If public opiniou had elevated him to the level of the great men to whom monuments are voted by the concurrence of the voices of a people, would it have been left to the Colonist to speak in the name of Nelson ? But it has been instinctively felt that no claim whatever existed of the pretentious character now put forward on behalf of the deceased gentleman. The demonstrations the public made at the time of his decease, and the provision made for his family by the Legislature were most honorable to the memory of the citizen and politician whose premature loss we ail deplored. With these demonstrations it was felt that the public duty had been fulfilled. No more was asked — more would have been out of place. There was nothing in the public career of Mr. Robinson to call for honors of this kind to his memory, and an honor of this kind loses its value if we make it too cheap. To erect a monument merely to the honest man

would be to imitate the school-room policy of giving 'prizes to virtue.' Honesty happily is not so rare an article amongst us that we must put it on a pedestal. To commemorate the honesty of Mr Robinson would be to draw an invidious distinction where no distinction exists, and the proposition savors far less of honor to our ill-fated Superintendent than of an attempt to galvanize the 'disjecta membra' of the party with which he was identified in life. We are quite of opinion that a modest memorial might with propiiety be erected by frieudly hands to the late Mr Robinson in the public cemetery, and such a proposition would, doubtless, meet with general and kindly acceptance from the public. There those who cherish : his memory will be reminded by it of his unobtrusive virtues, and soothed and encouraged by the recollection of the position in public life to which his industry and personal integrity had elevated him. But if it be a^ked that the province shall, motu- proprio, lift honest mediocrity into the light and proclaim it as heaven-born genius, providentially vouchsafed for our salvation, we must utter a protest against such a proposition. If we must have monuments, let us build them to those whose titles to such honors are altogether unimpeachable.