DR. LAISHLEY AND HIS NEW EVANGEL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9103, 11 July 1888, Page 3

DR. LAISHLEY AND HIS NEW EVANGEL.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,—lt is a pity that the learned doctor should so frequently half drown his wisdom in a flood of words. As an example, take the following specimen of his inflated pragmatic style from his last utterance on Free Trade v. Protection. " Protection is a pure question of principle. Either the principle is right, or it is wrong. Given certain causes, certain effects must follow. If Protection be wrong, the least dash of Protection, for the purposes of Protection, is wrong. ■' If it be right— the cause must in natural sequence produce good results— the cause, by all means, be as potent as possible, so that the results may be as ' great as possible. It cannot be a matter for compromise. But, curiously enough, on no subject more than that of Free trade and Protection are statesmen willows rather than. oaks— that is, in the matter of Freetrade and Protection flexibility rather than principle guides our politicians." It would require the genius of a Micawber to give us such another string of platitudes ! The whole thing might be better expressed in the pithy old saying that on the question of Protection statesmen should "go the whole hog." In the entire article I defy anyone to point out a single original thought or suggestion that should ratify the doctor's claim to be the apostle of a new gospel. It is true that his mode of expression is sometimes original, as when he goes to his dictionary and lugs out such an obsolete word as "jactance," which in plain English means " boasting," but this practice is more to be honoured in the breach than in the observance. In the home newspapers, one frequently sees the advertisement, " WantedLeft-off Clothes for the Colonies." The doctor seems to me, metaphorically speaking, to have picked up some of these cast-off habiliments of the old country, and, finding that they fit him very well, is anxious to pass off the furbished-up, yet manifestly threadbare ' old clo 'on us poor unlettered untravelled colonials as brand new and in the latest style. Let me add that the doctor's habit, of breaking up his text to refer to authorities, from Josh Billings to Demosthenes, for remarks, many of them the reverse of profound, is about as irritating and devilish as ever was invented for the torture of innocent editors, compositors, and readers,—l am, &c., H. J. Blyth. Greenhithe, July 7, 1888.