ON THINGS IN GENERAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10100, 8 April 1896, Page 3

ON THINGS IN GENERAL.

LEX TALIONIS.

The protest of the Victorian Government against the New Zealand tax of £50 a-yaar on commercial travellers from over-sea may be taken as a warning. We have been playing with offensive legislation so freely that wo hare, some of us, become oblivious of the possibility of other people paying us back with our own coin. Ib will bo interesting to note the result of this protest, and see whether, if it is ineffectual, Victoria may nob be moved to enter on retaliatory legislation. The taxing of outside commercial travellers is, of course, to the benefit of our own traders j and on that account there are plenty of people shortsighted enough to hold that this justifies the procedure. But a capitation tax of the sort could be made reciprocal and more extensive, and there is nothing to prevent its being applied iD Victoria to all travellers, commercial 01 otherwise, from New Zealand. The high stand we took in proposing to treat as an " undosirablo immigrant" everybody arriving from anywhere who had not a welllined purse in his pocket, was conceived on the short-sighted principle that our offensive actions end with themselves, with do after-claps; and a few such hostile proceedings as this against outside traders will, as sure as life, rouse up Australians to mark Now Zealand a3 a place to bo fought with hostile taxes and hostile tariffs, and to be givon a Roland for an Oliver every time. A special capitation tax on everybody land' ing in Victoria from New Zealand f.'ould be quite as legitimate as a head tax on commercial travellers, and the right we claimed to mako differential duties in favour of South Australia as against the other colonies would make defensible the position that Victoria should impose an exceptionally heavy duty on every article of produce or manufacture from New Zealand. Let us nob suppose we can haxe all the stonethrowing on our side, and unless we mistake the temper of the Victorians they will , put down tins obwmeus tax o( ours cm 1 CQawaecoia.l travellers or they \v((( know the reason why.

THE FIGHTING SPIRIT. Tho correspondent of the Hkkm,d who, representing "The Friends," maintains that war in every case i& opposed to the mind of Christ, shows in the persistence with which he comes up to the attack, that) the war spirit is well held in check by himself, but it is there all tho same. Bub instead of theorising let the principle be brought to a practical test. If a " Friend " saw two dogs fighting, and the biggest and uppermosb one was worrying tho other to the death, would ho stand by impassive, and listen to tho panting of the dog that was being strangled with the big dog's fangs buried in its throat? Would it) bo the mind of Christ that he should do so, or would ho not give a rousing kick in the side to the uppermost dog, and haul him off from his murderous work ? That would be a war of intervention on a minor scale. Again, if he saw two cocks fighting and one of them from time to time was digging his spurs into the eyes of the other, which with mouth agape, and drooping wings was dropping with exhaustion, would lis consider it to be the mind of Christ that he should stand looking 011 inactive, or with "a few well chosen words" endeavour to persuade the victorious rooster to leave off? Or would ic not be more in the spirit of the New Tostamont to snatch up a branch of a tree and wallop the bully till it had flown over the fence ? ,

REAL WAR. Or, coming to actual war, lob him speak unequivocally on this ? Should England, it conjunction with the other great Christian Powers, stand calmly by and see the Kurdf and Turks sweeping down tho flying anc terrified Armenians with their scimitars, al the rate of five or ton thousand unoffending villagers slaughtered at every battue, with their wives and daughters subjected to unnameable outrage? It would be war if the Powers marched their troops into Anatolia and drove back the murderers, but would it, or would it not, be according to the mind of Christ? And when on the coast of Africa thousands of negro men and women and little children were packed like herrings in Arab dhows, and were being carried into slavery, and when British men-of-war pursued these dhows, and with shoo and shell poured into the slavers, compelled them to render up these halfdead captives, and restored them to liberty, was such act of war repugnant to tho mind of Christ? or would the great Founder of the Faith have willed the British cruisers to have left the wretched beings to their fate sooner than to have mado use of those fiendish" missiles of war? And British troops that havo boon employed, and are now employed to go forth and put down slavery in the Soudan and other parts of "darkest Africa," are they doing the work of the devil, rather than the will of Christ in using military force to check the hellish work of slavery ? The?o are the pertinent l questions that are tho true test) of the rights and wrongs of war.

IN LIMBO. Referring to a sermon on Sunday morning last, it is reported in the Herald, thai) " in a lucid address the preacher combated the popular idea of people entering into Heaven immediately after death. He said that all men at death, both good and . bad, go to the spirit world, to which Christ) went at his death and preached to the spirits in prison." This wag nob in a Roman Catholic church, bub in a sanctuary of one of our most orthodox Protestant) denominations; and though the idea of a limbo for disembodied spirits is in various forms as old as the hills, the enunciation of it in "die circumstances will come with considerable surprise to most. This is not the place for the discussion of theological dogmas, but this dropi so entirely into the hands of the spiritual* ists that we might expect a boom 111 spirit* ualism 011 the head of it. If the bodiless spirits liavo not been sent away to their doom, but are just idly waiting or abiding thoir time as if they were in the flesh, there seem* nothing improbable in an occasional spook of a wandering turn coming over the line to revisit old scones, and it may be in sheer ennui that Katey King and Geordia and the rest may be revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon. The tomfoolery the spirits talk when they como would seem to show that they are nob much troubled with serious though the principal characteristic of their communications being iuibe« cility even when so favourably privileged as to be holding converso with " the goad man Stead."

IDLE SPOOKS. Accepting; the description given by tho divino on Sunday last hs correct, the ghosts have really to little to think about of a practical kind that they can easily fall into trifling ways, for he has discovered— how is not apparent—that they cannot bo " on probation" there, and that they.have no prospect of bettering their condition. Why in such circumstances the Saviour should have gone to preach to them is a mystery to the clergyman as it must be to most people, if there could havo been no benefit to them sorved by the preaching. The divine has probably got a little boyonj his depth, and perhaps should recede to the firmer ground of the old orthodoxy, unless indeed, he goes the full logical length of tho Roman Catholic Church, and regards the spirits as undergoing a process of preparation for another sphere. With such idle purposeless lives as they are by him represented to lead, ono would nob blame them in the least for rapping and tableturning and other fantastic tricks, for Satan, to pay nothing of " the good man Stead," is sure to find some mischief still I for idle spooks to do. The General