ON HOOLEYISM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10836, 20 August 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

ON HOOLEYISM.

i [by COLONOS.] The eminent financier who is just now passing through the fire, or rather through the whitewash tub, in Loudon, has done an eminent service in adding a new word to the English language. •■ Captain Boycott might have gone to the earth from .which he sprung, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung, had it not been for what ho thought at the time the unfortunate incidents of his life which have lifted him to a pinnacle of glory that will last while the language of Shakespere and the English Bible endures. And so with Mr. Hooley; he has fallen from his high estate, and momentarily feels as if he were in sackcloth and ashes. Yet the greatness of the glory of his name shall live long after his remains shall have mingled with their kindred dust, and while human nature is constituted as it is, men will speak of men as being Hooleycd. No doubt there was Hooleyism before Mr. Hooley, and people were Hooleyed, though they knew not what was the matter with them, long before mankind heard of Mr. Hooley's name. But just as people have pined away and died of obscure maladies, the nature and the name of which they knew not until the doctors diagnosed and located the disease, and nailed it for ever with a scientific term, so

there have been hundreds of people in ages past, who have lived and fought and fallen, without knowing that they had been Hooleyed. But just just as there are diseases of modern growth, which have had their genesis in the peculiar and novel developments by which they have been surrounded, and would perhaps have never existed had it not been for tils morbid conditions that had sprang up around the patient, so it may be that in the days long gone, when joint stock companies were not, when syndicates and watered stocks and " good things" were not even in embryo, in those primeval clays it may be that there was no such thing as Hooleyism. However this may be, like diphtheria and influenza, or even Blight's disease, or hydatids, or apendicitis, it has come to stay and flourish, and many a man will bear the trials of life with all the greater patience from knowing exactly what is the matter with him, and he will face his troubles with more composure from reflecting that he has been Hooleyed. The term first appeared in this quarter of the world in the Queensland Parliament, when, as mentioned in the Hkuald, an honorable member declared to his personal knowledge that certain men and certain papers in that land of the banana had been Hooleyed. But then the expression has passed into the Australian papers generally, and it is admitted universally by those who know that pure journalese is the very essence of belles Jetties, and as unimpeachable as if it bore the imprimatur of the French Academy. Anyway, Hooleyism it is, and Hooleyism it will continue for all time; and what is Hooleyism? Now, it is difficult to give an exact, or at least a succinct definition of Hooleyism. In that careless way in which some people write, it has been described as blackmail, and bribery and corruption, and hush-money, and it variety of other things, and it is possible that if we boiled all these charges down together, and made a compost or an extract, or for the finer kinds of it a distillation, we might have Hooleyism; but the fact that not one of these terms exactly expresses Hooleyism, shows that the term supplies a great want, and emphasises the blessing conferred on the world by the great financier in bequeathing it his name. In fact, the term blackmail is wholly out of court, and cannot be said to form any but.. the minutest. element in genuine Hooleyism. There is a force and a violence in blackmail, a sort of moral compulsion that does not seem to have found a part in the methods of Mr. Hooley and his friends. Of course, when the agony came along at the last, there was violence enough in various forms; but these were as it were the sequela? of the affection, or its subsequent unpleasant and abnormal developments. But Hooleyism itself is a quiet and rather pleasant proceeding, with reciprocity and mutual pleasantness, and altogether an agreeable sort of operation for the time to all concerned. In fact, as illustration is more apt than definition for distinctness of outline, I would illustrate this phase of reciprocal operations in HooloyHsm by the obsolete practice of kissing. If you creut up behind a pretty girl, and before she was thinking of it snatched a kiss from her, that would be theft, but it would not be Hooleyism. If you gave her a sweetie or a present of any kind to get a kiss in return for it, that would be bribery and corruption, but it would not be Hooleyism. Or if you held her tight and declared you would not let her go till she gave you a kiss, that would be blackmail, but it would not be Hooleyism. Or if you squoze her hard, and never minded her scratching or even biting you, and forcibly took a kiss from her, that would be highway robbery, but neither would that be Hooleyism. But if you put your arm gently round her waist, and she then laid her head quietly on your shoulder, and looked up lovingly in your eyes, with her pretty lips parted and close to your own, as if to say come on; and if you pressed your lips to hers in a lingering kiss, and she seemed to like it just as you did— more so—that would be Hooleyism. . Tlie're seems to have been something wonderfully reciprocal in Hooley and his friends. They may have kicked up a bobbery all of them when they were caught, just as it would have been in that other case I have described, if somebody had come peeping round the corner; and one would say, "You nasty man," and the other would' exclaim, "I never did," till from upbraiding one another, nobody could tell the other from ' The'fact of the matter is that the sudden and subsequent developments in the relations of Hooley and his friends, confused and turbulent as they are, give no clear indication of the- true genius of Hooleyism, which was neither coyness nor resistance, nor bribery, nor blackmail, but everything just nice. i ; , Now, the world has been very much shocked at this exposure of Hooleyism, as if it had been something unheard of before; but it is just like every other sin, which is only very dreadful when it is found out. How long has this Hooleyism been practised in London with impunity, and how many clean hands are there there, of those who are loud in their expressions of horror at such a revelation of' commercial anOf course, no one would for a moment insinuate that colonial morality has ever been infected by any such taint. ' We thank God that we are not as other men, and colonial morality is quite lmin"fact, we almost feel inclined to deplore that those who have gone Home from time i to' time in connection with the flotation of enterprises should have been compelled to breathe in the mephitic atmosphere of the commercial circles of London. But we should like to know, only by way of curiosity, the private story of some of our flotations, just that we might be able to speak with laudation , of our superior morality. , .■ ■ ■■•■■ . , •.„ ' Of course we know that some of our folks must have been subjected to the. painful temptations by which they were surrounded in that wicked'city,' and the high costs of flotation or' other promotions of enterprise must have been only caused by the exactions, as it were, 1 of blackmail. ~'-;.'' '.:■:'; '_ Still it would be interesting to know if there .has been ;any.;'reciprocity • in the Hooleyism, or whether it lias sometimes been a matter of good fortune in not having fallen into the. hands of those that : are so mean as to kiss and tell. -;. '■-. ;■ The whole thing is an unsolvable mystery, but what a pity it is that it is all confined to London, and that some of it does not come this waji not at all for any. profit in the thing, but just to know how it feels to be Hooleyed,. ■,-'••-'. ; ' ~"-",