Intelligent Vagrant.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 241, 1 July 1876, Page 13

Intelligent Vagrant.

Quis scit an adjiciant liodiernse crastina summse Tempora Di Superi.— Horace. There is a gentleman at present under mild restraint in the Weeing lon Lunatic .Asylum who thinks he has no qua"fications for being where he is. lie is accorc 'ugly petitioning the Legislature on the subject, and alleges that he is no more a lunatic than S’ .■ George Gi’ey. That ought to be satisfactory. In answer to a coiueopondtat sig. iDg h'mself “Holy Poker,” I may state that I am not a Freemason, but nevei Ihele's I am sure that Masonic ceremor’es do not involve any cruelty, because I have more than once of a morning examined the room in which a lodge had been held oveiAght, and the fireirors were always quite bright. My correspondent puts another question, which I do not feel myself ca’’ed upon to answer. It is no concern of name if Mr. Gillon were not jiresent at the installation of Sir Donald McLean or the banquet subsequent thereto. Perhajis he did not choose to ask for a ticket. As to the answer he would have got had he asked, well, you know, that is really a matter of most unnecessary conjecture. But without travelling out of my province, I may be permitted to mention what I consider was a grave breach of decorum at the aforesaid banquet. I have before me a copy of the Bill of Fare* and in it I find an item which, when translated, I understand to read, “ Provincial Lame Ducks.” Surely there were no barley-sugar effigies of the leaders of the provincial party ? Politics I always thought were excluded from Masonic gatherings. There is a little word of four letters used to distinguish a person who does not tell the truth. It is in some respects a dangerous word to use, as not Infrequently it is followed by the knocking down of the user. At least, I learn from a gentleman who last session used it somewhere within the Government buildings, that it was followed by the above d’sagreeable corsequences. But it may be often used with impurity. The gentleman before mentioned says that it has been appked to him more than once, but that he is above noticing such trifles. There has been a newspaper quarrel, I notice, in which some warm language has been used. As the subject was a printed correspondence, the matter ought to have been easy of adjustment. But I am bound to say that the difficulty was caused by the propensity of one paper to calmly quote all the accusations made against the Premier without quoting the printed evidence which disproved them. This system gives infinite ease to writers, because it gets rid of all superfluous matter that might embarrass a statement. But is there not in it a sacrifice of justice for the sake of ease ? Two papers now exist in Mastei lon, and the usual results attend their existence. One announced that its success was so gueat as to induce its proprietor to buy a doubly demy press. The other immediately remarked, w Ith polished irony, that what its rival wanted was not a double demy press, but a doubly demy head for its editor, who as yet had one the size of which there was no printer’s term sufficiently diminutive to describe. I have before me a copy of the New Zealand Liberator, which is devoted, amongst other things, to religion. It shows its appreciation of its title by the freedom w ith which it calls names by terming the hotel business an “ iniquitous traffic,” and its religion is exhibited by its treatment of the Rev. Mr. Fitchett, a Wesleyan minister, who, because he dared to preach what he considered the truth, is told that his words are near akin to Popery and very like heresy. Someone has said somewhere something to the effect that a great many wrongs are committed in the name of freedom. Hot the least of these wrongs arises from the literary license that at times is mistaken for freedom of discussion,