ROUND THE CORNERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 873, 23 November 1888, Page 17

ROUND THE CORNERS.

Somebody remarked the other day that England was, in his opinion, going down hm an<3 losing prestige as fas£ as possible, and soon. This kind of pessimism has been current ever since I csSn remember. In the forties’’England was declining,- and Wellington and Waterloo and the Peninsula , and Nelson, gar were quoted to exemplify past prowess and sturdiness of the race; while to-day it ? Corn-laws and new fangled, things nad- : - ; ruined the country.' And every ■ decadq sinw other phased of this peculiar pessimism have j ; ; come and gone and the old Jp,n4 has blundered. H „ into difficulties and' fought her way out of t them just.as sturdily and resolutely and dasbingly as ever she di<3. \Tbe race is, still ing race and will take a lot of wiping ou ~, Perhaps if there is any weakness it is in. the. . politics and administration, which, however, will assuredly right itself,; and perhaps, also, fhere is' a softening of the national in the direction of benevolence, and an, ; complacency that, is inclined;to let well qloi l ®* and, atthe same time, a political' complacency that is dispbied tp stretch matters in cpnnectiob. , . with the liberty.and rights of communities and v. , individuals. There are>lso evidences; of sC ; surplusage of law—the, old country is statute- • ridden—and in the; tremendous struggle life there is unquostio'nahly, a growing feelirig of lassitude in dertam quarters- as to .whether life is worth the living, but more^than■ might be expected in a population: growing so ( fast, so mixed, and so' tainted with * : defects. lam afraid the tendency of those de-;, ;. fects is to increase. The complacent benevoi, lence and extreme sensitiveness of the English peoole, when brought face to face with , ing,' tends to perpetuate physical ills, while it is the eradication of the latter that is domanae by reason and common sense, ,

It is our duty to .aim at the excellent, and it may not be gainsaid'that jiist jj£ humanity falls short of it are the ills of humanity existent. If the minds and bodies of the people were alike vigorous and untainted; \ - drunkenness and idiocy and. madness and extreme animalism would not be. Legmation is . antagonistic to these vices and failings. ' Gaols ’ . and penitentiaries and aßylums dot .the earth,. and enactments to fill them are rife, and stilly ; the root of the evil is untouched. In the place the curse of hereditament is people; in 'the second they' Buffer, force of example and the, temptation of tbC. ... evily-disposed. Both of fchsso causss aro dosdly f ,«• in their effect, and'that effect is never .ceasing. Of the two the first is the wqrjt, for it spring* ' from the very root of whiio the second 4 is collateral. Humanity seethes in its impurity and viciousness; and its purification isi a’ vpry long time question indeed. , fitany generatiqns will come and'go ere even the thick of ‘the evil is removed. Bat at least a'commencement might be inade;' ah' effort-to get at the root of it; And the first step, should be in the direc- • / tion of judicious restraint upon the liberty' _of \ 1 the subject). Where individual licence hr m- / dividual indiscretion, or individual'infirmity ~- imperils the welfare of the entire: body politic - clearly there is a lawful deniafid to control' ‘ -licence and indiscretion’and infirmity. 1 '■• T- j*/ What I am advocating now Thave advocated;,.' *1 before, and, as then, the distance that segay ; .; rates us, frbm the position of reform seems ini- ■ •measurable. But if sterling' hbpes oft'accbm- - -h----plishment are only excited; backefi by a do torrqination to make a beginning, however Small, - a good-first step will have been taken. -. To- ii-y . lustrate the subject. There are- people who - ought'not to propagate thefr species : why then.. mot impose restriction upon tail'the right to marry ? I know of more than qne faffiily in which the mothers are half idiots, - s must have been the pro verbial shingle short when > they married, and yet they married, there was fh rio' law against it; and what, pray,- can be ex-. - tpected of their progeny but imbecility and evil 3 Thes6 women aro as'silly as children, and have no idea of self-control or responsibility of any . y kind, and yet they live and go on propagating. Of confirmed drunkards, both men and women, but especially the former, there is no lack, as is borne out by the police records. - But there are cases of the kind that do not come within police ] cen —where the .woman persistently suffers in a perverse kind of way and shields the husband, who is worse than a brute to her.- Now, I know of such a case, and a bad .one it is. The husband spends all he earns on drink, and often;/- - levies by force upon the poor earnings of the ; ■ wife, who is the only- support of the children. He will -periodically absent himself from home. .' and leave to its own devices tho family which, r indeed, is the better for his absence. And}', he retums more full of deviltry-than ever, and the hand of the brute falls heavily on wife-and- r children. His wife, poor creature, does chores,-i y , and stated on one occasion to- the .housewife v.; . - , \/i * ' i'

thatengagedher, how herhusbandhad “knocked bee silljf " the night before. He had been away and came back empty-handed, and proceeded at once to incapacitate his wife from providing for the children. £ There should, be a law prohibiting the marriages of drunkards, male and female, andalaw providingfor divorce —divorce made easy—aye, 1 would go farther than that, and say compelling divorce where husband or wife are confirmed drunkards. Neither should be allowed to legitimately propagate at any rate, ‘ ’

It would pay • the State to proceed to much greater extremities than this, to wit, place under the closest restraint confirmed drunkards and confirmed criminals, never give them liberty on any pretext whatever, until dfeath stepped in. And whether hopeless cases might not be profitably consigned to the lethal chamber, and be disposed of for once and for all, i 3 a question that claims very serious consideration.

I consider that the London Daily Telegraph has done good service to the people in raising the question, “Is Marriage a Failure.” For although I, for one, believe that the majority of marriages are, not failures, yet I think there are many that would be all the better for dissolution. The Telegraph in its action has brought the imperfection of our divorce laws into prominence, and their radical reform is pointed at and suggested. It must \ come to it sooner or later, and if greater facility, under certain well-laid down conditions, .were given for the action of divorce, I venture to affirm there would be fewer unhappy marriages, people would look more closely, and consider more seriously, before they lept into the bonds of matrimony. The reform of our divorce laws must come sooner or later. It is well on the way now.

The old adage " there’s nothing like leather ” receives frequent exemplification, anil no wonder for it arises out of self-complacency and self-esteem, and esprit de corps. ' It found amusing illustration some time ago, when two individuals were discoursing on the sanitary state of the larger towns of the Colony. One talked bad drainage, insanitation in the construction of houses and so forth. “You are wrong, my friend,” dogmatically exclaimed the other. “ The chief cause of the great mortality in colonial cities is the. bad practise medical men have fallen into of mixing their own medicines.” I need hardly say that the speaker was a chemist and druggist, and spoke feelingly. He ; proceeded to enforce his argument by relating how a certain woman who had been prescribed for by a doctor, waited a day or two for the medicine, and at last went to the surgery to see about it. There she was confronted. by. the doctor’s coachman who, after hearing her, ejaculated, “ bless me, we quite forgot about that prescription, I’ll make itnpat once.” “You!’ almost ohrieked the woman, “1 shan’t take your make-ups,” and walked away without the medicine. She said afterwards she could not bring herself to trust such a dispenser. Now, without defending the exceedingly 'loose practice of entrusting the composition of medicine to an unqualified man, he be coachman, bootblack, or prime minister, I should .not like to say that woman did right. That coachman chap might have been a duly qualified dispenser out of luck, who was glad to the job of driving a medico about, and mixing drugs for. him, in his.off time. And it is not at all likely that, any medical man in his senses would, in these days of strict mamlaughtering laws, have allowed an unqualified man to meddle with patients’ medicines. Still the chemist and druggist put his finger on a weak spot in defence of his own particular occupation. And the proper dispensers of medicine are,' no doubt, qualified dispensers under the Pharmacy Act. , , .

The question thus raised takes me back a few years, when, .wherever I went there was a general growl among medical men about the unreliability of the drugs made up by the public dispensers—the druggists. Instance after instance was related of medicines failing in their effect, and consequent sacrifice of life through bad dings, and so doctors, at last, took to providing their own drugs and mixing their own medicines so as to ensure their patients the best chance for recovery and life. That this has been changed of late years is a satisfactory fact. The public dispenser is to be depended upon, but doctors still cling to their drug mixing. It has become an established custom.

The droughts in New South Wale 3, which periodically occur and send a shudder through Australia, so shocking are their effects, have been tolerated now for a great many years. I say tolerated advisedly, for in this age of the world such dreadful visitations ought to be ruled out of court as having no locus standi. If there is not water available above the earth, there is plenty: beneath it if it is only looked for, and tapped in the right place. . These droughts affect, the vitality of the colony, and are a colonial misfortune that ought to be averted by colonial resources. New South Wales has shown marked liberality on many leading questions, has spent millions on defence. and railways, and a pretty penny on that Soudan expedition. Wonder the Colony does not go in seriously and systematically for artesian boring in that dry back country that only wants water in plenty to make it as rich as any on earth. It would be worth New South Wales’ while to spend a couple of millions on a welldevised irrigation scheme. Dam - building might beused togood purpose as well. “Borrow, bore, and build ” should he tho Colony’s motto for a while. Asmodkds.