ECHOES OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1211, 17 May 1895, Page 23

ECHOES OF THE WEEK.

Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.

BY SCRUTATOR.

THE most glaring example of the folly of a man allowing his political spite to override the interest of his fellow settlers has been afforded by Mr Buchanan, M, H.R. This gentleman, the chairman of the v) airarapa Agricultural and Pastoral Association, the annual meeting of which body was held on Saturday. From the report of the proceeding in*the Wairarapa Standard I take the following :• — A discussion took pi dee off a prop'o's&l by the Invercargill Association to .ask the Government to carry lime for agricultural purposes free. The chairman opposed the idea and said if the Government agreed to give relief in this way, it. would only be an excuse for imposing some other, burden. A Tariff Commission had been sitting lately but it Avas apparently entirely for giving relief in the towns. The country g'ov no concessions, although the GoA r ernment occasionally threAV out a sprat to catch a

mackerel. —It Avas true that now the Government gave some assistance in the . Avay of grading butter and a certain amount j of cool storage, but Ihe relief was not much as compared to the protection, practically amounting to a bonus, giA'en to manufacturers and others. He opposed asking the Government to carry anything free as it Avorlld simply bo an excuse for putting some other burdon on the backs of the settlers. "¥~VTD evef anyone meet with more 8 P block-headed bitterness than is shown in the above remarks 7 Here j we have a man holding the position | of Member of Parliament and acting j I as official head of an organisation whose j chief objects are supposed to be the advancement of the pastoral and agricultural interests, the secufmg of all dae assistance to the farming class, who deliberately sets to work to deride and depreciate the well-meant efforts of the Government to grant a really valuable concession to the farmers. Not only that, but he goes out of his way to mislead or attempt to mislead, for I give his hearers credit for having more sense than to share his paltry prejudices his fellow settlers’as to matters in which not only the farmer but the whole community are concerned. What right has this conceited and captious critic of the Government to declare that the

Tariff Commission was sitting “ entirely for giving, relief to the towns’’? It will be time enough for Mr Buchanan to make assumptions as to the result of that Commission when its report is handed in. As to his remarks on the concessions in the freight charges on lime, &c., being only “an excuse for imposing some other burden,” such remarks are merely impertinent nonsense. Mr Buchanan, I suppose, reads the papers occasionally, and ought to know, if he does not, that two such representative Southern farmers as Mr Grigg and Sir John Hall—neither of whom, as Mr Buchanan knows as well as I do, are friends of the present Government —have recently expressed the most unqualified approbation of the action of the Government in this matter. Both these gentlemen are keen politicians, but they have tlie interests of their felloAV settlers first at heart, and do not, like this petty-spirited Wairarapa squatter-politician, allow their political prejudices to override their regard for the good of the country. It° is needless to say much more, or I might refer in detail to the good work the Agricultural Department in the way of practical assistance to the farmer. Mr Buchanan’s words stamp him as a man quite unfitted for public life. He is a typo of the “ old-time ” selfish squatter, to whom the idea of government “ of the people, for the people, by the people,” is a thing utterly accursed. Happily it matters little to the Government or the country Avhat he thinks or what he says, hut I will suggest to the smaller settlers in the Wairarapa that they cast about and try to find a more suitable representative before the next general election comes round. A man who, like Mr Buchanan, is prepared to reject the honestly meant assistance of the Government to bis fellow settlers simply because that Government is not his political ideal, is certainly not a man for the farmers to send to Parliament.

MR FRED PIRANI has, I am very glad to notice, teen elected a member of the Wanganui Education Board, and by a big' majority. I heartily congratulate my brother journalist upon bis success. Mr Pirani’s work on the Land Board alone stamps him as a man who goes heart and soul into any public Avork .he may undertake, and be brings to that Avork a common sense, a shrewdness and an all-round industry which one rarely meets with in local bodies. When his nomination was first announced, I warmly supported his candidature, and I believe that both committees and teachers will find in Mr Pirani a staunch friend to justice and a.n earnest worker in the great cause of popular education. But the little “ family party ” who have so long had everything their o>vn way on the Wanganui Board will find in the new member a man who is not to be bounced; and schools in the outlying districts will, I venture to prophesy, now o-et much more consideration shown to their just Avants than they have received in the past. TALKING of education matters, a step in the right direction is that contemplated by Mr Reeves, who intends, so I read in the Times, to introduce a Teachers’ Appeal Court Bill. The tribunal which this Bill will set up has been sorely needed, as anyone who has had any experience as a state school teacher knows but too well. The Avay in which teachers are sometimes treated, not only by committees, but by the hoards to whom they appeal, savours of positively brutal injustice, and it was high time that some unprejudiced court of appeal AVoro established. In the Hawke’s Bay

district 1 have personally known of teachers being literally hounded out of the district on sectarian and political grounds, and I have no doubt that similar eases could be found all over the Colony. If Mr Reeves can find a really workable scheme by which teachers can obtain justice he will reap the gratitude of the scholastic urofession from one end of New Z-saland to the other.

THAT bumptious young monarch, the German Emperor, and his slavish creature, Prince HohehJohe, the Chancellor, have had a very nasty smuck in the face m the rejection of the Anti-Revolutionary Bill by the Reichstag. “There is much rejoicing in Germany,” says the cablegram, over the rejection of the Bill. These are signs of the times, the “writing on the which should he regarded with fear and trembling by the would-be autocrat, for they fiie&ii,- as clearly as can be, the decision of the German people that they are no longer prepared to surrender the liberty of their political Aimed nominally at the advanced Socialists, the Bill struck a deadly blow at the right Of public meeting and public discussion" The leaven of a democratic spirit is Working in the German people, who are beginning to recognise that military glory will not stay the stomachs of the starving workmen. Over his long pipes and long tankards _ the German is now given to discussing politics with a freedom from reverence for the Divine Right of kings, emperors and such like which is absolutely maddening to the young man of the hundred and ten uniforms. He doesn't like his subjects to discuss politics unless with a servile admiration of his own overwhelming I genius, and so the Anti-Revolutionary [ Bill proposed to place a gag on free speech. ! The German, however, though slow to I move, is determined enough when he does make a start, and he has just administered a lesson to his “ ruler!” which that young man will do well to ponder over in the right spirit. Oh, yes, the democratic leaven is working in Germany, and although it may he many years before the accursed system of militarism under which _ the nation groans is finally destroyed, it is steadily being undermined, and its destruction is as great a certainty as the fact that the German Emperor is at present the most wrathful man in all the Fatherland.

WE are all glad t,o see Lady Glasgow back in Wellington, from where she has been far too long an absentee. Her Ladyship enjoys a genuine popularity with all classes of society, Wellingtonians by this time recognising in her a sensible goodhearted lady, dignified yet devoid of “ side," and sincerely, interested in any good movement. •

TALKING of Lhe Glasgows, I recently came across a good story of the late earl, which has not, so I believe, appeared before in print at this end of the world. Ilis lordship was a great sportsman in his day, and as fond of a wager on anything and everything as was Mark Twain's friend, Jim Smiley, of “Jumping Frog" renown. He was rather a hot tempered man, however, and on one occasion his wrath manifested itself in a form which might have had somewhat serious consequences. He was stoppfing at an hotel where he had a difference with a waiter. The latter was, like many flunkeys, inclined to be impudent, and upon his giving the earl some rather offensive “cheek,” the impetuous nobleman, who was a man of great physical strength, promptly ran him out of the room and threw him down the stairs. Shortly afterwards came up the landlord with a white face and exclaimed “ My lord, you’ve kilted the waiter.” “ Put him in the bill, landlord, put him in the bill.” No doubt the waiter deserved all he got, but such summary and exaggerated punishment would nowadays quickly land a lord in the courts, and oh, how the Radical papers would write down the “ bloated aristocrat.” GLANCING through the “Agony Column” of a London paper the other day I came across the following mystic advertisement: sth verse, 22nd chapter: ‘ The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man .... for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord thy God. This extract from the Old Testament is, I may risk the suggestion, a word of warning to the New Woman. The Lady Bicyclist, and that still more dreadful innovation, the Lady Footballer, are clearly the offenders aimed at, and evidently the advertiser would have a new commandment, “Thou shalt not wear the ,” read out of Sundays for the special behoof of the Grundy-defying section of the fair sex.

THE following extract from “Search-. lights ” in the Christchurch Press will be read with interest. — “ If cf such bo the Kingdom of Heaven, it must be Heaven indeed.” Pardon the sententious view ; but I can’t forbear quoting a tag so applicable to a little case that has come under my notice. It is about a clergyman who runs a parish —vvell, in New Zealand. He has a screw of over <£4oo a year, plus pickings ; plus a house, rent free ; and he is, as the advertisers say, “ without encumbrance.” It will be admitted, I tlr'nk, that he is comfortably well off. But the wet weather on Easter Sunday was a blow to him. In fact, a wet Easter this year seems to have involved parsons and bookies in the same fate. The collection on Easter Sunday goes, of course, to the and the good man grieved sorely over the “thin house.” So sorely thatlie melted the hearts of the churchwardens, and on the Friday, after they advertised that the offerings next Sunday above the avevcujc collection should go to the vicar. The advertisement was repeated on the Saturday, certainly with the knowledge of the vicar. A bumper house was the result at Sunday s service. And now came the vicar’s chance. Having first peeped through the *' prompt-hole and counted the house, he summoned the churchwardon hastily into the vestry and rated

him soundly. “I have never been so in-* suited in my life.” The churchwarden —simple soul—gaped in astonishment; he apologised; lie would announce that tffQ vicar generously renounced the offering's, it was all a mistake, ~&c., &c._ But he misunderstood his reverence ; it wss not tiiat ha had been “insulted” too much, but that he had not been insulted enough. it is a gross indignity to offer me tao surplus collection in this way, a mere pittance a few pounds above the average ’— I will have the whole or nothing .” And that pious man of God forthwith summoned a meeting -o. aiie Vestry, and by judicious browbeating and a, good show of virtuous indignation having been 6C insulted/* lie carried his point, and got the whole collection. And when tae evening came the churchwardens got them a hand-cart and wheeled the shekels to Lift good man’s door, and dumped them on ins hall table. , , . , But now the sequel. An astute churchwarden, a man of law, recollects that •II the offerings, except on four Sundays m r,na year (specially ear-marked) are mortgaged, to the debenture holders. And the man of law intends to make the man of God disgorge the shekels. But enough S “ Enow of such as for their bellies sake, Creep and intrude and climb into the fold. What is the name of the church ?