PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 6093, 20 August 1881, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

(From Otago Witnw*.)

Cruel is the fate of those members who in passing a Representation Bill are oalled on to give themselves the "happy dispatch." Unhappy Nelson is henceforth to have five members instead of nine, Marlborowgh two instead of three. Taranaki, H awke's Bay, and Westland are still to have three a pieco, but then the total uumber of membera is incroasad by seven, so that now, instead of three eighty - fourths of the representation, they will each have only throe ninety-firsts, or in round figures a thirtieth instead of a twenty eighth part. Nelson is out in the cold altogether, and yet one Nelson member, Mr J. B. Fisher, though one only, voted for the bill. It is only right to add that as far as I can see, his particular constituency is not wiped out, so possibly he may not be committing suicide after all. The arguments of hon. members for a larger share in the representation°than ia given on a population basis are ingenious though scarcely convincing. Nelson, we are told by a Nelson member, ought to have had more population, and would have had it if she had got more money Bpent there. Hawke's Bay ought to have more members, bo a Hawke'a Bay member tells ua, because she exports more per head than all the rest of the Colony. Wool, I suppose. Ergo sheep and not men ought to be the basis of representation. Says Mr Hursthouse, "One of the principle objects of representation is to make the people happy and contented, and this Bill will make the people of Nelson the very reverse of that. " You see, Mr Humhoune, it i difficult for all people to be happy and contented alike. If Nelson had been made happy and contented in the way it desires, why Otago and Canterbury wouldn't have been happy and con tented. Mr Hurathouse must cultivate hi* altruistic faculties, and be happy in seeing others happy. "Happy!" says Carlyle, in Sartor, " What right haat thou to bo happy 1 Who told thee thou were't to be happy'/" Sleapy little Nalson is doomed to political insignificance ; but she will survive it, and the Colony will endure it with becoming resignation, though within the walla of the Legislature, four of Nelson's bods are henceforth seen no more. I feel for all those who are going down in the world, but somehow my altruism does not cause me to be sorry that I am up. The majority secured on the second reading of the bill—i 9to 16— gives room for the supposition that the House has made up its mind, though doubtless reluctantly, to part with the four Nelson mon and the one Marlborough man. The former may oomfort themselves by the reflection that Mr Dick assured them in the handsomest manner thai the Government were sorry for them. They must die, but they will have a decent funeral. Peace to their ashes !

Dr Brown, who writes to the Times that the Judenhetze — Jew-baiting — in Germany and Russia is identical in principle with the Colonial Anti-Chinese agitation, can hardly be thought faY wrong. There is a good deal of difference no doubt between the modern Jew and the heathen Chinee, and Councillor Isaac will probably object to my including them even in the same sentence. But our ancestors felt about the Jew much a,s we feel about the Chinaman —the aptne herror at his alien blood and^ religion, the same suspicion about his,habits of life, the same distrust of his commercial morality—and the Jew-baiters have simply reverted to that state of feeling. The Jew in the, colonies is generally so good a citizen that it is hard to understand how an intelligent people like the Germans can regard him as we regard a Chinaman, yet such is the fact, and there ia matter for meditation in it. If we begin by persecuting Chinese because they are industrious and successful, we may go on to persecute Jews for the same reason, and may end by persecuting Scotchmen. Of course, I speak as a Southron. Persecuting a Scotchman would, in Otago, be-parlous work, and the persecutor would be likely to catch a Tartar. Yet, I observe that the Hon. Colonel Brett, speaking in the Upper House, has more than once this Session clasßed Scotchmen with " other barbarous nations," and if race hatreds are to be revived it is difficult to see why the Englishman should not bait the Scoi as the German baits the Jew, and the colonial larrikin the Chinaman. The modern Judenhetza is a lapse into medievalism. Sixteen millions' worth of Jewish property, Bay the papers, has been destroyed in Germany and .Russia within a month, and the owners in many cases have lost their lives. These scenes of massacre and riot exactly parallel what happened in England under the Plantagenets, when the Jews, after incredible sufferings, were expelled. 01 the 10,000 who attempted to cross the Channel many were robbed and flung overboard. One ship-maater turned out a cargo of wealthy merchants on a sand bank, and bade them call on a new Moses to save them from the sea. Cromwell, four centuries later, re-ad-mittod the Jews, and when Pepys wrote, his diary (tempo Charles II.) they had got so far as to have a synagogue in London. [ am tempted to quote what that charming old twaddler says about it: —

After dinner my wife and I to the Jewish Synagogue: Where the men and bqye ia their vayles, and the women behind a lettio* oat of eight; and some things stand np, which I believe is their l»w, in a press to whioh all ooming in do bow ; and at the putting on their vayles do ea3 something, to which otheri that hear the Priest do cry Amen, and the party'do kisa .his vajle. Their servioe all in singing way; and in Hebrew. And anon their Laws that they take ont of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and thay do relieve one another; and whether it is that everyone deeirea to have the oarrying of it, thna they oarried it round about the room while snoh a Bervioe is sinking. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, in whioh they pronounced hin name ia Porto (rail; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew. But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but oonfusion in all their Bervioe, more like brntes than people knowing the true God, would make a_ man forswear ever seeing them morej and indeed, I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the world so absurdly performed aB this.

It is clear from this extract that Pepys felt in the Synagogue very much aa a| Christian feels in a Josß-house, or as Colonel Brett most likely would feel in Knox Church. The fact is suggestive. Chinese, Jew, Scotchman, —it_ is all a question of degree. If we begin by peraeoutingtheChinaman where shall we end ? When the Joss-house ia threatened, the Synagogue in in danger, and not even the Kirk itself can be Baid to be safe.

Archdeacon Denison — perhaps the finest specimen extant of the real old British Bourbonism that loams nothing and forgets nothing—has lifted up his testimony against the Revised New Testament. The Archdeacon regards the Revision aa "an abomination in the sight of God," and believes that he would '' imperil his salvation " by giving any countenance to it. I should say that the Archdeacon's salvation, if it can bo so easily imperilled, muat |already be in a very precarious sate. Some good stories are told of Archdeacon Deniaon's impervious and impracticable conservatism. Once in Convocation he was reproached for his denaeness in not seeing something that to everybody else was aa plain as that " two and two make four." Said the Archdeacon, " I'm not sure that two and two do make four. To me, two and two seem sometimes to make 22." Rather clever that; and at the same time a good example of Tery " cussedness." It is a melancholy task which fate has ordained for Conservatives of Archdeacon Denison's type. They are the rearguard of an army which is in perpetual retreat, and are condemned to defend positions foredoomed to be taken. Their obatruc tiveneas perhaps is necessary —it stimulates the energies of the army of progress, —but it is hard to be always fighting a losing battle. There is nothing before men like Archdeacon Denison but to die quietly out of a world that is all agakmt them, and go to heaven,—that is, provided they have not imperilled their salvation by sinful complicity with new ideas Amongst other opponeui.ii of the itevis'id Version I noticf the X.v G« ■-/■- S.itW land, ->f Sw-ney. Til, R.». '■. «. ai)!H>ii:ie-s t!mr. lr'..i'.'g bw. n similar. <>i the H.'ly BiMu for *.-we nuv.y years i,-----i» in a po-.ition to affirm that the Kevisiou ia a failure, and thu work of a company of tyros! Cortaiuly a raoat characteristic delivei-iUiOii! Meuil>«ws of the First Church will receive with pleasure this

aasurano. that, amidst a changing world, their old pastor is still unchanged. Leaving out of account the untractable Conservatives who wanted no Revision at all, and the bumptious oritios who oould have made a better Revision themselves, I fancy the religious world generally ia fast coming round to a favourable judgment of the new version. It is a good sign that opposite schools of religionist* are discovering that it exactly confirms their previous views. Thus the Bishop of Melbourne thinks that the Revision " robs the awful face of retribution of something of it* droad sternness,' whilst another Melbourne. clergyman, holds, on the contrary, that it " brings out more darkly and more stroDgly than before the imk side of eternity," and here, in Dunedin, aa I am informed, the Deity ia thanked in prayer meetings that " hell is not abolished." The Christian Evidence Society is rejoicing that the Revision will " strongly confirm Evangelical doctrines," whilst Bishop Moorhouse, again, Baya that its "drift" is unfriendly to said doetrincß, and particularly to the doctrine of "conversion." It is the old rule, —each man brings to the Bible what he wanta to get out of it, and he will do this as easily with the new Bible as with the old.

Either the hatters are in a conspiracy to defame their customers, or the human race is undergoing a rapid and inexplicable deterioration. According to the Hatter's Gazette, the average size of hats has been decreasing for twenty-five years past. There is a difference of about a quarter of an inch between the hat of to-day and that worn by the generation preceding us, and it follows by inevitable inference 'chat the heads of the people hare dim inished in precisely the same degree. Evidence has been accumulated on the subject from a variety of sourcss, and there seems no escape frem the conclusion that the human head, in England at any rate, is smaller than it used to be, and that consequently, the intellectual decline of the race has begun. We have entered upon a miorooephalous period. A quarter of an inch in twenty-five years is an inch in a century ; pass in imagination over half a dozen centuries and England will have reverted to the savagery ot the Ancient Britons. A barbarous people will wander round the monuments of a perished civilization and be no more able to explain them than the Indian of Central America can explain the buried cities of the Aztecs. It is a terrible prospect, and one hardly knows whether it would not be preferable to beliete the Pyramid religion and look for the speedy end of the world. A circumstance that occurred in the House of Commons the other day seems to confirm the uncomfortable statistics of 'the hatters. Mr Gladstone rose to apeak to a point of order after the division bell had rung. Now when the division bell has rung the House is supposed to have risen, and members must have their hats on. But Mr Gladstone was ■without a hat, and the Speaker refused to hear him. A number of Treasury underlings rushed to find a hat for the Premier to speak in. When found, it was too small, and Mr Gladstone had to address the House, to its infinite amusement, with a hat cocked on his head like the foraging cap of a life-guardsman out for a Sunday in the Park. The Premier's head, you see, waa moulded more than twenty-five years ago. ■He was born before the degeneration set in, and no modern hat could fit him. There is one supposition, and only one, so far as I can see, which relieves the gloom of this baleful discovery made by the hatters, and being an optimist, to that supposition I incline. The loss of size is round the head ; but what about its elevation 1 Hatters take no note of that; yet it is in the upper region of the brain that all our nobler moral and intellectual qualities lie. We can afford to loße an ounce or two of brain at the base if we clap on three or four ounces at the top. What the flesh would lose the spirit would gain. Rightly interpreted, then, the lessening size of hats means the d Tslopment of the intellect, and is a faob of the beat augury for the future of the world. For my own part, I believe that heads have decidedly an upward tendency. Look at the wonderful perpendicular development of Mr .Graham Berry's head (as represented in Melbourne Punch), and you will see how the heads of a people may actually be growing bigger* whilst the hats that cover them are every year growing less.

One or two good stories reach me from Wellington. Mr Saunders, in the House the other day, complained of the Boftening iufluence of balls and parties on those Civil servants who are " in society," and of the pernicious effects of the softening process. Mr Kaundera is something too much of a Spartan father ; but I hear that there really is some ground for the supposition that members of the House, and especially new members, are exposed to these " softening " influences, and don't always resist them. For instance, Mr Vulcan, a new member, who was a son of toil before he was an M.H.R., was closely observed recentlyataMinisterial party. Mm Minister, oue of the cretne de la creme of Society—which word Dickens always nsed to say should be Bpelt with a big S—was apparently told off to "soften" Mr Vulcaa. She paid him marked attention, though he was " enly a clod," danced with him, went in to supper with him, put ice in his champagne with her own lily-whita hand, and altogether sent Vuloan up to the seventh heaven of enjoyment. He had been in Opposition, but how, after that, could he continue to oppose the husband of that dear Mrs Minister 1 Flushed with bucobbs (and champagne), ha went home to cool hiß fevered brow, and, 1 have not the least doubt, waa "softened." Ex uno disoe omnet. Sad, is it not] Another story is told of a certain dapper little member, also new to the House, and if not in Opposition, at least doubtful. He voted straight for the Government In the No Confidence debate ; but afterward* a few questions were asked, and answered by the Hon. Mr Dick — (poor Mr Dick seems always put up to answer inconvenient questions)—as to certain refunds of the 10 per cent, deductions. Mr Dlok admitted there were two refunds to dismissed officers. Names being pressed for—also amounts, also datea of payment* —it came out by degrees that, of the two, the new member was one, and that £19 was paid to him on 31st July, just three days after the division on the No Confidence debate.- The point of the joke, however, was in the remark of a rude member of the Opposition, who, on heariug the reply, turned to the new member concerned and ejaculated in an explosive manner, " Blank it all, so-and-so, why didn't you tell us. We'd have made it twenty five." This was cruel. Rude member of Opposition evidently argued on the post hoc propler hoc principle. For myself I can't believe for a moment that £19 had anything to do with the division. No, it was.a coincidence, that is all. But the rude remark is, I believe, authentic, and was very good chaff indeed. Of course we mustn't take such things au serieux. You see, my dear readers, the tedium of a session must of necessity be relieved by these little incidents, and I hope none of you will go away with the impression that Members are actually bought and sold. No; they are only soothed and "softened."

I thank thee, Saundors, for tcaohini; mo that word. — Shakesptart. oms.

In commenting upon the Robertson-Smith case the Scottish correspondent of a contemporary says :—" But they are not yet dose >vith the professors. It is notorious that more th»u one ohalr in the Free Churoh

Colleges is infected with the ' higher orltiolhoj.' Principal Rainy himself has published views of inspiration which abundantly warrsnt Dr Bcgg ia at lesst calling on him fur explanation. Professor Candliah, *on of the la:e De Caudlißh, and Professor Davidson, the distinguished Hebraist, have more or less openly endorsed moat of their friend 'Robertson Smith's oonolugioru. Any dsy ! they may give proof of it whioh the A6»embly oiunot wink »t, and for the nexi 10 years It may never ba without a hertgy case "

A ccrrespnndent of the English Jonrnftlof Hortioultnre says thst a.littls nnattrsotive weed vchioh gr-)ws on tho south ooasfc of Knghivd— B »6tioa olerao«a-~ia th« parent of xi! cvi" oai'baj «, pa i'i(}'Wi-rs, hr-icooiis »nd k-ii.- ■■-■ ■» -«-.. by :'titr« --io't f<r .-Ji* :u-- ;.-^, r.v..~c.ir, £!<,•!=■-!(! S.Hi wi^.-.nC pr-^m-a -yi.tf