PASSING MOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7326, 8 August 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

PASSING MOTES

(From tho Otago Witness.)

We sadly need in this country some piece of machinery, simple and trustworthy, for infallibly determining the truth in any political question submitted to it. Tho jury is such a piece of machinery in the administration of justice, and though juries are not always trustworthy, and never infallible, yet what confidence would a man have in committing any crime unless secure of his right of trial by jury ? Someone has said that the final cause of the whole British Constitution is "to get twelve men into a box." An apparatus with the same function, if not of the same nature, as a jury is what we are perishing for the want of in politics. Look, for example, at the state of the discussion re the proposed East and West Coast Railway. Men bless or curse.the Railway as they happen to live near, or not near, to the districts to be benefited by it, or as they happen to belong, or not belong, to the party of the Government. That ■which the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce danouuees as madness and folly the Christchurch Chamber of Commerce extols as' the quintessence of wisdom. Mr Holmes (Canterbury) says the Railway is salvation; Mr Hobbs (Auckland) says the Railway is damnation. In the view of Sir Julius Vogel, Mr Meiggs, the contractor, is a capitalist of unquestionable reputation, and benevolent disposition, who proposes to enrich the Colony by making a railway for it on ridiculously easy terms; In the view of Mr Fyke (who is politically opposed to Sir Jnlins Vogel), Meiggs is a Californian adventurer, of shady antecedents, whose design cau only be to bamboozle us, plunder us, and decamp. Now, what is an honest man, who loves his own soul and would'not willingly believe a lie, to say to these things? Whom and what is he to believe ? Politics is evidently the last occupation that a young man of good principles should think of turning to. Horse dealing is bad; so is share dealing. Teetotal lecturing and billiardmarking both have their moral perils. But politics' is worst of all. Become a politician, and you must swear that black is white and white black, as interest and party may require, and yet, with all this, must feign a tender interest in the moral welfare of barmaids and groan in spirit over the iniquity of half-crown sweeps !

It is not particularly creditable to our civilisation that societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals should still be necessary; but fortunately they are less so than formerly. The kind of sport which consisted in the illtreatment of animals is, as one speaker remarked the other evening, a thing of the past, and the occasions of cruelty are therefore narrowed down. Cruelty, when it occurs now is generally practised upon beasts of burden for selfish ends, or else it is perpetrated as the result of a quarrel between man and beast, in which the latter naturally gets the worst of it. That a man should be capable of receiving personal provocation from a dumb brnte sounds strange, but it is nevertheless. true enough. Cruelty is, of course, wrong in any case; but at the same time it is undeniable that many animals and insects have brought suffering upon themselves by their wrongheaded behaviour towards- persons of hasty temperament. A well-conducted dog, cat, or black beetle can generally jog through life comfortably enough ; in the case of the beetle he is safe if only he will discreetly keep himself to himself. But it has long been recognised that many creatures have peculiarities of habit or disposition that are certain sooner or later to get them into troubleMr H. J. Byron's showman, who presumably was well informed upon the subject, distinctly implies this in running through his catalogue of birds and animals :—

We've a personal oltl vulture who most grossly will insult yer;. We've a cassowary who's extremely vulgar when he's vexed; We've an elderly flamingo who blasphemes and cries '.'By jingo"; AVe've a peacock with a tail to be concluded in our next.

In the same way, outside the show business there are cats that indulge in midnight lamentations, and cats that retire to rest at a respectable hour •, horses that nip you in the calf of the leg as they are being girthed up, and horses that don't; cockroaches that crawl into your teacup, or down the nape of your neck, and cockroaches that confine themselves to their own proper sphere of action. Our Dunedin Society does good work in endeavouring to encourage love for dumb animals. It is only a pity that a mission cannot bo started among the more abandoned of these animals to make them a little more lovable.

If there is any man who deserves a couple of months in Bohemia, well beyond the reach of State and domestic worries, it is M. de Giers, and lam glad,to see by a recent, cablegram that he is going to get it. His Imperial master has granted him leave of absence, and the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs is off to Bohemia. This choice of destination alone shows thatVthe diplomatist knows what is what in the way of holiday-making. He has been young once, and he means to be young again— for two months. If we glance at M. de Giers' recent record we shall see that with the timely assistance of General Komaroff he has won his country a substantial victory at a remarkably small cost. The negotiations between De Giers and Granville form as instructive a Blue Book as has been issued for a long time past. The arguments of the English Minister were elaborate, masterly, unanswerable. M. de Giers was felicitous i» his phrases, but he had invariably 4he worst of the logical position, and upon every branch of the discussion there came a moment ■»hen the Granvillian arguments amounted to a mathematical demonstration, and a surrender of the Russian position seemed inevitable. Precisely at these junctures, when Lord Granville had conclusively proved that he ought to succeed in his contention, M. de Giers took effectual' measures to succeed in his, and affably resigned the honours of debate to his adversary.

Anothesr way in which M. de Giers especially distinguished himself was in the admission of principles. Take the matter of arbitration. After a correspondence extending over weeks* Lord Granville won-as usual; whereupon the Russian Minister admitted the principle of arbitration. In American phraseology he had " taken the measure of his man." The admission of the principle so delighted Lord Granville that the actual arbitration was waived altogether, and from thafc day nothing further has been done in the matter. Certainly M. de Giers has deserved well of his country; and who shall grudge him a couple of months' Bohemianism? There can be no more sensible relaxation from the formalisms, of official life. The Russian Minister is probably just now attired in a flowered dressing-gown, and old, but comforfcable, carpet slippers. He will be smoking a long play pipe and drinking students' beer. He will haya forgotten all about his digestion and his despatch-box. He will eat when he is hungry, and be able to walk abroad in a. shooting-jacket and wideawake hat. Other overworked European statesmen might do worse than try Bohemia for a change.

The virtue that Plato_,called " enkrateia," and St. Paul v temperance," was the virtue of not getting drunk, ljp doubt; but it was equally the virtue of not being .<j total abstainer. This form of virtue would soon begpme extinct if those who now-a-days rant most .abput temperance had their way. It is a curious change of fortune for the word " temperance " that it should now be claimed as their exclusive property by people who, in its original sense, are in-temperate. That teetotalism is good for druakards I admit—nay, J proclaim it; why do philanthropists who want to reform the drunkard affront my understanding, jepel my sympathies, and deprive themselves of my valuable co-operation by insisting that teetotalism is good for everybody? There needs no better evidence that it isn't than the self-righteous intolerance it produces in themselves. In these hard times when as the Daily Times remarks, even the people in church —without any special collection, or more than usually dull sermon, £o explain the factlook depressed and hopeless, I am seriously inclined to teetotalism on grounds of economy. But principles must be maintained! I will never consent to palter with duty or sacrifice my manhood. Sooner than that I am prepared to interview the Official Assignee. Liberty (plus a gjass of beer at dinner) —or the Insolvent Court! Though I say it who shouldn't say it, I have never keen a hard drinker. Heidseck, Pomraery, and Greno have never made the figure in my life (nor in my weekly household bills) that they make in Mr G. A. Sala's letters. I' renounce them without a pang. But my daily glass of beer I not only will not renounce, but I will maintain the duty of drinking it as a protest against the intolerance of an age that is rapidly losing the capacity to understand, even, v/h.at the elementary idea of virtue is.

A noble lord has recently been writing in an English magazine to point out how little teetotalisni has done for his class, yet how steadily tie English "upper ten" have improved in social habits without it. In George the Third's time —says one writer, commenting on the useful contribution to the teetotal controversy

made by the noble lord—Cabinet Ministers slept under tho wine table, and the head of the Church was swollen by excessive drinking. Gout attained its highest degree of perfection. A man who did not wear a split shoe was only under protest admitted into tho circle of polite society. A " buck "of lorty-five was considered an old man. "Oh, yes," men would remark "the bishop is a pretty good sort of a fellow, but did you observe that it was about as much as he could do to stand up under a gallon of wine, good wine, too?" Sir Philip Francis, author of tho Junius letters, upon awaking at night and finding himself sober, would immediately get out of bed and proceed to get drunk again. Lord Wyemoutu, after spending a fortune and becoming utterly worthless, was appointed Secretary of State in recognition of his abilities as a drunkard. One night at a great ball the beautiful Miss Parthenia Stowell approached the Lord Chancellor and said:

" My Lord, will you please take me home '?" " Why so early, my dear miss ?"

" Well, you see, I am as full as a goose, and papa thinks I ought to go." All this has been changed, totally and utterly changed, yet the "upper ten" have never become abstainers. -An English lord has more money than he had in George Ill's time, and probably quite as naughty passions, but as a rule he does not get drunk. What has made the difference ? Education, books, newspapers, more objects of interest in life, and a higher moral standard. When will our blatant reformers who misuse the name of temperance learn the lesson ?

Apropos of the Revised Bible—a work more talked about than read, I am afraid—l may mention that the other day, in looking through a volume of essays b3' Mr Gladstone, I chanced on a new and startling rendering of the text which reads," Every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians." AMr Savill is quoted as proposing to substitute for this the following: " Every consecrated goat is, with the Egyptians, an object of worship." Mr Gladstone thinks this rendering quite a possible one, though he does not commit himself so far as to recommend that i: be actually adopted. It is this sort of fact that impresses one with the amazing resources of modern scholarship. Out of the same word you can get, it seems, either " a shepherd" or a " consecrated goat," and out of another word either, "an abomination" or " an object of worship"— apparently according to preference. How wonderfully expressive those ancient languages must' have been!

Here, also, may be a suitable place to cite another example of exquisite workmanship in Bible revision, quoted by Macaulay from the works of Samuel Patrick, Dean of Peterborough about 1689. In the Song of Solomon occurs the following verse: " I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of love." Dean Patrick's version runs thus:—

So I turned myself to those of my neighbours and familiar acquaintance who were awakened by my cries to come and see what the matter was, and conjured them as they would answer it to C4od, that if they met my beloved they would let him know—What shall I say ? What shall I desire you to tell him but that I do not enjoy myself now that I want his company, nor can be well till I recover his love again ?

Dean Patrick was entrusted with the task of improving the collects of the English Prayerbook. " Whether he was or was not qualifisd to make the collects better," says Macaulay, "no man that ever lived was more competent to make them longer." It is to be hoped that the Westminster Revisers have not erred with Dean Patrick. I have not noticed whether they have made the Bible longer, but they have certainly made it dearer. Cms.