PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9117, 16 May 1891, Page 5 (Supplement)

PASSING NOTES.

(From the Otatjo Witness),

IP, as members for this city, instead of the three wise men we have, we had a trio o£ enchanted donkeys, the meeting held this week by Messrs Hutchison, Pinkerton, and Fish might perhaps be explained. The object of the meeting—as Mr Hutchison, who presided, stated it—wag "to make an effort to put some more life into unionism,' Now the odd thing is that nobody has the slightest desire to put any more life intc unionism—nobody, that is, with the excep tion oE Messrs Hutchison, Pinkerton, and Fish. Certainly the public doesn't desire it. " If unionism is dying, let it die 1 " says the public; " the pleasure of its society during the past eventful year has been more than enough for me I" Nor does the work ing man desire it—a fact sufficiently proved by his declining to sanction by his presence the futile resurrectionist attempt of the other night. Then who does desire it? Plainly, as before observed, Messrs Hutchison, Pinkerton, and Fish, the three city members, solely and simply, jointly and severally—and for a reason just as plain Unionism, if it did nothing for anybody else, did this for the sapient three—it sent them into Parliament. " What is going to become of 1«," says F. to H. and H. to P., "if there is to be no unionism 1 " All that is intelligible; the rc3t is not intelligible. That these three wise men should proclaim their danger and distress from the housetops, that they should commit themselves tc the tragi-comedy of calling a meeting that wouldn't come, that they should be so plainly bent on getting (for election purposes) moribund unionism to give a few more galvanic kicks in their interest—all this is a mystery The only explanation I can think of is that the city trio have unwittingly come under the " influence" of Madame Cora.

The all-embracing philanthropy of our good knight Sir George Grey is never satisfied and never still. He discovers a panacea, and preaches it with a fervonr that strikes us all into amazement and admiration. Then, just when we are aflame with enthusiasm, he unearths another, and lo! the first is incontinently dropped. His fertility of resource in this respect is embarrassing. Any one cure-all would suffice, but amid so many we are only perplexed. A few years ago it was borne in upon him that lucifer matches were a menace to the State, and he brought in a bill to put them out. It is said he was never more burningly eloquent than when painting the woes of the little children whose little tummies were distended and disturbed by the over-much sucking of sulphnr matches. Mr Scobie Mackenzie was moved to tears, and for a full week Mr Fish refrained from lighting his pipe in his wonted •way—to wit, by friction produced near the seat of his pants. A striking tribute, this to the winged words of the old mar eloquent! How far the reformation might have spread is hard to tell, were it not that a little later and lucifers gave place to lawyers as a peril to the commonwealth. Abolish them and all would yet be well. It is true that, with a vague suggestion of inconsistency, the plague of lawyers was to be stamped out by making every man a lawyer. But that's a detail; and if lucifers and lawyers still abound in the land, it is only because Sir George has perceived that if the race is to be rescued from the iron heel of Berfdom one man must have one vote.

Sir George baa actually gained us the inestimable boom of one-man-one-vote, and in due time he will probably show that our jaurplas and our windfall are its first fruits, At present he is preaching it to the benighted Australians, preaching it in season and oat ■of season—particularly out of season, as the Premier of Victoria profanely remarked when addressing his constituents at Geelong. There are signs, however, of a change. One-man-one-vote will do much, but to bring in the millennium, you must pass an act to make every newspaper writer sign his article, and to this Sir George was, at latest advices, devoting himself with might and main. Ah, h'm, yes, precisely. I fancy I could name one or two people nearer home who are as eager on this point as Sir George Grey himself, and don't they wish they may get ltl No messieurs. Where ignorance-is bliss 'tis folly to be wise. Take a case in point—one occurs to me at the moment: —SJ E-b-t St-t desires to pleasantly banter Mr H. S. F-sh for his personal delectation and the entertainment of the community. He does it in a crisply written Passing Note, and calmly awaits results. Mr F-sh straightway pants and plunges and splashes and spouts, after his kind, to the high delight of the .town. And thanks to the. protecting veil of anonymity he splashes and spouts into the .empty air, and nobody is drenched save himself If, on the other hand, the note were signed by S-r R-b-t St-t. But. no; the subject becomes too harrowing, and I decline to pursue it. Dbab Cms,—Your remarks on Bishop Jnlins' profession of Socialism seem to me unfair. Why should a Socialist be expected to sell his goode tj feed the poor ? That wouldn't bring SocinliOT nearer by » single <lay. What I understand by Socialism is that the State should become a joint stock company, the sole owner of property, fc cole employer, the sole paymaster, I can concave that a bishop may sincerely think such a 3oci»i reconstruction desirable. And if he .does, why should he be taunted on the score of his big ioeorae, which he makes no offer to surrender, and hia poor curates, with whom he ■shows no anxiety to divide? What is wanted is 4hat everybody should agree to make the same sacrifice—if sacrifice it is—and at the same ,time. K^l Mabx•Yes!—that is what is wanted. Everything to be cast into one common pot, and then divide equally I Personally I believe I should oome out a gainer. I should cast in a few hundreds of NeDtborn mining scrip, and be compensated by becoming a pensioner for life on the State treasury. My correspondent will say that this is to talk^nonsenee. Perhaps it is; nonsense is what most people talk who talk on Socialismbishops not excepted. But, seriously, if the universal sacrifice of selfishness is wanted to bring in the social millennium, must we wait till everybody is in the same mind 1 That is to postpone the millennium sine die. Surely eorae individual hero should begin. Who so fit as a bishop? Preaching cathedral Bermona on Socialism to an accompaniment ' "perceptible applause" from trades 01. *«tj3 is one thing; practising what you amon* • -mother. In my humble judgment, jreacn is . which an ounce of pra otice this is a case . £th would be worth v That have stimulated the bis.. «*» *f^J oratory, but what did the dea^ , a w"! think of it? What did they sa, ?T?heir afterwards 1 I picture the wagging o "j* • venerable beards 1 A bishop clappeu •% church —worse than that, if anything couk. be| worse, first clapped and then hissed— hissed and groaned at lOf course if you may clap in approval you may also hiss and groan in dissent; the one right implies the other. This seems very terrible, but the thing itself — applauding in church —is not new. Indeed it may claim a very respectable antiquity. Canon ITarrar has lately made some remarks on the •subject, citing the case of Chrysostom, the. " golden mouthed " preacher of Antioch in the fourth century, whose pulpit orations, it seems, were often clapped and sometimes ihissed. The good man remonstrated' but in •vain. " None of his sermons was more loudly applauded than one in which he strongly his congregation's unseemly custom of thus venting their feelings." Judging from what happened in Cbristchurch the "unseemly custom," after sleeping for some centuries, is in a fair way of being revived. If this should come about, service in church is destined to become as lively as a political meeting or the election of a school committee. Sermons will be punctuated with cheers and groans, "hear, hears," and "derisive laughter"; when he proses too long the preacher will be extinguished by unanimous cries of " time I" Like socialism, this may or may not be desirable, but it ,would certainly be a sweeping revolution. .1 am not an angler, and scarcely know one ■end of a rod from the other. Yet for the sport itself I have a deep, if somewhat distant respect, and that on moral as well as physical grounds. It promotes veracity, and the truthfulness of your genuine fisherman touching the weight of his basket or his biggest trout has passed into a proverb. So likewise it leads to good fellowship—as witness Fraser v. Thompson—a case by the way which says a good deal about that mysterious mode of progression called. " grt.~itating upwards," but throws very j little light on it. Izaak Walton, with whom j I have some slight acquaintance, says never j a word about it, and, on the whole, I am j disposed to surmise that it has more to do j with fishiDg for trophies than "troots." ■■ Trophies were unknown in his day. He angled for the love of it, and the gentle art itself was a delight to both the fisher and the fish. Each of them entered into the pure spirit; of the sport, and no intelligent and right- j minded trout repined at being landed if only j it were done delicately and after a pretty

piece oE play. Nowadays that sort of thing is out o£ the question. Your fishers are strung in a row one behind the other. They must cover a mile of wafer by 12 o'clock, and " gravitate upwards." Your fish is appreciated by pounds avoirdupois and not by the pleasure of playing him-for playing takes time, and may cost the medal. There must be a subtle fnscination in fishing, albeit I know it not, or the good old Izaak could never have written so lovingly about it; and — more potent reason still — such staid and sober burghers as Mr Thomas Brown and Mr Robert Chisholm could never desert their webs and their wares to wallow all day in a pond or wade all day up a creek. Is then the "trophy" such an indispensable addition?

A Dunedin lady, I observe, the wife of a well-known New Zealand legislator, lias been reading a paper in a London drawing room on the women's rights question. The desira o£ colonial women for the political franchise was particularly strong she said, " be' cause of the active and energetic part which they took in social matters all over the country." Well, it is not to be denied that women here, as elsewhere, do take an active and energetic part in social matters, and especially in balls and afternoon teas; but it doesn't follow that they are particularly eager for the political franchise. Indeed, I doubt whether they are eager for it anywhere. If they wanted it, if they all wanted it, if they all wanted it in deadly earnest, who should say them nay? Not their husbands, certainly; still leas their lovers; nor even their fathers and their brothers. Fathers and brothers might be able to maintain the standard of resistance —and of independence—a little longer than husbands and lovers, but they, too, would have to give way in the end. And the end couldn't possibly be remote. If women particularly want a thing, and that thing is in rerun natura, have it they must and will; men are bound to get it for them. As women have not yet got the political franchise, I infer that they don't particularly want it. I wish they did I Polities' would be better and women no worse. Miss Lydia Becker (lately dead), editor of the Woman's Suffrage Journal (which died with her), is credited in a biographical notice by one of her friends, with a remark that exactly bear 3 out my view. In a discussion with a lady on the question with which her name is so intimately woven, "My dear friend," remarked Miss Becker, " a really good husband is worth a hundred votes." OIVIS.