PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13288, 20 May 1905, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Since Mr Seddon began the practice of bestowing upon us an annual surplus he must have enriched us in this way by some millions sterling. Last year alone the result of his operations—yes, wo will say his operations, it is a better word than manipulations—was to bestow. Upon us a solid half-million. Public ingratitude takes the form of denying outright the existence ■of these benefactions. That I consider peculiar. Dame Tartlet lays her morning egg and cackles; the whole poultry yard echoes sympathetic. Mr Seddon announces his annual Surplus and chortles; for answer lie gets a chorus,of denial and derision. The odd 1 tiling is that we have no motive to pietend. Apparently we affect incredulity out of mere cussedness. For, if even there were a surplus '(which we deny) we should have a perfectly gdod answer. We should 1)8 able to explain it without any credit to Sir Sedcton. We should say that what he gives hi must first have taken away, that the "surplus" presented to u<J with demonstration as evidence of our prosperity had been feloniously abstracted from our own pockets. Yet with this incontrovertible answer at command we take the other line—denying tho existence of any surplus whatever, big or little, now or heretofoie. A cruel situation, for our benefactor is clearly helpless. He cim go on talking surplus, but can ho show it? I am not suggesting tna't Mr Seddon should appear befoie the lieges with a cait-load of bullion, bidding them handle it and feel its weight. But, if he were really half a million to tho good, we might reasonably expect him to say, Now let's, finish the Otago Central, or the Northern Great Trunk; let's endow the Duiiedin Mining School; let's knock off half a million from railway rates or Customs charges. None of these things does ho say, nor will, nor can. There is only one infeience—the " surplus' is merely an affair of hocus-pocus and thimble-rigging in tho Government accounts.

Mr Balfour has either announced in clear terms, or has alloued it to be understood, say the cables, that he intends to continue in office until the conclusion of the war. For months past—as I myself who love him \iell and desiie his continuance have ruefully admitted—he has been staggering along on what seemed his last legs; yet these same last legs are to serve him until "the conclusion of the war." It is a bold pioposition; is there any visible leason why he should not make it good? He still commands a working majority in the Housethen let the heathen lage! As represented by Sir H. C.-B. and his following the heathen will do that verv well. In tad they aie laging all tlie time. The Liberals are a gieat historic party; they mo entitled to their turn at the 'helm of Slate, and their turn will come. Just nmi tliev rago and gnash their frcth pmtly at Mr Balfoin's unreasonable vitality and the impossibility of dispossessing him. but partly also because of a fear that when their turn comes they will not be able to use it. The ciew under Sir H. C.-B.'s ordeis" are divided, factious, mutinous. Oi—dismissing this niautime metaphor, which will grow unmanageable—there is a skeleton in the Liberal cupboard, a skeleton that audibly tattles its bones and insists on getting out. Mr John Mm ley has just affirmed himself the .same Home Ruler that lio wis uhen liish Secretnrr under Mr Gladstone. On the other hand T-tiul Robbery, who must sit in the next Jdbernl Cabinet alongside Mr John Morlev. has simultaneously protested that lie will not have Home Bule nt any price. But perhaps Home Rule may be shelved for a time—a counsel of infection to be "steadily kept in view"? JTaullv so; the Irish Biigade will have a word to say to that.

The position of the Irish parly was ,perlectly clear, rliej would support and keep in office m tho newt Parliament no Liberal p«rty no Liberal &o\ eminent, which, took tho bery view of Home Rule for Ireland —(Ciert chewing) And in a spirit of the .most complete friendliness to file Libera! partv ho pave tlem this woid o! warning that even if they suertded in the coming election in returning to the llouw of Commons with a majority which was nominally independent of Irish \otes they would find the government of liehnd a sheer impossibility, and it would be tho duty of the Iri'h party to make it so if it was attempted to ho rim 011 tho lines of Lord Rosebwy's dishonourable lecnntatirai of his pledgesS on Home Iliile.—(Clieers, and a Voice: "What about Asquith?"} This is Mr William Redmond at the Irish National Banquet in cclobration of St. Patrick's Dity. I admit that the Liberals may justly ba disgusted at Mr Balfour's unwillingness to die ; but, their ical trouble is domestic. It is the Home Rule skeleton in their own cupboiud.

In the London papers may be read—and it is not at all bad reading—an officii! lepoit on the Ventilation of th,e House of Commons. Here is a paragraph:

With a view to diminishing the liability of Iho sir of.the chamber to lie polluted by material continually being brought m upon members' boots, as a makeshift arrangement, a h'ay should be placed beneath t-hp grating of the centie. gangway, between the bar and the lobbv door iiudei the clock. An alternative plan, also nukefyit, won'.d be to place a movable metal plate over the top of the grating and' under the prerciil matting.

This leads mysterious. Is the whole personnel of the odd, by iSounfc of heads—lo deposit in a tray tlifi iniitelial brought in upon its boots? Other ventilating arrangements previously specified— fans, air filters, spraying apparatus—me intiicate but intelligible: tlils'tray for the diit on memfcij' boots I give up as hopeless. Another paragraph reads as though writ satiric:

11l view of the unsatisfactory leaults of the piosent conditions at the Chamber, some better means of cValirg with tlie paiticulate contamijiai.oi! to which tho air is continually subjscM duriritr debate? is desirable, and Di Gordon publDite that such better mtati9 should be sought diligently. ;

" Pniliniilnte is not'the printer's error it looks It is a term of liigli science. " L'.i) f 'uilalc coiitamjndtjonis contamination by atoms, or particles, aerial and gaseous. Which peril, it seems, threatens cliieflv "during debates," That, I think, we lhay Uiiderstand, The amount of carbonic acid and otHer maleficent gases disengaged during a debate on a watit-nf-confidence amendment must be considerable. Tho remedy, savs Dr Gordon, " should be sought diligently." Then apjftrently mere ventilation is no good. I should be disposed to rely on a rigid ten-minutes rule and tho closure.

Bishop Julius returns from a recent visit to London lis from a voyage of discovery. He did not take his stand cm a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's; that is fto some New Zealander of the future. But ho discovered the London '' smart set," rind in Christchutch last Sunday froze the blood' of a cathedral congregation by lurid pictures of the ruin, the moral rain, of English" sbcicty. At one time "obedient to religious control," English society haS now<'''bfolt<Sn loose,' 1 he says, and " the Commandments it obeys" may be summarised Ants': "Tliou shalt enjoy thyself.'' "Thou shalt raaka money." " Thou sha.lt commit adultery." "Thou sha.lt get into the divorce court; and when thou hast fulfilled all these thy duties "Thou °ha'!t commit suicide." ' 1

Well it may be so; the Bishop speaks from personal investigation and ire must bow, I suppose, to his superior knWtdi'e. M- the same time I take leave lo offer

j aim a little advice gratis, with a view to I correcting his historical perspective. The i novels of Fielding and of Smollett—did he | ever read them? Probably not. If, lie possesses a judicious friend who can be trusted not to give him away, the Bishop might perl)tigs through such an agency obtain a peiusal of those invaluable pictures of eighteenth century English life and manners. Then lei him descend to the period, less remote, when our own grandfathers were setting the pace. They liaVe been gibbeted for ever in Thackeray's "Four Georges." The period adorned by olir grandfathers was one of which, in Thackeray's phrase, " the dissoluteness was awful." Drinking, tjicing, debauchery, grossness, profanity—the everyday amusements of a gentleman— -went shameless and unrebuked. It is impossible to transfer to this chastr column Thackeray's examples, but a bishop might conceivably' inspect them unharmed. At what point in the history of the last two centuries would Bishop Jtilius place that obedience to religious control from which English society has now broken loose? When he has satisfied himself of his inability to name the date, peihaps he will _kindly explain how ahd why the literary education of the higher clergy is so grievously neglected.

Only a Jeremiah predestined to jeremiads could miss the tiuth of this matter. Wherever there is idleness nnd fulness of bread there will be vice, and by that rule English society of the '' smart" sort stands condemned a priori. But, however lj.ttl to-day, it was vastly worse a. century back. And if worse then, it must needs be better now. That is logic, I fmcy. I'or comparison take some of the lesser immoi alities -drunkenness, say, (by leave of the prohibitionists!) and profanity. A century back no man of fashion, from the Prince of Wales downwards, thought it shame to go drunk to bed. A man of fashion seldom went to bed sober. The clergy, fellows of colleges, university professms, might tipple without scandal; at Trinity College, Cambridge, there was a celebrated classic, Pot-son, who in his cups would "pour out Greek like a drunken Helot." Many are the stories of Porson, Ins clnonio intoxication, his muddy wit. A certain Gilbert Wakefield had written against Porson's edition of the "Hecuba" of Euiipides.

At a dinner patty at which a toast with an appropriate Shakespeare quotation wrs required fTtm each guest, Porson, before his turn catire, had dif appeared beneath the toblo and ifeis supposed to be insensible to what was going on. Not m>, however. Staggering up, In- gave his toast. "Gilbert Wakefield What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" Then once moie he subsided out of sight Coarse language, such as is now accounted piofane, was then a grace no gentleman could afford to be without. Kings and princes set the fashion. William IV, signing the accession oath in solemn assembly of his first Plivy Council, snapped out, "You've damned bad pens lieie." The Duke of Wellington (a better gentleman than his royal mnstcr) could hardly open his mouth in familiar talk without a big big D. Sometimes the same bad word lent unlawful emphasis to his speaking in Parliament; e.g.— ° " My lords, the noble and learned lord has <aid that I do not seom to understand this. bill. Well, m\ lords, I can only say that I rcwl ilio bill cnrehilly through, once In ice, and three times, .and if »ftcr that I do noc understand t.tm I>iU, whv thoti, tnv lords, I liiust bo a damned stupid fellow!"

These arc tiifles. So is the straw a tiifle that s-bows the direction of the rtinnirig stream.

All this is to say t"hat Bishop Julius, talking of Knglish society as broken loose from a religious control to which formerly it was obedient, must lave lost Jus bearings;—'e don't know where 'e are. It may lielp him to orient himself if I add it story or two about his own church, whereby and whetefioni lie may infer that his own church has changed for the better within living mommy. My stories are from the Diary of Homy Crabb Robinson, 1800-1867. Tliis well-known diarist was a barrister in large piactioe and a decent Christian, an intimate friend of the Lakers Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge ; indeed a Lake poet himself, except that lie wrote no poetry.

1816 'Scplentbor Ist.—Strolling into the old church at Manchestei, I heard a strange noise which I should elsewhere lmve mistaken for tho bleating of Going to tilio spot, a. distant nisle, I found two rows o{ women stand* ing in files, each with a babe in hor arms. The minister went down the line, sprinkling each infant as he went. I suppose tho eflicieucv of the sprmlilmg-—I mean the Tact that the water did touch—nas evidenced by a distinct squeal from cacli Words \vero muttered by the priest (mollis course, but one prayer served for all. This I thought to be a christening by wholesale; and I could not repicss the moveiont thought Hint, being in the metropolis of manufacturers, the aid of sleam Or roaohinwy might bo called in. How the cssence of religion is sacrificed to these formalities o! the Establishment I The other story is of a prosecution for iionattcndance at church I

1817 March 24th,—(At Bedford). Only one case was inteiesting. It was a Qui tam action by Dr Fioo, lector ot Sutton, against Sir Montagtie Burgojne, Bitrt., the senile of the parMi, to recover £20 a month for Sir Montague's not going to churcli. This was founded on an ancient and forgotten statute, unrepealed oy the Toleration Act. Said Serjeant Bhsset, Mho defended "Mj client would rather be convicted than thought to be a Dissenter. But he was able to prove that during many of the mouths there was no servioe in the church, it being shut up, and that the defendant \vss ill during the rest of the time; so that on the merits he had a verdict.

To complete this happy illustration of how the Chuich of file period schooled the .society of the period to obedience and religious control tfifie needs only one detail: " A little later Paison Free" was, after much litigation and great expense to the Bishop of London, deprived of his living for immorality?" Cms