Passing Notes.

Otago Witness, Issue 1503, 4 September 1880, Page 17

Pa ssing Notes.

The stage miracleof the Palace of Truth, i or something like it, has been exhibited i in the House this week. Hon. members have been constrained to drop affectations and say about each other exactly what they thought. Thus ifc comes about that Sir George Grey, who, at the beginning of the session was gushing over the incorruptibility of his life-long political opponent Mr Moorhouse, and wanting to create an order of nobility for the reward of so rare a virtue, has now taunted him with his unholy hankerings after Murimoti land, while Mr M. has responded in a torrent of invective in which he speaks of "the rotten ascendency of Sir George Grey and his parasites !" Next, Mr Sheehan is accused by Sir George of shady land transactions at Patetere, and retorts that his friend and quondam leader has made a treacherous use of information gained in confidence. So goes to wreck a friendship which seemed modelled on that of Mentor and Telemachus. They stand aloof, the scars remaining,— Like cliff which has been rent asunder ; A dreary sea now flows between, Telemachus will heed the voice of his Mentor never again. Buc the most interesting display of candour was when, during a protracted sitting, between four I and five in the morning, hon. members began to accuse each other of being — not drunk, the word is not Parliamentary — but of being " not in a fit state to carry on the business." Nothing could be more correct. The House generally was " not in a fit state ;" two or three hon. members were in a state eminently unfit, and proceeded to prove it by forthwith getting up the most remarkable row of the session. I see that Sir William Fox proposes to close Bellamy's, and allow no further sales of intoxicating liquors in or near Parliament House. But what would you have ? You pay a Colonial parliamenteer a couple of notes a day to leave his home I and the wife of his bosom, and go up to [ Wellington to sit up all night for his ! country's good. How on earth is he to doit without whisky? Even a man of cast-iron mould like Sir William Fox has to be *'kept up" by something, and as [Dizzy said of Gladstone, becomes " in- | toxicated with the exuberance of his own I verbosity." The Colonial parliamenteer as a rule is a seasoned vessel, and carries his liquor well. It is only at the fag-end of the session, and when kept sitting till four or five in the morning, that he sotne- ! times reaches the condition known as I'• not in a fit state." Even then he is "fit" enough for a row, and can make it hot for any hectoring moralist or oppresi sive Chairman of Committees who interferes with him. The situation at the close of the Pyke and Seddon scene the other morning may be "moralised "ma n old story of a couple of lines .-—Parish Clergyman (meeting an intoxicated villager) : " Drunk as usual, William !" William : " Deed, sir, so am I." Collapse of clergyman.

If Mr Vincent Pyke thinks he got the worst of it in this "extraordinary scene," as the papers call it, I am mistaken in Mr Vincent Pyke. He is quite aware that the little farce he improvised has given the country an hour's genuine amusement, and he possesses, no doubt, the approving conscience of a man who has increased the sum of human happiness. Lf course it will be said that Parliamentary " scenes " are an expensive form of amusement. lam nofc referring to the mouey expense, though it is quite true that the House " sits " at a cosfc to the country of £500 a day, and addles most of its eggs at that. Only about one Bill in every five introduced this session has chipped the shell, certainly a poor result of four month's strenuous incubation. But it isn't the co3t in money and time that grieves the enlightened patriot when lie sees a Legislative Chamber indulging in such diversions as those introduced by Messrs Pyke and Company this week. It is the sacrifice of Dignity (with, a bigD). I confess I don't °tak c this severe view of the matter. The House had very little dignity to lo3e, any commodity of that kind it may once have possessed having been sacrificed earlier in the Session. It is a remarkable fact, too, and one which all history illustrates, that respscfc for law doesn't in the least depend upon respect for the character of the law makers. Under Louia XIV, the Orleans Regency, and Louis XV, the morals and habits of the French Court would have put to sbamo the stye of Circe, and were ceaselessly lashed by epigram and satire. Yet absolute power in Franco was then at its greatest, ancl the submission of the '

people complete. The nation made the excuse for the beastly practises of its rulers which honest Pepys made in like circumstances for Charles II an d the Duke of York. After mentioning that. Lady Castlemaine was iv such-and-such a"^ condition, and Lady Chesterfield ditto the loyal chronicler adds — "At all which I am sorry ; but it is the effect of idlenesse, and having nothing else to employ their great spirits upon." It is power that people reverence in their law-makers, not character. Whilst the House in Wellington can flay us with taxation, or borrow ' new millions from the accommodating British capitalist ; whilst it can create Governments, bestow billets, and make political railways, it will continue a most worshipful assembly, though its members' abandon the last rag of personal decency, and begin to go about — as some of them already seem inclined to do — naked and not ashamed.

" Wanted, a policy," may just now be a fit announcement on the part of New Zealand politicians. Things in the political world are all either "at sixes or at sevens ;" the programme of the Liberal party has been nearly filled by their sue-, cessors, and we seem to want a new departure. In Victoria things are not much better. " Reform " has become a wearisome topic to the people, and they wanfc something new. There ia a remarkable similarity in one respect in the situation in both colonies ; in both cases the Liberal Government managed to run their respective colonies into fearful financial' straits, and forced the sordid question of money into the foreground. In New Zealand the unpopular work of retrenchment is in the hands of the party which did not incur the expenditure and iliabilities ; in Victoria, on the other hand, the. chief culprit, Mr Berry, has to undertake it himself. But in both colonies retrenchment stops the way ; everything has to give way to the pressing claims of tha "almighty dollar." This, however, cannot last ; the age is, like Lady Macbeth—

" troubled with thick coming fancies, That keep her from her rest." Political "isms" of all sorts are stalking abroad. The Scotsman, during the late elections at Home, enumerated some of these that were then in full cry, amonc which were Publicanism, Home Ruleisuf, Agriculturalism, Permissive Bill-ism, and Rights of Women-ism. Mr Gladstone enumerated no leas than thirty one subjects "in which our social and political life could be improved, and the welfare of the people advanced. " The only two subjects now strongly ranged against each other in this Colony are on the one side Beer, and on the other Local Option. Beer threatens to be terrible. It is organising, it is to contest the next elections : for the rights of Beer have been assailed. But the same thing was lately said at Home, and the result was that Beer was ignominiously and totally defeated. That Beer should be eventually triumphant here "stands not within the prospect of belief," and a temporary success on the part of the brewers and publicans would only hasten on the local option cry and all its necessary consequences. But I should, I confess, like to see some broader issues before the people. We are only just now setting our house ia order, by squaring accounts and settling with the natives ; what is to be the Liberal policy of the future ? Is it again to be ' ' Grey or no Grey V I think the worthy knight's best friends have given him up as a party leader. If I may venture a prediction, the coming man is Stout, and he at least is a man of ideas. Local Option, Local Industries, Womens 1 Rights, Land for the People and People for the Land, will all find in him an advocate, and when he comes to the front Beer must henceforth hide its "diminished head." One cannot take one's stand upon Beer.

Home Rule is giving the Gladstone Government many a mauvais quart d'heure. There is something peculiarly Irish in the method pursued to attain it. "Home ßule," say its advocates, "does not mean dismemberment of the Empire or anything at all inimical to British interests." The means taken to attain it however, are the shooting of landlords' the refusal to pay rents, and a general reign of terrorism. Sixty Home Rulers were elected at the late elections as against 51 in the present Parliament, but they do not hold the balance of power, nevertheless, as the Conservatives thought tbey probably would. Sir Stafford Northcote told, during the electious, the followinggoodstory in illustration of the position those uncomfortable Home Rulers would probably occupy in relation to the Liberal party. "I remember being told how Mr Buck having brought up a number of Conservative voters to Bideford, went down to their lodgings to see whether they were comfortable, and when he went up into one, room he found three gentlemen who were in a state of some difficulty. The cauae of their difficulty was this ': there was only one bed ; but they did not mind that. What they did mind was t'aat the gentleman who, it was intended should sleep iv the middle had got on his top-boots and spurs and refusul to take them off. Well Mr Buck, I believe, settled the difficulty as well as h could by persuading the other two gentlemen to get ia under the clothes and to leave the gentleman with the top-boots and spur 3to lie outside the counterpane. It strikes mo that is something like the position in which the Liberal parry will iind themselves when they m«<it together with the old Whig* on the one aide and the advanced Liberals on the other, and the Home Rulers in top-boots and spurs in

the middle. I have not the least doubt they will propose to the Home Rulers to lie outside the clothes, but I don't know whether these gentlemen, if they 'think they have got the best of it, will always consent to be out in the cold in that way." However, the man in top-boots and spurs lias to lie out in the cold for the present. What the Irish would do with Home Rule if they got it is a matter for puzzled conjecture. The probability is they would quarrel among themselves like the Kilkenny cats, and the best way to cure them of Borne Rule would probably be to let them have it for a time. Even among the Home Rulers there are two or three different parties — Parnell-ites and anti-Par-nell-ites — though they all join together to worry the Government when Irish business is od. The party may tell the English people they desire only their good, bat while they stand with a pistol at our heads and finally put their hands in our pockets, Englishmen may be excused if they a little distrust such professions. It is "Gentlemen, I come for your good, for all your goods." But what is to be done with the Irish people passes comprehension. If they won't pay any rent and won't be turned out of their buildings, what in the name of goodness can be made of them ? We are a free people, and I sympathise with the objections of the gentleman to taking off his top-boots and spurs, but it is intolerable that he should be a bedfellow.

I recommended last week our overworked clergy to spare themselves (and us) the weekly sermon-trouble by substituting, occasionally at least, readings from standard orators and divines. The advice was good, and — as it cost me nothing— l gave it freely. This week I have no objection to give them some more. It shall never be said that the Otago pulpit came to grief for the want of a little friendly advice and paternal guidance from the secular Press. The single bint that I am going to give in this paragraph is itself worth more (to any clergyman) than the price of the paper. It is this: Talk to the people in the vernacular. The vernacular, as you are doubtless aware, was, amongst the Romans who gave us the word, the household tongue — the language of the verna, or home-born slave. When you do preach your own sermons — for, being conservative by nature and education, you doubtless will, spite of my excellent advice grati« last week— preach in the household tongue. It is not merely that it is a tongue " understanded of the people." That is one great merit it has, no doubt, but it has a greater. The home speech of the people is the most vivid, vigorous, picturesque, ear-compelling, heart-per-suading dialect that a public speaker can employ. The pulpit, I should fancy, would especially gain by its use, for this reason, if for no other, that tb.9 pulpit seems in danger of perishing of its own dignity. If preachers understood their vocation they would drop the royal and editorial "we," avoid such sacred locutionsjas " in our midst" and " those by whom we are surrounded," and launch themselves boldly out into the broad current of the popular speech. It is the strain to talk in book style, I should say, which makes the average pulpiteer such a galvanic marionette. He is liable to the most woeful misadventures, like the metathesis of " mess of pottage" into "pot of message," or of " Hans and "Vandals" into "Vans and Hundels." The young cricketing parson who closed the Bible with "Here endeth the first innings," was the victim of another kind of preoccupation, but his calamity may be quoted to illustrate the general law that preoccupation of mind is the bane of the public speaker. The effort to talk like a book means for nine men out of ten an absolutely fatal preoccupation of mind.

Some one has sent me a copy of an English periodical called The Christian, I suppose as a specimen of the curiosities of religious literature. What sect or denomination The Christian represents I haven't been able to make out, but its subscribers, as judged by their advertisements, would seem to be a decidedly "peculiar people." A perusal of The Christian's list of "Wanted's" makes credible tome what Ihave always thought half -mythical, namely, Sydney Smith's specimens of religious advertisement given in bis cruel Edinburgh Review article on "Methodism." Henceforth the "religious hoy" which, "by the divine permission," sailed weekly from London to Margate, and the young man out of place *' who has brewed in a serious family" will be included in the articles of my literary belief. Here are a few similar specimens cut from The Christian :—: — A] URSE.— Wanted, a Christian Youn-j Woman (a be- *-* licver) as Nurse to an 'infant and three other children. i\o under-nurse. The nursemaid cleans and assists in nursery. Wages, £20, and all found except beer One may infer fromjthe terms of this advertisement that a young woman may be " a Christian " yet not "a believer." The mention of "beer," which beverage it seems the young believer is to find for herself, suggests, when coupled with the advertisement of the young man who had " brewed in a serious family," some curious speculations respecting the social habits prevailing in theae unworldly circles. The distinction between "believers" and mere " Christians " is recognised in several advertisements. Thus we have a "school for the Sons of Believers," and another in which " Conversion to God, where not provio UE ly experienced, and building up in tiie truth of those who believe are primary objects " The terms "converted" or "Christian" occur in almost every advertisement. A

boy, 16, " who has been converted six months," wants a place as groom ; a young woman, who offers her services as domestic servant, is " subject to rheumatism," "has been converted, but has not yet attained to assurance." An " upper housemaid," who "must be converted, and able to take charge of children's wardrobe," is wanted for Tasmania ; and a '• truly converted " governess is required for the same colony. The following is mysterious : — A BIBLEWOMAN wanted. One desiring to live def*- pendently in the power of the Spirit, whilst seeking: to win souls.— D. P., Mr Chown, 4 Queen's terrace Kilburn. Is this to be read as equivalent to "no salary 1" Many advertisers offer to let "apartments," but always and only to "Christian" tenants. There are also " sea- side lodgings suitable for Christians," and others for " persons of Christian principles." In some cases it is held out as an inducement that the " apartments " are " within ten minutes of "—not the post-office, but " an Evangelical ministry !" Fancy the exacting nature of a man's spiritual appetites who requires to live within ten minutes of an Evangelical ministry ! A gentleman at Brosely, Shropshire, after enumerating "kitchen, pump, cellar, front and back entrance," and other advantages of a "comfortable small house to let," concludes as follows :

PREFERENCE to one meeting for worship simply on ground of Christian Brotherhood, and would sympathise with Bethesda Bristol Liberty. Scope for evangelising and edifying ministrations. I haven't space for farther examples of the excellent reading to be found in the advertising columns of The Christian, but must here take my leave of these good people. Doubtless they are good people, and whatever it may be about them that makes them absurd it isn't their goodness. But it is curious that so many good people should be absolutely destitute of a sense of the ludicrous. The subscribers to The Christian would seem to be a multitude of unfortunates to whom nature in one of her cruelest moods has denied the faculty of humour.