Passing Notes.

Otago Witness, Issue 1506, 25 September 1880, Page 17

Passing Notes.

I havellaughed so irreverently, infra. (not infra dig. I hope) at the ex-Attorney General, that I fee) an honest pleasure in finding an opportunity of sticking a feather in his cap. Mr Stout has been mercilessly ridiculed for his radical notions on the " unearned increment " and the impolicy of making land private . property. There will be some compenaaj turn to him in the fact that the soundest political economists are now referring the troubles of the agricultural interest at Home as much to English landlordism as to the caprice of the seasons, and the last bad harvest. Thomas Carlyle is not a sound political economist, hence nobody ever attached much importance to hia opinions on the land question. The startling phenomenon is that Carlyle's most extreme utterances now seem to be echoed by the highest authorities in economical science- Nearly 40 years aeo Carlyle wrote in his " Paat and Present ": Men talk pf aelling land. . . . The notion °t ll c]1 £ s " f £ r CBrfcain bita of ***»*, the Land ?•,. ™Id Or « ator is a ridiculous impoasibihty. We buy what i 8i 8 saleable of it ; nothing more was ever buyable. Who can, or could, sell it to us ? Properly speaking, the land belongs to these two: To the Almighty God i and to all His Children of Men that have era worked well on it, or that shall ever work well on it. No generation of men can, or could, with never such solemnity and effort, sell land on any other prinoiple ; it ia not the property of any generation, we Bay, bat that of all tha past generations that have worked on it, and of all the f uture ones that shall work on it. By the side of this visionary talk IpnJ without comment some specimens of the language which Professor Thorold Rogers of the London University adopts on the English land question. The English system, he says^is " the absurdest system of land tenure ever heard of at all " a system which is "beginning to break down ,an artificial monopoly," and the principal cause why the labouring classes are depressed and demoralised." As to projects of a protection policy ia the interest of landlords— ■n TI ?5 re f?' an 4 fchere oan be » no reason beyond illegitimate and selfish power, to be alleged in favonr of keeping certain people's income up bw taking something away from everybody else* income. It is true that there are people who make the claim, but there are |no claims too impudent for some men's cynicism. As to Irish affairs the following is aa neat as it is outspoken : Some timeagoan I«sh landowner complained to me that his class had been stigmatised aa vermin by some agrarian orator. I COu ld £.i?v? i y an i d ÜBefnlneß8 ' *»* that this had unluckily been also very much an accurate del finition of an Irish landowner. If this represents the political economy o! the future, we need not doubt Mtf Kogera assertion that changes are coming, and that the changes will be thorough Th«r« M tlyi to be said for totejn^rj

theorists, like Mr Stout, who assert principles out of harmony with the practise, beliefs, and likings of the actual world — if their principles are sound they are bound to be vindicated in the end. The world, in the long run will be found not workable on any other principles. The drift of things in England is towards a social revolution. When political economists begin to describe landlords as " vermin" the day can't be far distant when the peopl& will begin to ask why they shouldn't hunt the vermin down.

. The success of the Australian cricketers was getting monotonous. After the first few matches I imagine most people lost interest in their doings until fortune changed, and the Australians began to experience the benefits of adversity. As long as they remained theEver- Victorious Army it was impossible to believe that they; had measured themselves against the real strength of English cricket. They have certainly done that at laßt, and with a result of which we are all proud. Nothing will set the reputation of the Australian team bo high as the fight they made against theAU England Eleven. That defeat is more than all their victories. Their big bowler, Spofforth, was absent, and. luck — always one of the dii majores on the cricket field — was clearly against them. The Home team, winning the toss,, went in to a lively wicket, and made an enormous soore. Their innings over, rain fell, and the Australians went in to a dead wicket and inevitable small scoring. The flukey nature of even the beat cricket was well illustrated in this match. Murdoch, the best Australian bat, went out 1 in his first innings for a duck. Grace, the English champion, on the other hand, made the mammoth pile of 152. But, in his second innings, Murdoch actually topped his rival's score, making 153, the biggeßt figure of the match. It is the element of chance in cricket which helps to give the game its special fascination. The strongest player is not stronger than fate, and the weakest, by the help of that irrational disposer of cricket chances, may, on occasion, show prodigies. No one disputes that the Australians fought a losing battle with wonderful pluck and capacity, and that, though they could not command success, they deserved it, Spofforth's absence, though a great loss to the Australians, was not entirely a gain t* ; the other side. It detracted from the significance of the English victory. Had Spofforth played, the Australians might have been beaten all the same ; as be didn't play, it will always be possible foSr us to believe that with his help they would have won. And so Lord Harris condescends tobury the hatchet and admit us under-bred colonials -cricketers and others— to a general amnesty ! Very gracious of his Lordship ! We shall now be able to hold up our heads again. Remembering, however, that I saw Lord Harris on the M.C.O. ground Bmash a bat td little bits in his aristocratic rage on being caught out by Blackham at a critical stage of his game, I don't, for my part, attach so much significance to his Lordetiip's judgment on the proprieties either of the field or of the drawing room. English calm is not the forte of this English lordling, and in social decorum, as well as in the handling of the willow, some of the Australian boys who[played against him might have taught him a lesson.

;The worst of mechanical contrivances isihat they have got no judgment. They do the most wonderful things, but not uufrequently at the wrong times, and in the most unexpected and eccentric ways. The telephones in New York are said, for instance, every now and then to get their wires in contact, and when in that condition to mix up the messages in the most wonderful way, to the extreme perplexity ' of the draper who gets an order for salt fish, and the fishmonger who is objurgated about the fit of that last ball dress. Our fire annunciators are a case in point. Besides the ever active efforts of larrikins, they are constantly set in motion by nervous folks when only a chimney is on fire, and then when there is really a fire of some consequence, the thing goes wrong and Bends the brigade off to a ward distant from the actual locality of the fire. The condition of the Fire Brigade must begetting very like the rooster who was taken in a yacht to the arctic regions where the sun no sooner sets but it rises again. He kept himself hard at it for a length of time "heralding the approach of dawn," but as it was never anything else but either drum or full day he found bis powers quite unequal to the task. He kept incessantly at it for a week, and then dropped overboard and quietly drowned himself. In such a chronic state of disturbance must our firemen be. It is " wolf, wolf "so often that we need not be surprised if some day they don't turn out when there is a real fire. I heartily wish, at all events that some tocsin could be invented warranted only to, reach the fine ears of firemen, and not to disturb the slumbers of peaceful citizens like myself. If twenty thousand citizens are to be waked up by the clang of the fire bells every time a chimney catches fire, or a larrikin touches an annunciator, they will be disposed to say with Dryden — Withdraw thy action and depart in peace, The remedy !• worse than the disease— and prefer taking tha chance of being burnt in their beds. Among the strange inconsistencies of human nature is the patience with which a whole City will submit to worries like this for the sake of wfaty, while they calmly ignore the ternfio prospect of being blown to atoms by tie explosion of the powder magaaine, 9&B may quietly smoke their pipes at the

tloor and boys put burning brands down pipes leading into the magazine, and we don't bother our heads about it ; but a Chimney on fire, that is different. For my part, after crying in vain "silence that dreadful bell," I am willing to compound at the price of a little less safety for a little more sleep. If we are to have annunciators, at least let us have properly educated and well-behaved annunciators.

i Robert Stout, my astute and excellent friend, when next you write to the papers that a "statement" of mine "is not true," kindly certify yourself beforehand that you know exactly what the statement j» that you impugn. Here are your words : t

The statement made by the -writer of Passing Notes that the Freethought Association i runs the Wilmofc lectures, is not true. And here are mine : j I suppose it ia the Freethought Association frho "run" the Wilmot lectures. i Now, Robert speaking as an^old dominie, and on your allegiance to Lindley Murray and Morell, tell the Court what the " statement" in that last sentence is. Obviously, the statement is, that I supposed something. And is that statement f not true," air? Do you presume to know that I didn't suppose, when I affirm that I did f No doubt what you want to aay is, that my supposition is incorrect ; in saying that my " statement " is " not true," you deny that I make a supposition at all. Robert ! Robert !— as your Countryman Jeffrey long ago remarked in the Edinburgh Review — This will never do ! Something or other of late haß been taking the fine edge off your intellect. Whether it is law, or Freepought, or Local Option, or too assiduous perusing of the Echo newspaper that has obfuscated your naturally clear perceptions, I don't know ; but you are getting as foggy as a German metaphysician, and quote as loosely as any popular preacher. It distresses me to find you fumbling a business so simple as that of showing up my rashness in this matter. You see, what you ought to have Baid was : This Passing Note man " supposes " —does he ! Well, his supposing ia all wrong ! What right has he to " suppose " to other people's detriment at all,— the brainless idiot ! (sarcastically, d'ye twig 1) p and you'd 'a' had me. As it is, my dear Robert, you set out to perpetrate a murder, and have merely succeeded in icommitting suicide. In my supposition about the management of the Wilmot lectures I was, ao doubt, entirely in the yrong, and yet you couldn't communicate Jhatpleasing intelligence to the public without getting wrong and wronger yourself ! You have muddled the thing so ingeniously that the "statement" which is f ' not true " is in your own sentence, and not in mine I Robert Stout, my poor friend J how could you get yourself into such a fearful hole as this !

As for Mr W. M. Bolt, the other Freethought critic whose gentle dulnesa I have provoked, his letter exhibits the same conscientious muddling that delights one so much in Mr Stout's. In my Passing Note of last week, " the assertion is made," says he, " that Mr Bright was not a very reputable lecturer." Characteristically wrong from the outset ! This is evidently a gentleman who cannot open his mouth without putting his foot in it. The words quoted are not my words ; but letthatpass. None of these Freethoughters seem able to quote correctly. What I said was that Mr Bright " was not the most reputable of lecturers"— a very moderate statement, by which I am prepared to stand. Mr Bright was, I don't doubt, an honest and capable man, but smce his lectures held up to unmeasured ridicule what most people count sacred, I take leave to think and say that he waa not the most reputable of lecturers. Let Mr Bolt affirm the contrary, and try how it sounds. But "it is exceedingly reprehensible," moralises Mr 8., "to depreciate the character of an absent man by a slovenly made of expression." True O most sapient Bolt! In depreciating a man s character, whether he is absent or present, a slovenly mode of expression is decidedly reprehensible. When you slander anybody, use the neatest and most precise expressions atyour command. I always do, myself. But having laid down this admirable rule for accuracy in evil-speaking, why do you immediately transgress it, and depreciate my character in some of the most slovenly expressions that ever suffering innocent was tortured by ? You say —

It 13 sincerely to be regretted that differences (sic) of opinion or the exigency of a reputation for wit Bhould make such a heavy draw on the virtues of Truth and Charity as contained in the sentence quoted.

Now ponder this, O Bolt. What you mean is that my sentence (which you misquoted) was false and uncharitable. What you say is that it "contains" a "heavy draw on the virtues of Truth and Charity J" I wouldn't have served you like that. / think your sentence muddled and unintelligible, but it would never occur to me to say that it "contained a draw " upon the virtues of Clearness and Simplicity. How can a sentence contain a draw upon a virtue 1 After you have thus openly taken away my character by slovenly expressions, I think little of your cruel insinuation that I am " entering the fatal vortex of orthodoxy." I can truth* fully say that 1 was never accused of orthodoxy before. Orthodoxy has a "vortex" it seems — a "fatal vortex," and I am entering it — am already spin* mug round and round, perhaps, in the devouring maelstrom Mr JBrunton,

and the First Church, and Dr Copland, and the Christian Young Men .' The Freethought Association are probably not much given that way, or 1 might ask them to remember me in their prayers !

In attributing " gentle duiness " to Messrs Stout and Bolt, I ought to have remembered that — on the very competent authority of the Dunciad —

Gentle dulness ever loves a joke,

— whereas, Messrs Stout and Bolt' don't love a joke. Like the "fearles3 and independent " Echo, these gentlemen, I should say, are constitutionally incapable of understanding a joke. Mr Stout, professing to explain wherein the "humour " of Passing Notes " consists," is a sad example of human presumption, and resembles a sansculotte Highlandman explaining the convenience of breeches. When the humour and the breeches are not what Mr Bolt profoundly calls " facts of consciousness," how can they be explained ? The poor little Echo, having incautiously swallowed two of my jokes, with the result of a laborious digestion (three weeks, and not over yet), has become j painfully exercised in what, for want of a better term, I must call its " mind," on the subject of my moral character. It begins to question whether the jokes were jokes at all, and is inclined to look upon me as an impostor. As the thing is running on bo long, in the interests of humanity I feel bound to come to the rescue. I proceed, therefore, to explain those jokes. First, the tremendous witticism, "Where is Zealand? nobody knows ; probably in Holland," was a refined and recondite allusion to the fact that the navigator who discovered and named these islands was a Dutchman. I don't expect the Echo to see the point at once, but it will come — probably about this day week. Then the lines about Father William standing on his head, which I ascribed to Tennyson, and which the Echo insisted, and insists again last week, were Bob Sou they 'b — referring me to the book in the Athenaeum — those lines, I beg to state, were a parody. Whilst the sub-editor looks up " parody " in his Webßter, letter P, I will make the thing so plain by an illustration that even the editor himself will see it at once. Suppose I quote — How doth the little busy bee Delight to bark and bite, And gather honey all the day To scoff it up at night— —ascribing the lines, say, to Eobert Browning, and you were to answer that the author was not Browning, but Dr Watts, whose pious productions you had learned and loved in the delightful days of your innocent infancy, before you became a Freethinker and an Echo — suppose you spake thusly, and offered to fetch me the book ; — why what a little donkey you'd be, wouldn't you ? Ponder this | parable, my prattler, and you'll come out all right. " Parody " and " parable "— two p's— don't forget ; you'll see it by-and-by. In jokeries, as the poet saith in "Pinafore," some things are not what they seem. Pyramus is not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver ; lion is not lion, but Snug the joiner ; Tennyson is not Tennyson, but Lewis Carrol the parodist ; and "Civis," the gifted writer of Passing Notes, is not " Civis," but — Hang it, there's that darned boy for "copy' 3 again ! Cms.