WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 1981, 11 February 1892, Page 25

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY.

THE WEEK.

(THURSDAY,, FEBRUARY 11,1802.)

" Nunquam aliud nalurs, aliud saplentladixH."— Jvvcif it " Good uatiire and good bcuso must ever join."— Pur*. It is satisfactory to note that the banquet to his Excellency the Governor Farewell, by the citizens of Dunedin on Saturday night was in every way success!: nl. IE tbe'dinner itself was not first- rate it was at any rate good enough for all but the most fastidious. After al', the success of an entertainment of the kind does not depend upon what there miy be to eat and drink, but rather upon the novelty, the satisfaction of the gregarious instinct in man, and the absence of those jarring incidents that so often occur when they are most out of place. The speeche3 on ,the whole were excellent in tone, and not (oolong; indeed the gathering broke up at an hour that constitutes it a sort of model for others,— as at Balclutha for instance. His Excsllency made an excellent speech, evidently most carefully prepared, and delivered— as Lord Onslow can deliver speeches— with great clearness and accuracy. The tributes paid by the various speakers to his Excellency, the acknowledgements of bis many sterling and genial qualities, were not as a rule overdone — a fact which was perhaps as much due to the sincerity with which they were uttered as to anything else. It is when speaking mere formalities that people fall into platitudes and allow platitudes to merge into exaggerations. There can be no doubt, as the Otago Daily Times puts it, that Lord Onslow during his term of Governorship has "striven as earnestly as any man could to maintain the dignity of the Empire, to promote the welfare of the colony, and to make himself pleasantly and easily agreeable to all, whether in official or social life, with whom he has come in contact."

We very heartily wish his Excellency and the Countess of Onslow a safe and pleasant journey Home ; and we trust for the colony's sake that we may never miss him.

Mr "Tom" Mackenzie (the clan is so numerously represented in Baldutha the House that its members Again. are all becoming familiarly known to the people by their Christian names) advanced pretty nearly to tbe front rank of pditicians during the session of 1891. Hia speech on tho second reading of the Land and iDcome Tax Assessment Bill was one of the very best of the entire session, and raised him at once to a level as a financial critic which we had not previously expected to see him occupy. It is gratifying to find from his speech at Balclutha the other day that his Parliamentary achievements of last year were not a mere flash in the pan. He has more than justified tbe reputation he then won, and henceforth must be reckoned with by those whom he opposes in politics as an incisive, powerful, and ever- courteous antagonist, and relied on by those with whom he works as a fearless exponent of soundness and honesty in politics. He must also be pronounced to to have come out in an admirable light as regards his treatment of the unmannerly and evidently pre-orgamsed, interruptions of cue or two Ministerial claqueurs, who strove thoif best all through to intrude certain pointless rudenesses into the thread of his discourse. Mr Mackenzie fully confirms the truth of the Hon Mr Stevens' statements with regard to the conference between tbe two Houses ou r ,he Land Bill. It is once more apparent that

the real deadlock with the Legislative Council took place over the determination of that body not to allow the abolition of the right of ultimate purchase in the case of perpetual leases. Everything else was practically settled by the method of compromise ; but it had been determined to pick a quairel with the Council in order to fiud a plausible ex-cu.-e for fresh appointments, and the quarrel was picked on the purchasing clause. Supposing that the mo6t mischievous elements in the bill had already been suitably modified and the measure made workable by the compromises alluded to, it seems to \\t to have been hardly worth the while of the Council to have made a cardinal point of refusing to permit the abolition of the purchasing clause. We differ from Mr Mackenzie here, not as regards the principle itself (in which his judgment wiil commend itself to nine pettlers out of teD), but as to the vital importance of insisting on the principle being continuously maintained in the present bill at all hazard 3; for, as we have frequently taken occasion to point out, it does not really matter a straw in the end whether the bill of 1891 or 1892 gives perpetual lessees the right of purchase. If these do not, some future act inevitably will The absurdity and intolerable injustice of refusing a poor farmer the ownership of his farm when surrounded by smiling homesteads which his neighbour* proudly call their own, of making him subject for all his life and the life of his descendants to a system of official landlordism while those next door to him can say, " These are our homes, our own, our inalienable possessions," will never persist, if all the Ballances and M'Kenzies jin Christendom combined to say the opposite. If one particular class of small settlers lose their freehold right 3 this year, they will get those rights agiin when they are strong enough as sun ly as the sun will rise to-morrow.

The Ministers continue, it is true, to shuffle over this matter of land nationalisation as they always have — denying it one day to a country audience, and avowing and glorifying it the next to a town one, — but though Mr Mackenzie made an excellent point off theso weakly vacillations, we do not think, for the reasons named, that they matter so very much after all. TLe sensible way in which he summed up the nationalisation fad generally was, however, in the best style of trenchant attack.

Mr Mackenzie's very able analysis of the new taxation doe 3 not admit Realities of of being usefully sumTaxation and marised, but will repay Finnncc. careful study as it stands in the full report we published hut week. Besides contending, as we have always contended, that it is " the first step to place the whole tax eventually upon the land," he adds his voice, we note, to those of all the most competent critics in predicting that the land tax, with all its graduations, will net, even with the help of the income tax, bring in anything like the revenue required to make both ends meet. He might have added that the cost of the change of system will be enormous, and will be practically worse than wasted, while scores of new " billets " are beingmanufactured under the Land and Income Tax Act, and filled in a way about which perhaps the less said the better.

When it is remembered that, as Mr Mackenzie very properly points out, this loss of revenue results from largely releasing from taxation men who are really wealthy, but whose wealth happens to be in other forms than acre, the bungling that is being committed seems really inexcusable. As an evidence of this fact Mr Mackenzie commits himself to the accuracy of figures which we confess astonish us, and which he will assuredly be called upon to make good. "There are," he say?, "30 people in New Zealand holding property over L 200.000 [each], and do you know how many hold it in land ? Only seven out of the 30— the others hold property not in land. There are 68 men holdirjg property not in land to the value of over L 10.000,000, and there are 91 people in New Zealand who do not own land and have property to the extent of L 30,000,000." No graduated tax on this kind of wealth ; but on the other hand if a man happens to own land instead of any other form of wealth, and if his land is mortgaged for its full value, he has to pay tax as though he were ricb, when practically he has not a penny in the world. The almost ludicrous anomalies of the new system, however, by which men who have borne the heat and burden of the day, and are still poor, are crushed into ruin by enormous taxation, while men with 50 times their wealth are let off even a large part of the taxation they paid under the property tax, can only be really appreciated by people who examine the matter honestly, and who are not content with merely finding out where the popular fancy of the moment lies, and truckling to it unreservedly as the one only sufficient canon of wisdom. Mr Mackenzie gave one or two striking instances which he might, had he wished to go to extremes, have made more striking still. But perhaps tbe most effective part of his speech—certainly that part which will most surprise and gratify his friends— was bis really terrific exposure of Ministerial incompetency in finance. It will make financial jugglery quite a risky trade if Mr Mackenzie's example in this respect is largely followed in the Opposition ranks ; though after all a Treasurer can nearly always confound a critic by judicious j ambling of a heap of new figures hot from the Treasury, and a triumphant peroration calculated to largely impress those (the great majority) who either don'tread thefigures or can't make head or tail of them if they do. This, we may venture to predict, will be Mr Ballance's line in reply to the membei for Balclutha. The worst of it is that no party recriminations will alter tbe fact now made so clear, that the Government have made ducks and drakes with the money, that they are deliberately disorganising the revenue in order to pander to ignorant fads, and that nothing seems to be able to make them care so long as they can " take out " their salaries and allowances in electioneeriDg tours.

New Zealand is so far fortunate in having been at various times visited

Our by men more or less known Latest Visitor, to the world at large, someof whom, aa for instance the late Mr Proctor, the astronomer, might be called eminent. But in the advent of H. M.

Stanley we have ha<l an enlirtly new ex* perienoe— we have seen, in one particular walk in life, the greatest man who has ever trodden it. For we do not hesitate to say that Mr Stanley is not only the greatest traveller of hi 3 day, but absolutely the greatest the world has yet produced^ Small wonder then that the people of Dunedin flocked to see and hear him— more eager indeed to see than to hear him. For it was within the power of most of us to make our* selves acquainted with the chief incidents of his great journeys. But the man himself I— the man who was presumptuously ordered to find the great Livingstone, buried as everyone thought him beyond the reach of aid in the dark unknown land ; the man who as presumptuously started, and ultimately astonished the world by the success of his quest ! The man who let light into the darkest continent, and permanently fixed the chief features of a map that had been curiously shifting for 2000 years 1 Many of those who read this note will remember the map of Africa of their youth, when they were compelled painfully to point out the Mountains of the Moon stretching away — where no mountains existed — pretty nearly from one end of the continent to the other ; with the historic Nile too, vaiuly endeavouring to find its own source in various directions, and finally dying away in despair of so doing. The great Congo also, what a rap over the knuckles our youth would have received had he, with a flash of the inspiration of truth, traced the majestic river backwards from west to east and made it then swoop downwards so as to take it 3 source from the land ot the unknown Mashona, or the country of the non-existent Boer. And the man who solved all these puzzles, and rescued the beetle-hunting Emm from his dread but not to him unpleasant captivity in the heart of Equatoria — the roan himself standing en the platform of the Garrison Hall, Dunedin 1 Is it any wonder we flocked to see him? It would have been an odd thing, and little to our credit, had we not. And who would believe, had he but the chance to doubt, that the little man in full evening dresp, with florid, rather soft-looking face, who walked as if he were troubled with corns and would lequire a cab if his walk extended for more than a mile or so;— who would believe that to be the man who had performed such prodigious feats ; who had travelled through death, disaster, and disease ; who had borne such unheard of toils and achieved such, unexampled success ? It was in truth difficult to realise the fact that Stanley himself was before us.

That the lectures were intensely interesting it is needless for us to say, A Voice, though the chief point of innn<l terest was the man himself. Something A clear, good sonorous voice, More. perfectly distinct throughout the large ball ; a good, plain delivery without hesitancy of any kind, but none of the arts of the orator, with, however, an occasional attempt — generally ending in failure— to try those' arts. Mr Stanley had only to tell the story of his travels to keep his audience enthralled. Ihe bare facts were sufficient. Whenever he travelled outside of them— when he attempted humour, verbal description, or fine speaking— the .interest of the audience tended to flag. Mr Stanley himself was probably nofc aware of this. Having done so much in. the way of actual feat, he probably thought little of it all, and, human-like, he is evidently ambitioas to excel in departments in. which Nature never intended him to be great. Thus the first three lectures, which described the finding of Livingstone, the discovery of the Congo, and the rescue of EmiD, were inteasely interesting from beginning to end. The fourth was intended to be the finest of all, and it was the worst, becoming at times not only dull, but absolutely wearisome. No one wanted the great explorer out here to give us what a secondrate lecturer could better give. There are two kinds of novelists : the ordinary novelist and the master— the genius. The former will describe his characters from the colour of their eyebrows to the shape of their feefc. with the result that we can form but a poor idea of them; the master allows them to develop their characters and personality, and both get imprinted on the imagination of; the reader. Mr Stanley as a lecturer is not a master. He took halE an hour over a minute description of an African forest, and the same ; description would apply in all essentials to every forest in the world. Besides, it was' a description, and it failed. Had he dwelt ' on his everyday life in the forest, the forest . itself would, in all its vastness and its gloom, ; have filled the mind of the reader. Curious \ it is that a man who has so much and such enthralling matter to relate should be ambitious to excel in the vapid art of what has \ in recent year 3 been called word-painting.

Who will be disposed to deny, after hearing- ! Mr Stanley, and reading of' Truth the great pearl stealing case j and in England, that truth is ] Fiction. stranger than fiction ? Set ! down in a book the incidents j of the pearl case would be regarded as un- ] likely and the characters as unreal and overdrawn. Miss Elliot, a young lady moving in good society and eugaged to be married to a high- i minded, chivalrous English officer, goes to ] visit some relatives in the country— a certain Major and Mrs Hargreaves. The latter has some pearls and diamonds hidden away in the secret drawer of a cabinet. Woman-like she shows them to her young relative, whose eyes glisten as she looks at the baubles and thinks how easily ttey would provide a marriage trousseau for a poor girl not over burdened with cash. Miss Elliot leaves her hosts and the pearls leave their owner at the same time. They are "melted" at the establishment of the Messrs Spink, who give for them a cheque for £550, which cheque is exchanged at the bank for gold ; and the gold strangely offered to the Messrs Benjamine, clothiers, in exchange for notes. Mrs Hargreaves misses her pearls the day after Miss Elliot leaves, and writes to that young lady, who responds with sympathy for the losp, wondering who could have stolen them. But Mrs Hargreaves herself soon ceases to wonder, and her suspicions settle permanently upon her late visitor. Woman-like, too, she talks, and the talk goes round London, eddying about poor Miss

Elliot, whose innooence is so stamped on a serene face that Captaia Oeborne, with more than the chivalry of Lady Dilke (and with like results) hurries on his marriageiwith the injured girl, thus flouting society and giving scandal its dealh blow, or very nearly so. And Miss Elliot as she places her trusting hand in that of her husband vows inwardly that for his sake she shall establish her innocence for ever. An action for libel is brought against the Hargreaves. Miss Elliot (now Mrs Osborne) in ths witness box is like icnocence on a monument smiling at suspicion. Sir Edward Clarke, Solicitor-genera', may be terrible to the guilty, but he has no terrors for the innocent. When ho asked Mrs Osborne the terrible question : " Did you recently change a large sum from gold into notes 7 " — it was surely innocence that prompted the clear, assuring answer, "Certainiy not." On the other hand poor Major Hargreaves loses his senses in the hands of Sir C. Russell, contradicts himself, stammers, stutters, and, in short, plainly reveals to the wise onlooker that he has stolen his wife's pearls. And then— all in proper dramatic style— a letter is handed into court— a letter from the prosaic Ben jamine, who tells how he gave Mre Osborne noteß for gold to the amount of £550. And the injured innocent bad actually endorsed one £50 note when she paid it over for goods received to Maples. The letter was not read in court, but the court adjourned, and when it again met ihe plaintiff did not put in an appearance. Sir C. Russell threw up his case ; the wise onlookers detected a look of innocence after all in the face of the blundering Major, who had not stolen his wife's pearls.

A sad story. — A girl of iron nerve, born to be great had she only had the moral principle in her ; a chivalrous, trusting Englishman, great of soul, if ever a man was, and doomed to suffer throughout his entire life for his very greatness.