CURRENT TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1989, 7 April 1892, Page 18

CURRENT TOPICS.

(From Daily Times).

Deer appear to have become very plentiful in the vicinity of Tapanui if the statement is not overdrawn that large herds of stags are to be seen. The Acclimatisation Society have given evidence that they are not going to allow indiscriminate slaughter of the deer to take place, for the ever vigilant Ranger Burt is to be statioped on the spot during the season, and may be expected to exercise his practised discrimination in the detection of poachers. The license fee, which entitles a sportsman to shoot stags only, is L 3 3s, and it only permits of the shooting of three stags. The nature and attendant expense of the sport will probably restrict deerstalkers to a few ardent lovers of the chase, and if only a few stags are taken there will be no material check to the increase. The district has proved a valuable nursery, and it will be a desirable achievement if by means of it the mountainous districts about the lakes become stocked, and a new charm added to entice visitors to that grand showground of our colony. There is the possibility that the herds may become so numerous about the Tapanui district as to be a nuisance to farmers, but we apprehend that when that danger arises a slight relaxation of the rules will be all that is necessary to keep them in check. With the high license fee charged and the other expenses involved, it is quite certain that wholesale slaughter will not imperil the permanence of the herds.

The Harbour Board could not well have done less than acknowledge by its donation of Ll3 and a complimentary minute the bravo action of Pilot Milne and his erew — M 'Donald, Dick, Byrnes, and Edwards — who rescued the.captain and a boat's crew of the Sardanah. It is impossible to assess the money value of an action which, as Mr Barclay very neatly put it, "was a very fine instance of a duty promptly done and successfully done." The Board might, indeed, have gone further, and bestowed on the men some souvenir of the event — a medal each, for instance, inscribed with a brief record of the circumstances. Men who, like these, take their lives iv their hands to rescue others from a watery grave would feel far more pride in a decoration of the nature we have mentioned than in a money present. It came out in the course of the discussion that there is ncf life-saving apparatus at the pilot station. This" ought to be remedied without delay, and the occasion seems a fitting one upon which the local representative of the Australasian Humane Society, Dr Coughtrey, should be consulted. It may not be necessary to provide a rocket apparatus at the Heads, but there certainly ought to be abundance of life-belts — perhaps even a life-boat for cases of emergency. At all events the fear of having disregarded a warning ought to be removed, and therefore it is to be hoped the Works Committee of the Board will give the matter the consideration it demands.

The advocatus diaboli has already overtaken Cardinal Newman, although but a few months have elapsed since his death. It is natural enough that his very numerous admirers and disciples should desire to perpetuate his memory in visible form, and what more natural than that they should desire for him a statue in some well known and much frequented place ? So they selected Oxford, in which city of spires and streams it was proposed to the Town Council by' the Duke of Norfolk and other leading Itonian' Catholics, that a canopied statue should tye'ereoted at the charges of the 'petitioners in' a thoroughfare well known to every frequenter of Oxford as "The Broad."' To this proposition the Town Council "unanimously acceded, and here the matter may have been assumed to reach its first stage. But 1106 so, for as soon as the nature of the concession was clearly understood, opposition sprang up armed from every quarter, and in the most unexpected quarters. Now, so far as Oxford is concerned as a University, it is hard to see what Newman ever did for his alma mater. He was not a distinguished scholar, student, or specialist in any branch of work of which a University takes strict cognizance, although it is admitted without reserve that his contribution to the literature and thought of England are very precious. So far from Newman being a personage of influence in the promotion of University work, it has always been held by a quiet minority that by diverting the attention of young Oxford from learning to polemical theology he was an actual stumbling block to the progress of academical labours. We have been told by more than one man, who being a contemporary of Newman's was also entrusted with a share in the guidance of University affairs, that during Newman's time the University was in a fever of unrest, and that his departure from Oxford was regarded as a measure of deep relief, for the place then settled down to its proper work : learning, exact and discursive, once more invited ardent pursuit. Hence when the other day a speaker m Oxford asked a very large assembly of indignant opponents of the statue scheme, " What on earth did Xeivmaneiey do for Oxford?" there was a roar of applause which calmer moments than those generated in the heated air of a public meeting may without difficulty be able to justify. What did Newman ever do ftr Oxford? The obvious answer to this pertinent question has brought t Jgether in opposition tho most discordant persons, who seem to have found for once in their lives an intelligible principle of co-operation. On the one hand the Master of Balliol, Dr Jowett, the most liberal of theologians and an ardent Platonist, on the o'her the Warden of Keble, the stronghold of the highest Anglican theology, are shoulder to shoulder in this matter. Thirteen heads of colleges handed in to the Town Council a protest, which was supplemented by a petition bearing thousandsi signatures, and under this pressure the Town Council gave way. The plan for putting a canopied statue of Newman up in The Broad was withdrawn so far aB the site is concerned, and the scheme referred to a committee, with.

instructions to make further conference wiph the Duke of Norfolk and his friends as to future operations. Now it appears that the mass of Roman Catholics were in the first instance opposed to Oxford, as about -the worst place that could be devised, and, as for various reasons there is strong opposition from the representatives of rival theologies and of no theologies at all, doubtless the original proposal will be gracefully withdrawn. The charm of making memorials to the great departed lies in there beihg no serious or extended opposition to the project. The very fact that grave objection from responsible quarters makes itself heard is enough to cause doubts as to the expediency of proceeding further on the lines disapproved. But in Newman's case the nature, extent, and locality of the opposition to his memorial are significant. The air about him begins to clear : we shall behold him reduced to the really fine proportions and dimensions belouging to his character, and, divested of the heroic robes in which his adulators have clothed him ; he will stand out clearly as one of the greatest among the many great men of his country^ and of his age. But his work was not of unmixed advantage ; while no place suffered from his hands more sorely tjian did Oxford. Hence the strength and substance of this protest, which, while it has the merit of honesty, is not open to the charge of bigotry. If anyone will take the pains to review the names, work, and character of tho men who sustained the objection to a statue to Newman, he must feel that they are as far away 'from the imputation of bigotry as any human being can ever expect to find himself ; while no man would have approved their fidelity to their views or accorded them more applause than Newman himself.