THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Volume 01, Issue 2123, 1 November 1894, Page 29

THE WEEK.

" Kunquam alind naturci, allud taptcntla dixlt."— Juvinal. " Good nature and food seuee must ever join."— Porn.

The accommodating politeness of Parliament in bringing itself to an end

Curtain.

juat as our last

labourt were concluded — thereby ensuring that the prorogation should be a week old, or in other words out of date, bj the time that our present, issue sees the light— relieves us from the necessity of saying much about tho session that has passed into history. If it were possible to add that the willingness of everybody to forget about it had been provided for by a short aot on the last day, consigning nine-tenths of its work to final oblivion by repeal or otherwise, the country would be not only well satisfied, but materially benefited. We shall doubtless hear presently from various platforms the usual platitudes about the new House— how It " compared favourably with its predecessors," "would rank with any Legislature in the British dominions," "was composed of men of whom any oountry might by proud, ' and so on. The edifying pronouncements of members on themselves have, however, but little influence on the publio judgment. Estimated either by its personality, its history, or its wort, it may be indeed allowed that the House of Representatives of 1894. has attained preeminence in relation to Its predecessors ; but as to the precise nature of that preeminence it were as well hot to particularly inquire. Taking first the Ministry, the case is mostly one of "as you were." Nothing new has been developed as regards the character and capaoity of the members of the Government, with one notable ezoeption. There is plenty of ability In its ranks, and neither more sor less than the normal amount has come out in the session's work. It is nothing new, moreover, for Mr Beddon to be brazen of voice and anbtle of design, inexhaustible at work, able In legitimate taotlos, and unscrupulous in illegitimate manoeuvre 5 for Mr Beeves to be witty and sour, flippant and bright of speeob, pliant as the reed where vote* are to be won by pliancy, but withal a politician whose intense Belf-admiiatlon alone would carry him along even if it were not oombined with more solid though shifty qualities— whloh it Ut ; for Mr John M'Kezysie to be loud and blusterous, oombining bis desire to do bis beßt in h\* department with his unfortunate capacity for exhibiting himself at bis worst, and taxing to the utmost the patience of his colleagues* and wellwisher* by successive exhibitions of himself which altogether mask the better John M'Kenele tbat no doubt does exist } for Sir Patrick Buckley to be suave and business-like; and for Messrs Oadmart and Montgomery to be inglorious!/ humdrum. All this is just as we have all known them before. To those who declare that Mr Seddon as the author Of the Frater job, Mr J. M'Keozie as the prinoipal figure in the Pomahaka scandals and the inventor of the ridiouloue press-gagging bill, and Mr Reeves as the brilliant qonceiver of the almost eqoally ridiculous Undesirable Immigrants Bill, have attained a further development in their peouliar attributes than had hitherto been feaobed, we have simply to say tbat we should like to think so, but — don't.

From this category of uniformity Mr Ward, it is doubtless noted, has Tho been excepted. It if very Treasurer, difficult to estimate exactly where the Treasurer's political reputation stands to-day. On the one hand, ne has b«en the exponent of a per* fectly reckless financial policy, which may be summed up as a policy of borrowing first with the right hand and then with the left, and ultimately spending with both at once. He has, moreover, stood forward— it may be from choice, it may be from fate, ft may be from an honest, single-minded sense of duty reluotantly to ha porformed-*as the benevolent Inspector and relieving officer to at least* one financial Institution, behind whose lately unfortunate but now happy shareholders In and out of tf ew Zealand he has placed the Solid prop Of a Treasury guarantee. On the other hand, whatever odium may attaoh to him among those who thoroughly disbelieve In all these things cannot fairly be visited upon him alone, but mast be distributed among the members of the Government, However muoh in other departments Individual Ministers may be responsible for policy and administration, the fnanoial polioy at least must be tbe policy of the Government as a whole. We all know, of coarse, that as a matter of faot none Of the other Ministers, exoept unfortunately those who are in the Council (where finance can only be indireotly influenced), understand anything about finance at all. But persons who know aotblng of flnanoe oan always find their way in general terms to a borrowing career: potelbly, indeed, some may be of opinion that it is only those persons who do. Hence there Ib no reason to doubt tbat the total abandonment of the sham of self-reliance, after the borrowed money wbioh sustained the sham came to an end, was the polioy of Mr Seddon ; the details only being the work of Mr Ward, We cannot therefore classify the Treasurer's sessional reoord as though he were the originator Of the wild-oat schemes of wbioh he wm, on the whole, a fairly efficient exponent j no*, ad his majority was a merely mechanioal one, which bad its orders how to vote and cared neither for what he said in favour Of hie sohemeß nor for what others said in condemnation of them (understanding, for the most part, nothing whatever about either), oan we reasonably give him credit for their successful passage. We do, on the ether hand, give him credit for the fact that when shorn of a few of their most objeotionable features in tbetegielatira GoohqU hit Mia fe«d Emitted loftta

farther consideration of thai; body in asptrft of reasonable ' compromise, contrasting favourably with the nauaeous blaster under similar oircumstanceß of one or two of h!i colleagues. Mr Ward, by virtue of his office, has cer> tainly been the central figure of the nevi ' Parliament. He must be content, from thet nature of his work, to be judged in the futurtf by its results. His initiation of It has beet ' efficient, though in no way brilliant. In bit working out of it there is plenty of soope fOl the making or marring of bis reputation.

As regards the general effect of recent parllamentary work on th« Tll « country and its prospected Result. what critics outside Parlla^ I meet have to do is to try and I believe that it will not be as unsettling and] unfavourable as it almost Inevitably must be*. Details, as we hinted above, are a week out ot date, and we shall not go into them. The) public is weary of the endless bills, aiok of the| Sorry speotaole of about half its represented tives doing ita legislation for It under the)* lash of the whips and without even a plausible? effort to understand and diaouss what the/ were voting about, disgusted at the tin> scrupulous use of party "machinery for the: perpetration of|jobs future and the condoning of jobs past, and only too anxious to be spared] the recapitulation of the inglorious particuV law. In r general way, however, the wide 4 spread uneasiness and discontent, and, more than all. the unprecedented dearth of ejxtf ployment and paralysis of enterprise in the colony, are definitely referred in the/ publio mind to the political conditions existing for the last two or three year?; but more especially since Mr Ballanoe's! death. It has been discovered by those whose political creed consisted largely of tha principle of the total extermination 01 employers as " social pffsts " that the partial extermination of employment was & more! likely result of their efforts, and that it hu3 indeed (for what it may be worth), already rewarded them, tn times of depression Governments can do little actively (what; they may refrain from doing is more to the point) to v restore prosperity" as it Id called; but oertaialy the present Govern^ ment has shown us that constant harassing interference with and threatening and abqsq pf employers of labour and of people who] have and would otherwise spend money oaoj unfortunately, do much toward* turning what might be a period of contentment ana moderate progress into an era of stagflation*! poverty, and alarm, We have no sympathy! with the view that the working classeiv whose votes are principally responsible for* the serious condition of New Zealand w<^ the unexampled distress resulting from the;, paralysis of enterprise, are only fitly punished! by having to bear the brunt of the constant attacks upon employers. It is the interested^ and unscrupulous politicians who deludej them upon whom the punishment should! fall, Bat does it fall on them 1 No ; it does! not operate within the walls of Parliament! where everyone is provided with a comforw able salary and pickings, and where, if he M not satisfied, with it, he can scheme to gel gome subservient supporter to move that In be increased. Doubtless employers can be I made uncomfortable, or even made poor, dj? aot of Parliament; but any satisfaction there may be in that is dearly bought at the oost ' of snob prior and incidental Btepa in the? prooess as the privations which labour, from tbat cause alone, is called upon to endnre today. ,

M re Besant has oome and gone, and haa left behind her an impression extrj A Pathetio > tirely favourable to herself Failure. ajod entirelj onpropitious t£ her views. She manifest^ herself before her audiences as a wo&an of intense sincerity, of 'rare intellectual gift* Of infinite sympathy, and of true passion— tha latter the rarest possession of all among ons fin de sieole women of the platform, and pet* haps the very one wbioh moft surely cap. tnrea the soul of the earnest listener. Baa manifests her' doctrines with no morf and no less success than is attained by the average religious crank, whose lnte^j lectual superior she so clearly is, but frors whose time-honoured paths ol " demonstra,? tion " she does not once depart. Her fine; oratory we do not dlsouss : it is admitted on; all hands, but it does not enter into the essentials of the- matter. It seems, indeed* that at time goea on and knowledge, p%| gross, and aotion increase in depth and irltensity, eloquence in the delivery of the mes* sage counts in this $orld for less and less, ana the message itself for more. Mr Gladstone-^ the latest analyst, by the way, of Mrs Besanfc--*, would probably now at tbe close of his career, confirm this from his personal experience.'; In bis later years he has not succeeded, if wlrmay venture at this distanoe to judge himy! in glorifying inexplicable casuistrws into th£ watoh words of men as in the zenith of hip, manhood he was wont to do ; yet the zenltßJ of his manhood preceded by many a long, year the zenith of his matohless eloquence. The test to apply to an orator nowadays It to tell him to write it down. If it— tb« message he brings— is good enough, it will stand the test ; men will still be eager and! grateful for its exposition in glowing words from the platform, but its power to move* will not be ultimately dependent on the pog> session by Its prophet of a single gift, denied as that gift so constantly is to the true), prophets and leaders of men. Bobbed of the raiment of attractive elocution and put into pamphlets and manifestoes (to which Mrs Be6ant, fortunately for th* interests of criticism, has committed het4 self), the series of lectures just concluded will prove but evanescent literature. ThehJ' value as oral deliverances must be estimates in terms of that verdict. It is not to ths purpose to point out, as it seems the fashlo# to do, that Mrs Besant is unchristian, therefore wrong. On the other hand, it is fair and to the point to indicate, by a feoapitula* tion of the steps of her strange oareer f that, her utterances at any given Spoon must bef received with due oaution. The incongruity irresistibly apparent in tbe speotaole of a philanthropic enthusiast in latter-day Buddhism run by B. S. Bmythe must be) allowed to be legitimate matter for comment^ And on the whole. Mrs Besant and her message of a higher life leave this part of the world) an-l will leave the world itself, very much where they were before. The world wUlfcdvahcft! aXtruiftDl »&6 tbe. hkfatf lift

km make tbeir way j but the share therein 4t this great ■offerer and true enthusiast In cite cause will not be what she bo fervently entires to make it. ifi of the outward and visible signs of the advance of the higher life in Bine Mrs Besant's sense will he Blood. the curtailment of certain peculiar prirlleges belonging to the higher life In Mrs Grundy's. A few | months ago a muttered rumour ran through fnrope, the echoes of which have not quite Sled away to-day, imputing to a high-born { personage recently married an earlier in- , dulgenoe in a form ef marriage to whion among such people the name ef " morfeanatic" U applied. To the European ndmd, saturated with the traditions, good and bad, of the past, It would appear that the morganatic marriage— an exolusive privilege of kings and princes— oonveyß no idea of_ disgrace to anyone. In the case to which we have distantly alluded, the principal sentiment expressed— the emphasis must be on the " expressed," for if we substitute » experienced" we should have to go on to define tbat sentiment as .an intense and "prurient curiosity— was one of sympathy for the reaT and late wife, who was also highborn. That was all very well as far as it vrent. but with our unsophisticated notions out here, most of the sympathy would go to the l alleged deserted "moganatlo" girl. And we European mind, and provoke many superior JlliaJons to "these colonials," if we-de-nounced thii morganatic privilege (to Bay pothing of the blue-blooded scoundrels who avail themselves of it) as among the most rtuel and damnable of all the recognised institutions of our time. Asothtr instance I* supplied by the ghastly rejoicings at the marriage of the Princess Alix, a daughter of our own Royal Souse. Consider the dragging of this poor girl half across Europe, in the face of the civilised world, for the avowed purpose of giving shameless colour to a claim tending to the stability of the Throne, before the breath should be out of the body of its occupant, and death defy the cunning of these callons diplomatists. It may be that jroyalty under present conditions demands «uch sacrifices from a royal maiden as is implied in this repellant proceeding. If so, Jet ub hope that the advance of " the higher life" may, among other things, give to such loyal maidens the protection from the public gaze which other maidens so placed may leek at wM— or, In other words, may take away the privileges of those who now deny ih to them. Widely different is that other privilege of nobility in various countriea the Jew which finds ita highest ex- ' Crusade. pression In the English House of Lords. Here we have a legislative chamber which, whatever its pTefent status and present privileges, has at lay rate ull the recommendation that comes from splendid traditions, an honourable history, and, on the whole, a recognised jeoord of present sincerity and usefulness, {fhiare is nothiDg in connection the House of Lords to excite the kind of feelings jrhloh are roused by such things as the last preceding note dealt with. When, however, thlß has been granted, truth compels the addition that there Is very much In the whole notion of a partly hereditary and partly sacerdotal legislative assembly, with the power of veto over the representatives of the people, whioh cannot and will not square With modern progressive ideas. The crusade of the English Liberal Ministry the power of the House of Lords has slow, after much backing and filling and 'banging back, been vigorously proclaimed by the English Premier, himself the Leader 6t the threatened House. The success or the crusade is assured beforehand. By What methods the Peers will be ultimately Induced to pass the measure that will enact (heir abdication Is probably known to nobody ' it present, and the guesses oover very wide ground indeed; Lord Roeebery probably hap as Uttle idea as anyone. As a peer of 61d family, he is probably not in favour of < $Cr Xiabouohere's short and easy method with the Lords — the investing of 500 ohimneyijweeps with temporary coronets for the purposes of the second and tbirdreadings. He has 'po substitute ready; but he very likely has a good idea that the substitute will in some way or other be found in the determined trend of public feeling, and he is not Mistaken. * There Is no analogy between the English (.House of Lords and tbe colonial Upper \Houses. The latter, where they are not Elective, owe their seleotion to the Ministry — 'therefore to the Lower House — therefore (theoretically) to the people. The •former owes it to the accident of birth ; as regards "temporal" and to the [hierarchical arrangements of one particular {religious sect as regards the "spiritual" peers. It is difficult to say which of these methods of selection Is most anomalous, ftrojust, and illogical; and both are doomed % be swept away before the rising sense of $he incongruous which the aristocratic man*, guß we should call it here, is at last becoming Jiowerless to stifle. . !Che Pabiatua bridge over the Tiraumea rivtr ftfc Ngatiri, on the road from Pahiatua river to Makuri, was opened on Tuesday by the Hon. Mr Seddon, who was accompanied by the Hon. tfix Carroll and Mrs Seddon. Ueisn Hogg and Hall, members of the adjoining districts, were present. Borne 800 people assembled on the fridge when Mr Bolton, the county ohainnan, welcomed tbe Premier and party. Mrs Seddon broke a bottle of champagne on the pier and peclarcd the bridge open. Luncheon followed md was partaken of on the bridge, where a number of toasts were proposed and duly responded to. The bridge is a very important one over a dangerous crossing. The cost was £2500. The Railway Commissioners have deoided to dispense with the services of Mr M'G&rva, inspector of bridges, who is alleged to have inspired the charges brought by Mr E. Norton Taylor, and subsequently denied before the Railway Committee having done *o. In recognition of the excellent service previously tendered by Mr M'Qarva, he will be permitted to draw bis retiring allowance. Mr M'Garva bas.for some £3 yean betn a valuable officer of the department,- and had hitherto an unblemished record, but it is felt by the oommismoners tbat his recent indiscretion and subsequent denial render it advisable tL»tifl sjwuld '«ofe be continued in the sarvioc; i