PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2170, 26 September 1895, Page 36

PASSING NOTES.

'•Too many cooks" is the comment of chanty on the tariff fiasco. You oan't make a taiiff by Committee of the Whole House, nor a pudding, nor a poem. Where there ammauy littls details, every little man sees his little opportunity and trots in with his little amendment. But for the merciful severity of Standing Orders, the tariff wrangle would have lasted till Christmas; Mr Ward's successive editions, which now stop at six, had stretched out to sixty. And why is this thus 7 To what freak of Ministerial modesty do we owe this unwontod and ridiculous Ministerial self-effacement 1 It is not altogether modesty, nor altogether softening of the brain; in the main, it is cowardice and "hedging." We humour one set of paople by proposing a duty, another set by withdrawing it. So each set is humoured in turn, do you see ; and we stand cqaally well with both I Equally ill, I should say. Anyhow this policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds is the tariff policy of the Government, the only tariff policy they've got. "We refuse to increase the duty on. beer," ssyn Mr Ward, tipping a wink to the publicans ; " and the reason for which we refuse to increase ,the duty on beer is because we think a high beer duty injurious to the interests of temperance. The more revenue we obtain from this source the more unwilling will many electors be to vote for prohibition." And here he winks the other eye towards the prohibitionists. Dexterous Mr Ward — yea, ambidexterous ; between the de'il and the deep sea he gives a band to both ! It Is grievous that so much cleVernew. should have succeeded only in patting up a record for floundering.

An explanation of the Sultan'u Bee-sawing about Armenia is given in the " Qaarterly Review." The explanation s mounts to this: that to ask the Sultan lo place a Christian in charge of Armenia would be like askir g the Pope to confer a cardinal's hat upon a Unitarian. He simply cannot do it. I cannot say that the comparison strikes me with any force. There was a Pope who conferred a cardinal'B hat upon the A*>\ 6 Dubois, time of the French Regency, and the Abt c Dabois was a good deal worse than a Unitarian. However, the important thing is that the " Quarterly Review," which is thonght to express more nearly than any other English periodical the ideas of Lord Salisbury, is convinced that the Sultan won't give way and can't give way ; also that he must be nia.io to give way. The trouble is that the three Powers whose business it will be to make him — England, France, Russia — are very capable of qaarrellicg amongst themselves in the process. If only they would take advice 1 My idea is that the three Powers should hold a kind of auction knock - out. Russia might have Constantinople •, France should get Egypt and the Mediterranean littoral, south side, all the way to the Straits of Gibraltar. In return for these handsome concessions we should ask a free hand in Central Africa, the transfer of the shadowy French prottctorata over Madipascar, the ceffion cf Tonkin, New OLdjma, and Tahiti. Our list is the lo'^'.^r, but 3>;lri'.>-i-cally the least valuable. O t this scheme civilisation would be & good deal safer ihan now and the human race a good deal happier. It is not really difficult to settle these matters once you get outside the vicious circle of the diplcirrUiata and the statesmen.

The principles of " Cr-is " — says Mr R. N. Adams, in Tuesday's Daily Times — ate in reality prohibitionist principles, bat " Oitis "

doesu't ksow it. It is my Intelligence that is at fault— only my intelligence ; my principles are all right. This is really oivil in Mr Adams. Most people of hiß way of thinking deny that I have any principles at all. Bat there ate 12 principles of mine already known to Mr Adams— l 2; I have counted thorn I— he sets them forth in 12 separate paragraphs, a paragraph to a principle. There are 12 already known, and Mr Adams believes that by researoh he might discover a hundred and one more. This is flattering 1 And all prohibitionist principles I For example : He [" Civis "J believes io the right of private property: wh : ch is a prohibition »g»iisb any roan appropriating to bis own use what belongs to his neighbour. Quite true. I believe in tho right of private property, and I believe in the wrong of pickiog and stealing. I also believe in the utility of locks, bolts, bars, and the police. My principle in these matters has been neatly expressed by the poet : Him as prig 1 ? what isn't hisn, When he's cotched is sent to prison. But it seems to me that to bo a prohibitionist as Mr Adamß is a prohibitionist I should have to prohibit not only stealing, but the existence of anything to Bteal. Not only shall you not get drunk, Bays Mr Adams, but there shall not be anything wherewith you may be able to get drunk. Drunkcnuess is wrong; therefore abolish strong drink. Stealing is wrong ; therefore abolish private property. I don't see it 1 And doubtless that iB wh-3re the defect of my intelligence oomes in.

Mr Adams is of opinion that the prohibition question was intimately connected with the Fall of Man : He [" Civis "] must have forgotten thsfc the first directions given in the Garden of Eden contninrd a prohibition of a far more individual nature thin a liquor traffic Veto act — " Thou shalt not eat of it." But it was there within reach, waen't it? Answer me that, Mr Adams. You would have said not " Thou shalt not eat of it," but " Thou ahslt not hava the chance." You would have applied the local veto, would hava taken a prohibitionist vote, would have had that fatal tree out of the garden. Come, now, confess I— do you not in your heart of hearts believe that if the Garden of Eden had been managed on prohibitionist principles things would have gone much better thau they did? | There could have been no Fall of Man ; the Adam of that date might have stood in his integrity. There would have been no travail and pain for anybody ; no ping'ng with wry .mouths — Of man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe, Mare prohibition applied early enough would have kept everything right. It must be a melancholy reflection for Mr Adams that his original namaaake, and the father of all the Adamses, fell a victim to the want of prohibition.

'It was Thursday of this week, and the sun's eye had a sickly glare, the earth with age looked wan. This was at 8 oVI ;ck, or thereabouts, when I came down to breakfast. Too late I remembered that it, was for Thursday morning before breakfast that the astronomers had time-tabled an eclipse. There is really nothing to see in an eclipse ; nothing worth noting by the naked eye. Yst I had desired to be an observer. I wanted to imagine how people feli in the back centuries when eclipses partended battle, murder, and sudden death, plague, pestilence, and famine ; arrested armies in the heat of fight, and sent whole populations to prayers. I wanted aleo to impress myself with the majesty of modern science, which has dissipated these superstitions by explaining eclipses away, so to speak ; by reducing them to a system, as it were, and calculating them backwards and forwards for thousands of years. What is an eclipse? The most trivial of incidents. The moon gets into our light, or the earth gets into the moon's light. In the presence of this ex- : plained, exploded, and discredited portent, I wanted to pity my degraded ancestors, and .ixiediiaie .on the superiority of nineteenth cemury man— Whose gotence gropes from star to star, But than itself finds nothing greater ; And even ip a Lcyden jar Has bottled the Creator. Unfortunately, Thursday's eclipse was at an inconvenient hour. When I oame down to breakfast and the Daily Times the incident was all but ended. Now that science has disenchanted them, eclipses, maybe, don't last as long as they used to do. What do we read in " Lycidas ": It was that fatil and perfidious bark, Built in th' eclipse aud rigged with curaes datk. You couldn't have built any sort of " bark within the duration of Thursday's eclipse, that is certain. The phenomenon, in short, was disappointing. I gave it a glance or two, looking up from the telegrams and the tariff debate, then went indoors to my porridge and bacon. Man, even nineteenth century man, is a poor creature unbreakfasted. There are some matters in which we have not got very far ahead of our benighted ancestors, after all.

There is really only one reason, I suppose, for which men smoke tobacco. They smoke tobacco because they like It. Yet there can be no harm in haviDg another good reason at the back of this. Here it ia .— Professor Dr. Tassinari, of the University of Pisa, has made som? exhaustive experiments as to tbe aotion of tobicco fumes upon the growth of bacilli. He tested it in the case of seven kinds ot bacteria, the so-called cholera bacillus, the bacilli of typhus, pleuro-pueumouia, blue > n«, pus cccjua, arid c^Hl; d sli mp' r, and the l''inkt;i-lVior bac'tr-.n. He nn.'e '. is t \pirimeuta uuiier corid'ti'.ii-. jiji^r >i'.Li' g •••• 11 u - !y as possible fco tbe ord : a>-y 'Ajiy ot >inoUiii.j t'b.-cco, with tbe results that he fc-uMI that tobacco smoke retard-* the development; of sme kinds of bacilli, p.nd tutirely arrests it iv others. The pus bacillus— whatever that may be— was thrown back 72 hours, thß bacilluß of cattle distemper 100 honrs ; better Ihan this, the bacillus of cholera and the bacillus of typhus were killed outright. If the3O things ore bo, smoking ceases to bo one of the minor

vices and becomes a virtue. lam bound to say that I ouly half believe it. The tremendous inference would follow that women ought to Bmoka— women as well as men. For goose and gander strictly equal rights 1— as against bacillaseß, anyhow. Is the gander to be fumigated, disinfected, rendered germ -proof, whilst the poor gooee is left exposed and a prey ? That will never do. Prove tobacoo to bs a germicide, and women must smoke. As I don't— won't— believe that Nature intended women to smoke, 1 have tho great eit difficulty in admitting any theory that would introduce tho pipe into the innocent lips of Mrs •■ Oivie." I have no objeotion to compromise by smoking enough for both— and Darhaps this ia the best solution of the diffinnlt., OIVIS.