PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2171, 3 October 1895, Page 36

PASSING NOTES.

As there are no degrees in chaos, and ooe chaotic muddle can't be more chaotic than another, we are forbidden to say that the state of Parliament has been woree this week than last. It is sufficient to cay that ifc has been as bad. Apparently wo have at last got a new tariff, but I defy anybody to say what it is; why it is goes without saying. We shall have to pay more taxation. And this is the Government that always vaunts a surplus I The surplus this year, be it remembered, was a particularly solid and sabstanfcial surplus. Other surpluses might be hollow and illusory. This surplus wa-o of the most satisfactory kind — such as would bear the keenest critical examination. Waß it not so written and spoken in the Governor's Speech ? And yet the possessors of this unimpeachable surplus are not one wait the richer for it. Just as much as their uDeurplused predecessors are they victims to that eternal want of pence that vexes public men. It is our agreeable duty to supply those missing pence, no doubt ; and supply them we shall ; at the same time one would like to know, if only for the sake of gratifying a vain curiosity, what has becom« of the mrplus. Did it ever exist; or was it bogus? Hi« it been absorbed in a contemporary deficit; or does the Treasurer keep it safely hidden away somewhere in a stocking 1 Vain questions, all of them I All that the Treasurer knows about it ia that, six months ago, according to the public accounts as supplied to him by his underlings, he seemed to have a surplus and that he doesn't seem to have it now. That is why we have got a new tariff. Ah for the said public accounts, no public man on either side of tho House is in the least able to understand them, the Treasurer himself — ifc is generally believed— no more than anybody else.

I do not reckon myself a party man. Rather, I am of the persuasion of the ancient Komanß (date uncertain), where none was for a party, and all were for the State. Oae Government is the same aa another to me ; if a Government goeß wrong, I'm agin it, — not otherwise. Naturally, lam myself the judge, and from my judicial decisions there is no appeal. All tbn wears an egotistic look, but it is not egostistic really. Every man who is ' not a party man must judge for himself ; aud though he be a party man, not the less mTißt he judge, for himself in deciding that Mb p»rty shall judge for him. So yon sea that after all I am not more egotistic "" than oiber people. What I waiitod to »ay as a non - party man was (his: that I am diegusted with this Government for abdicating in the rcatter of tbe tariff their essential function ac a Government and permitting a month of parliamentary chaos. A Government may be a bad Government, a foolish Government, a veak Government; but aa long as it is a Government, at leaat let it govern. Butter tyranny than anarchy, any day. The tariff, as for the matter of it, may ba forgiven ; the manner of it, never 1 Curious , that we should come to accuse the Sbddon-cnm-JoHN M'Kwkzib Ministry aa weakkneed and weak-banded. Yet so it is; wherefore I, as a non-party man, ara going to pray in the lacguage of the poet 6: Ah, God, for a man with heart, head, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone For ever acd ever by, One still strong m*n iv a blatant l&Dd, Whxtbver Ihey c*ll him, what care I, Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat— one Who can rule aud dare not lie.

When at the call of duty I debate with a prohibitionUt I usually have the humiliating feeling that the prohibitionist is a better mRB than I am — morally a better man. The prohibitionist is morally bo good that at the sight of drunkenness and the evils ifc brings he is swept off the legs of his judgmont by uncorJroiiarilc emotion and clamours for a new world from which tbe pc«ioilir,7 of so dreadful a thing bhull be excluded. Now, I am not as good as that. The g<meral plan of the world, so far ao I am able to make it out, doos not outrage my moral sensibilities. I am not aghast at the fact, of which Mr R. N. Adams has reminded me, that in the very Gcrden of Eden there was a deadly thing to be had for the taking. Neither am I horrified, as Mr Adama i 3, that tho means to get dru&k and do many other ill deeds maj now ba .had for money.

I regretfully admit that the moral advantage seems to be with Mr Adams. My only consolation is that I seem to be in ono and tbe same case with the Upper Powers. I am wiilirig to reside in this world as the Eaid Powers have made it, and don't hanker, with Mr Adams, for a legislative besom to swepp ail temptation out of it. As I said the other week, there is such a thing as boing too good for this world. I disclaim this inconvenient degree of excellence mybelf; probably Mr Adams would ditolaiin it too. All the same it it dear that if Mr Adams had been at the making of tbis world he would not have made any intoxicating driDk, and that he would have excluded oaref ally the possibility that it might be made by the devil, With what ease might we all have been perfectly good if only the world had been arranged from the outset on prohibitionist principles I

Here is a letter which raises an unoomfortable question about Mr Adams's ir.gc-na-ousnefls. There can be nothing in it, of course. It ißn't ingenuousness that prohibitionists lack, aa a rule. They are usually ingenuous to the point of simplicity. Nevertheless wo will hear what this correspondent has to s*y : ■ Dear C'.vls,— On readiog Mr R. N. Adann'e letter in Tuesday's Times it atruck me that Mr Adams either was voi himself fully ocquniuted with (he demiude of the prohibitionists in New Zealand or wai disingenuous in his stntemcat of these demands. He says: "We prohibitionists ci.nte.id merely th»t no man should be permitted to make or trade in soiling au ariicle or cf minority on which men n.ay be able to gtt drunk." Murk lie ''merely"! I Nit a word there eboub i>robibiting the manufacture or importation of alcohol for private coi somption. Ib is the traffic that is to be prohibited — only that and nothing more Novr, what ate the real demands of the prohibitionists P The Lioersiug Bill recentl) brougbi ii.to the Houso of Kepreßentativos by Mr M'Nab w&s approved of by (he prchibitio! isfc conventions, and may be taken aa *xpre«fcing exactly the vkws of tho party. Now, section 20 of that bill provides that after colonial prohibition h»s been carried— and for this purpose a bwc majority of the votes recorded is sumciout— the Coninmsioner of Customs alone is to have p>wer to irnpott into ihe colony or make therein any a'c>hol f<.r sale or c n.t-umptioii, and then only for mediciuee and f^r the arts and manufactures. If that is not intended to tffect r complete prohibition of the manufacture and consumption of alcohol — save for the few exreptcfl purposes —then words have no nieaniDg. The truth is that Mr Adams in indulging in the old quibble that prohibitiouut} do not Btek to int*-rf«ro with the consumption of alcohol but merely with it«t sulo, wLui the prohibition of the s-»le ia intended to be a prohibition of the use of alcohol. Anti-P-kohibitionist. Here are two equally impossible suppositions, the one, that Mr Adams, who expounds the demands of the prohibitionists, is' himself but imperfectly acquainted with those demands; the other, that he has inleationtUly misstated them. A third hypothesis ia wanted; Mr Adams hiawoJf will doubtleßg supply it. Dfar Oivi!«, — We have heard with »Urm of "(he nolid'ca! woman," and "the new woman"; in my b- l;ef the real t-rror of the future is the mnn-woman. She is on the road and will soon be here; the other t-vo arc her forerunners. The man-woman will wear men's clothes, appropriate mou's employments, clamour for men'a pay. What is the merit of the socalled " rational dresa" ? That it defines the wearer's shapely limb 3 ? Fie !— -nothii'g of the kiDd. Such a motive would bo wonimly, though vicious. Modesty may walk abroad in knickerbockers ns serenely r-a iv piCicoita. The real faecinati n of " rational dre-B " lits in tbe fact that it is half-way to the dre3B of a man. Rightly viewed, it is a symbol and a portent. There ava still a good many of the new women goiug about in the old dress of their humiliation, but it irks them sore, and there isn't one who does not secretly speculate on the advieab lity of trousers. The bolder spirits have already got half-way ; by the end of the century they will have achieved the other half. Then the "new womau," ambiguities dropped, will stand revealed in her true character 88 the manwoman—and sometimes I feel as if I would I rather not live to ccc it. Anjhow, lam iv the meaiit ; me—A Discouraged Bachkvxju. j Obeer up, brother ; tb«rc is no need for discouragement ; take heart, m*rry one of them and make her happy. That is the only'Bura cure. A woman with a cradle to rock feels little temptation to be the political woman, or the new woman ; still less a man- woman. She is content to be a true womau, like her mother before her. A young matron never takes to the etump. She may lecture, it is true ; but only after the manner of the late Mrs Caudle. What 1 you are a bachelor, and haunted by the dread that you are about to witness tha perdition of the whole female sex ? My dear fellow, make haste to save one soul, at any rate. Subtracting from universal womankind tbe women who are happy or unhappy ac wives, mothers, and mistresses of bouEoh»>Viß, and who consequently find their own affvrs I sufficiently interesting, thera remain the women who have not married, acd the married women no longer young for whom the domestic sphere has become too narrow, — how and why we need not particularly inquire. These two are, and alwt-ys have been, the regtless classes. Nowadays they are becoming tho daagerou* classes. At ona time they took to devotion, charity, literature, match-making ; their present temptation is to politics and sociology. In New Zealand, email blame to them (—have we not given them the franchise? But the B&imi uncomfortable development appears in Eogland, where, as yet, tbere is no woman's franchise. Ore may always find something piquant, something characteristic, in press reports of women's meetings in Kcgland — e.g. \- Oa Wednesday niijhb at the meeting at Quoui's Hall, I.ady Henry Somerset who was to have presided, \yiii {»ha-nt, owiug (o a. temiMraiy bro-<Wl')">n from overwork. Mrs Ormiston Chant, with eoubidcjab'.e alacrity, took the chair in her p'aoe, and proceeded to explain that '• Dear Lady Henry has been overworked," and "we must, of course, be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." Mrs Ormieton Chant did nob exactly mean to describe " D<;ar Lady Henry " as a goose, yet somehow the incident seems quite in placo at a meeting of female Btompow and

their devotees. The political woman aa yet Ii raw, her logto faulty, her rhetoric loose; her illustrations are sometime* perilous. This ia only to lay what Lady Stoat has been saying this weak — that tho poli'icftl woman must ho educated, Wo dare not suppress her, we shall not be able to ignore her ; what remains ia to edacate her. Dj I agree, then, with Lady Stout's scheme of education 1 ? No, I don't— not altogether, anyhow. I ccc little to admire in a league of women specially to look after wpmen'B interests, Waa there ever a league of men to look specially after men's interests ] I am for division of labour, it you like ; but division ot intersflta — no I Either sex is only a half ; join them and you get tbe true social unit ; — always remembering the fundamental law ef nature and mathematios as enunciated by Dogberry : If two persona ride on the same horse, one must rids behind.

Said Lady Stout, referring to tha exhilarating possibility that women may be sent to Parliament : — I consider it absurd to say women should not stand because they should look after their homes end families, and th\t is ia not snitabl© for women to sit in the House and go homo at all tours. I think any woman who was quatfGod to sit in the House would be vesy well *bfa to take care of herself and go home without any fear at any time. On the first pomt — tho looking after th«fr homes and families — the right of criticism eeems to belong to their husbands and child* e?v ; on the seooad, I eaatty agree with Lady S f out. Auy wv.nicn qu*/ifi«}d to sit in the House— particularly the present Honse,— and who actually gets there, will need no csoort to her lodgfcgs in the small hours of tho morning. She wilt be such a person as will be " v«y well abla to take care of heretW, and go hornfl without any fear"— of her husband or anybody else— "at any tims." He would need to bo a bold bad man that should meddle with her, and a mistaken man to boot. Lady Btout does not favour the bonding of women to Parliament— but It will come, all the same. At tbe same honorarinm, of courso. If there is any one polat of social economics on which political woman has unanimously made op her mind, and made it up wrong, ifc i« on the question of equal pay for equal work. Women cooks shall have us much as men cooks, waitresses as waiters, mHHo.«ra as tailors. Hitherto we have been accustomed to pay for the Bervioea of each tex respectively what we are compelled to pay, and no more; also to sell our wool and frozen mutton for what we are able to ger, and no more. But all this is to-be altered aad abstract justice shall prevail. Wife and family are now, as a rule, supported by the husband ; under the reign of abstract justice and equal pay for eqaal woik, husband and family shall just as commonly be supported by the wife. There is a good time coming for the able-bodied loaf«r. OIVIS.