PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2203, 21 May 1896, Page 38

PASSING NOTES.

half a column of small type enumerates the olaimß of bis countrymen to be let' alone by " professional jester*." Fax be ifc from me to wear the cap and bells; regret* fully rather than la mirth do I refor to the foibl«s of the Scotch or anyone else. And I must protest Agaln&t the injustice inflicted npon me •by "Scot " In hinting that my humour ha? no wider scops than to write 11 Sawbath " for Sabbath and " bawbee " for halfpenny. I should be sorry to jest on so sacred a subject as the Scotch Sabbath without good and sufficient reason, since three or four ce&turtoa hare demonstrated that that peculiarly national institution was net made for man but oiaa^for it. I have a similar tenderness regarding the " bawbee," because I am well aware that the national veoeration for it has .sensibly diminished Blnce the farthing was devised in order that Scotchmen might contribute to the churoh, although other denominations are equally .frugal in this respect, teste the remarks of Bishop Julias at the Wosfc Coast the other clay on finding some bad I coins in the- collection. I am afraid " Scot " is not really sincere. If so, he is the &TBt " Soot " I have heard to admit that Scotland is a small country with a poor soil and a wretched c'imate. Not ona of tho ! "bare shanked" horde who aocompaniod James VI to E gland would have admitted ; so ' mnoh, Sir .Walter Scott telle how quickly the " alrn " would have leapsd from its scabbard at such an imputation. And if " Scot's " description be true, the bottom it knocked out of the beet half of Scotch poetry at one blow. 'Concerning Scotch fidelity to religion I have nothing to Buy, though I confess I am- somewhat weary of ! those 474 martyrs who " went out " at the Disruption to cast themselves upon the liberality of the people as manifested in the sustantation fund. Even their most fervent admirers will admit that the move was not a bad one from a business point of view. Bat, there 1 I am beating the air. Snch letters as "Scot's" have be 3n written ever since Scotchman began to emigrate, which was the moment they became aware that adjacent countries were overflowing with [ milk and honey.

I I notice tbafc a newspaper correspondent, who signs himself " Plumber," the other day declared bis conviction that— from a sanitary point of vie*' — Dacerlin was fast becoming one of." the filthiest cities in Australasia." I trust that " Plumber "i 3 wrong. L9t us hopa that to some extent, at least, be may have been blinded by professional prejudice. There cm be no question, however, that morally Duuedin ought to be one of the olcane3t and purts 1 ; cUies in the world. Here we have 10 o'clock licenses, uo Sunday trading, the abolition of bottle licenses (looming ia the immediate future}, and a whole host of "blue ribbon, white ribbon, and other leagues to look after ths morals of! naughty cHz<?ns. With -all these aids to! virtue there surely can be no -wicked people ; in Domedin at all. That b9irg bo, it is too ■ bad for a company of strolling play actors to descend upon our Puritanical city, and, not content with •' leg shows " daring the week, to give " Sunday evening concerts " on the Sibbath. At all events, it has vexed the righteous souls of some of our citizens, who, with the Hon Dowoie Stewart at their head, waited on the mayor and councillors a few day 4 since, and lectured them somewhat severely, and from a high moral standpoint, on the wickedness of winking at Sunday entertainments,

Now it may or may not be true that, aa Mr Stewart remarked, it is poßfcible to " get over any 3iffio«Uy by a by-law." It may be possible, theoretically, to make people moral by by-laws equally as well as by nets of Parliament. Bat in practioe it is often found that the remedy is worse tban the -dUease — that if it be attempted to efftct_a drastic cure by prohibitive legislation, national or local, the tendency which it ia sought to restrain breaks cut in other and possibly- less wholesome directions. Of this fact we have an insti active example near onr own doors in the Oluths, where prohibition reigns, and consequently sly grog ehopi abound, with their attendant evils of bad Hquor, informers, and perjury. Or take the case of New York. There, we ara told, when the Tammany ring was defeated, Sunday closirg wa» rigidly enforced. Puritan' statues whioh had long fallen into s di3uae were carried out to the" letter. The comparatively harmless German drinking saloons were attacked. And what was the result 7 •' The inevitable reaction has come, and 'the house that was cwept and garnished is now making ready to acconamo- ! date seven times as many evil spirits as were originally driven out of it. Toe rpmote outcome hoped for by moderate men is the adoption of the English Sunday— not the Continental Sunday, or the devil's Sunday, or the Puritan Sm day, but> the commonrense Sunday — for orderly, well-behaved citiz3ns." Let ns take heed that what has taken place in New York does not follow in our own fair City of Dunedin.

The recent defeat and subsequent triumph of the Tammany party in New York to which I have referred is, or should be, most instructive to prohibitionists and to publicans alike. As an object lesson lo social reformers its price is above rabies. I learn from an Australian contemporary (qaotirg largely from the " Foram ") that when the citizens of New York arose in righteous wrath against Tammany rule, they decided to make a clean ■ sweep of things as they had grown up'nnder the ring. Matters were bad enough and corrupt enough in all conscience. The licensing laws were somewhat " absolescent " (vide the "Foram "), and could safely be disregarded by those saloonkeepers who chose to pay blackmail to the omnipotent Tammany crowd. Bat when Tammany was beaten at the polls — largely by means of the German vote — everything was changed at once, and the beer-loving Gerrhana found themselves deprived of their beloved beverage on the day of rest. The Teuton loves peace and good government much, bub be loves lager, beer even more. Accordingly at the next elections the German ho*t changed sides again, and voted for Tammany and lager. Tammany reigtm once more in New York, and the reason ia'apparent. The reforming crusade was overdone. Spies and "stool- 1 1 pigeons " were employed to entrap the ! unwary saloonkeeper, " Stool-pjfreone " (not

Fob & genuine specimen- of tho cellarflapping variety of politician cam mend mo to " H. B. Muir," who, it is not difficult to divine, is ths same gentleman who recently intimated by advertisement that he would be a candidate for the suffrages of the electors at the next election. This aspirant for the parliamentary •' honorarium" of £240 a year, besides any unconsidered triflesthat may be picked up, finds fault with the proposed introduction of "linotype typesetters," on tha ground that they will "displace a vast nuoiber of respectable artisans without any compensating public advantage." Unfortunately the same may be said of any labour-saving maohine, and Mr Muir has spoken several thousand yeara too late. He ought to have been on hand when primeval man was about to commit the economic Wuader of substituting the plough for tbe pointed stick, and he would have bsen iuvaluable at tho period when the Chinese ware about to Invent gunpowder aud so dispUce a vast number of respectab'e artisans who earued a livelihood by making bowa and arrows. L:k« others of his class, Mr Mmr proves too much. If the introduction of these labour-saving machines in sucb an unmitigated evil, why permit it at all? Why not call upon the Government to forbid their importation or manufacture; and why not in tha same act compel newspaper proprietors to return to tbe methods of Oaxton 1 Why not even forbid printing altogather, since it di»places a vast number of respectable scrivener*? And Mr Muir would not only clap a prohibitive duty on !'. linotypo typesetter*,", he would make newspaper proprietors pay full rates for all telegrams. Hb evidently has a vague idea that Dew.tpaper proprietors publish telegrams for their own pleasure or amns&menr, just as people wickedly rida by train when thay ought to go by c?ach and thus belp a vast number of very respectable coacbbuilders — or walk, and thus encourage a va*>t number of very respectable cobblers. Surely Mr Muir's sympathies do sot stop at oompositora?

To listen to Mr Muir is to believe that the State makes some g<eat concession to owners of newspapers by allowing them to receive telegraphic news at reduced rate?. Mr Muir may rest his soul ia peace. If it did not pay tbe State to do it, it would not be done. It is the duty of the State to retaliate, he gays, in tffec'", and it may do co in tbe event of certain things happening, snch as, for iuotance, the election of Mr Muir to Parliament. Well and good : we shall know what to expect should tbat remote contingency occar. In euch an event Mr Muir will, I am Bare, be ably seconded by Mr D. Nicol, whose election may be expected about ths sama time, and we may probably live to .Bee Mr Muir proposing and Mr Nicol seconding a resolution that sll labour caving machines are a menace to the State and an injury to a vast nnmbsr of -"respectable artisans." They will be oblivious of thefact tbat tbe respectable artisans. would not have been there at all but for labour saving machinery. Unhappily, the misfortune of all this is that Mr Muir should think so meanly of the intelligence of the elfc-ors as to imply that they can be fed with such " flapdoodle," which we are asßur^fi on niga authority is the food of fools. A m*n who alleges that he bas been reading and has made inquiries on the matter ought not to neglect the little preliminary ot making himself acquainted with the temperament and range of information of the persons he ifl anxious to serve in a senatorial capacity.

It eeemi I have innocently abraded one or more of the angularities of "Soot/'irbo in

unknown birds even in moral Ofcagol) admitted (hat they received 3Jol foreaoh arrest and sdol for each conviction. And (says our contemporary, with grim irony) " all ihl* was done ia die name of purs government aud righteous role."

Political feeling in the north seems to be running h'gh at present. PocsJbly it is tho warmer climate that mtkea matters more sultry there than in the southern part of the i colony. I have had forwarded to me a j report of an "interview " batwesn Sir R. 1 Stout and the representative of one of the : Wellington newspapers, in the cows* of whioh the doughty knight " walks into" Messrs Seddon and Go. pretty freely. 16 appears that the Premier, In bit recent speech at Oiaki, referred to the purchase of the dittriot railways in 1885 as a "job." Sir Robarfi waa one of the Minutry in 1885. and, straog^ly enough, he does not teeax altogether to lika being classed aa a "jobber." To do him justice, he does not in plain E gllgh call the Premier a liar, bat he g >es as near it as tha exigencies of polite language wili allow. He says that "the charge of jobbery is one of those misstatemanta for Trhicb r I am sorry to say, the Premier haa become so notorious"; and again, "I do not think there is a sirgfo statement accurate " either in the r-p-.ech or in the journal of-the | Piemier. He goes on to say that the figures given by the Pramior are all." absolafcely wrong," *nd winds' up by saying that such a charge (of jobbery) "',• comes only from the diseased imagination of one charged/ with poli'ical corruption, who imagines that by falsely accusirg other* tf jobbery bi* own misdeeds may escape condemnation!" Pretty stroDg language, ia it nor, for ona high priest of democracj to use towards^ a brother demagogue. CiviS.