PASSING NOTES,

Otago Witness, Issue 2250, 15 April 1897, Page 3

PASSING NOTES,

(From Saturday's Daily Times.) Mb W. A. W. Wathkn's desire to break a lance with me in honour of St. George of England cannot be accommodated. Not on any terms ! A foeman more worthy of bis steel may be found in Gibbon, of the "Decline and Fall." After exterminating Gibbon, Mr Watten may give bis attention to the other authorities on the subject — Hogg and P^gge and Pott. I am not romancing ; these are really the names. St. George has been discussed by Hogg in papers read before the IlDyal Sjciety of Literature; by Pegge before the London Society of Antiquaries (whose anniversary is held on St. George's Day) ; by Pott in his " Antiquities of Windsor and History of the Order of the Garter." It is net a tilt with "Oivis" — whence no honour is to be won — that I recommend to Mr Wathen, but a literary waltz with Hogg and Pegge and Pott, with whose honourable names he may perhaps be able to associate his own. In thus dismissing him I may express my sympathy •with his aversion to the Cappadocian pork butcher, who never killed any dragon, though he may have killed pigs. I prefer with Mr Wathen the other George, the saint who pulled dfwa a Government advertisement, for which "sublime audacity" the Seddon of the day caused him to be " roasted to death." How this entitled him to become the patron saint of England is a point Mr Wathen must settle with his Hoggs and Pcgges and Potts.

Looking up the proper authorities on this momentous subject, I find that the Georges whose doingß or misdoings entitle them to mention in ecclesiastical dictionaries are 73 — no less. If England, being an old country, must have an old saint as patron, and if his name must be George, any one of this very mixed lot w ouli setve as well as any other. There is not an Englishman amongst them. nor even an Ancient Briton ; most of them were Asiatic Greeks, some Armenians ; none of them ever did anything for England. Nor can I make out that e'er a one of them ever saw a dragon. Ia 1349, King Edward 111, fighting near Calais, ejaculated Hal St. Edward, Ho ! St. George ; whereupon his troops, inspirited by this remarkable exclamation, charged with fury and routed the French. From that time St. George, of

whom the Kiuis't, ciusadiDj,' forbear* had h°ard in tha Eist, became the patron saint of England, his rival, St. Edward the Oonfesgor, being only a native saint and for that reason less esteemed by Normans and Plnn- ' tagenets. Si io comes about that in New Zealand, 500 years after, we keep holiday in horour of Sr- George. It must be re- '. membered, however, to our credit that vre ' are prepared to keep holiday for less than ' ; that, I J The three new legislative Councillor*, W6 ; are told, have taken their seats — meditating . piously, no doubr, on ihe mysteries of Provii dsnce as represented by Mr Seddon. Kicked j out of the Lower House, they find themselves hoisted into the Upper ; rejected by the people, they have been specially chosen to honour by the Government. Thus under the Sedconian Providence a Seddonian Liberal is made to see that his political misfortunes may ba blessing < in disguise. ; Only let him be faithful, and — one war or | another — bis calling and election shall be made sure. Ie ia melancholy to refhct, however, that the atmosphere of the Upper I House is not favourable to fidelity. We ! have had it officially announced as the reason ' for creating t&ese ihrea new lords that Mr Saddon's former creations have gone bad on his bands, so to speak. They " have developed Conservative tendencies." Naturally enough Change the environment cf any animal and . that animal itself must change; — it is the first law of evolution. Send a needy democrat into the Upper H-ius?, permit him to oreathe an armosphere of privilege, monopoly, irresponsibility ; cocker him up by punctual payments from the Scate treasury, snd what can you expect him to become but a sleek Conservative. This development cannot be stayed, bur. il may be delayed ; and that is why Mr Seddon has descended lower thin time than ever before, — even to the disconßolates rejected at the polls. •. These will have more to be grateful for and further to travel. Bu». they will get there all the same. What- Mr Ssddon calls 14 Liberals " change in the Upper House into what Mr Seddon calls " Conservatives " as inevitably as tadpoles change into frogs.

I do not know of any clear reason .for which we should think with respect of the people ot Crete. The Apostle Paul remarked of them in his day that one of themselves bad said "The Cretaus are always liar?, evil beasts, slow belliee," and addp, probably out of hia own knowledge, " This witness ia true." Though not exactly the latest historical reference to Crete, this is probably the lnteßt that any of us remember, and it conveys an unfavourable impression. " Slow oeliies," though obscure, i* distinctly opprobrious. Th? Cretans, or fome cf them, are said to be Christians : on the other hand, t^e rest are undoubtedly Moslems. This distinction, thoagh a vital one in Crete at the present moment, is n-ot very patent to the impartial observer. Ir. seems a oasp of 11 Cas ar and Pompey berry much klike ; specially Pompey." Hatred between them is strictly reciprocal ; Christian and Moslem massacre each other with equal good will. Nevertheless we are all clear in our minds, I fancy, that the Moslem ought to go. And from this point of view I am unable to see, as Mr Cuizjn of the Foreign Office 6ees, the moral grandeur of the attituae adopted by the Powers; nor do I find it pleasant, reading when tbe telegrams report British warships as shelling Christian villages in the interests of the Turk. The less said about morality the better. It is hardty worth while playing the hypocrite over so plain a business. The Powers, one and all, would be delighted to evict the Turk, not only from Crete, but from Europe. They don't do it, because they are afraid of each other ; in dividing his possessions and goods they would inevitably come by the ears. The situation is a " great moral Bpectacle " indeed, but in an inverse way.

It is a moot point whether any honour or the reverse has been done to the memory of Mr Ballance by erecting a statue to him in the grounds of Parliament House. As a work of art the statue is slightingly spoken of, and there is the usual deficiency in the balance sheet. Mr Ballance is more fortunate in one respect than Burns, whose Danedin statue waß detained in pawn until the artist was paid. And, besides, the inscription is about as senseless and unmeaning as anything that could possibly emanate from the brain of a political crank. The information that Mr Baliance " loved the people" will be about as interesting to posterity as the circumstance that Mr Ballancs had corns, or that he was particularly' partial to chops and tomato sauce. If the inscription had named one single thing he did for the people it would have been different. The

author ot the jargon .was evidently unaware that he was casting a slur on the present generation, for the implication is that Jove for the people is such a rare thing that we give statues to those who possess it. A politician's love for the people is akin to that of a cannibal for missionary, or that of , a boaconstrictor which embraces its victim ' for the purpose of making it more easy of ' de^latitioc. Was it not a member cf the female bodyguard of one of the early ' Georges wfco called out to the murmuring crowd : " Mine frents, ye haf come : for your goots — for all your goot3 1 " , "Yes, and our chattels too," replied | a. surly proletarian. It is not detract- I ing from Mr Ballance's worth to say ; that a dczen men could be named in New Zealand who are more deserving of a statue than be. Parliament ought to see to this. Mr Seddon, in particular, ought to prepare for seme such contingency.

We have been so accustomed to regard Mr Ward in connection with the dry financial disquisitions of the Treasurership that he hap been denied the credit for literary ability to which he is entitled. A correspondent sends me an extract from Mr Ward's own trade journal which was formerly published by him and was designated the Southland Farmer. Here are a few gems :—: — 1 hive never had, in connection with my own operations, the use of capital which has non been fully s^cured to those from whom I gob it. It has bcea my privilege to bring into life and put on a stable footing no le^s than six independent businesses and industries, and I am proud to kcow that every one of them has succeeded, and that ther are proving lucrative investments to those concerned in them. Are you a shareholder in the <T. G-. Ward Farmers' Association (Limited) P If not, it will pay you to become oue at once. ' We are always going ahead. Join us, and keep in the front. The bs^t you can make afc the present tima is to take five shares in the J. Q. Ward A-ssociation (Limited). These selections from Mr Ward's literary f fissions prove how completely he missed his vocation.* He was. evidently intended by nature to be constantly giving away bargains, or making astounding sacrifices, all for tbe love of humanity. Such people are always desperately in a hurry. Audit cannot bo that they are hastening to get rich, for I never yet met one of them who succeeded. These are the people who deserve statues.

It seems we have not heard the last of the Mulvaney correspondence, and the correspondence between Mr Saddon and Mr Hislop showß the Premier in a new light. Hitherto innuendo has not been numbered among the weapons in his political armoury. At a meeting at the Hutt he jocularly stated that his letters must b« gettlDg valuable, sines he rmd heard thai" L4O was given for one of them. Mr Hislop promptly picked up the glove, but M' - Seddon finds himself too much engrossed in public business to continue the correspondence. Hence still another valuable quality — that of discreHon — has been discovered in the Premier. He is evidently not destined to have it said about him that The f-v'A that men do live s after them, The good is oft inferred with their bones — for his virtues are being manifested in this life. It is only reasonable to suppose that he will not have to wait four years for a statue as Mr Billance did. He may even have the pleasure of seeing his own counterfeit presentment on the lawn at Parliament House. And this leads me to ask why it is that statues are seldom erected until after the death of the original. It may be objected that it might be afterwards necesaarj either to pull down the statue or alter the inscription, just as it is considered prudent to tako an undertaking from colonial knights that, in the event of certain things coming to pass, they will return the insignia. Bat the people's B chard is above such considerations. Why not complete the group of statues by adding those of all tbe members of the Ministry that " saved the country"? Mr E=eve» might be represented in a kneeling attitude typifying his adoration of the working man, Mr M'Kenzie in the act of heaving a pickle jar, Mr Seddon trampling the insigoia of the Order ot Sf:. Michael and St. George, and Mr Ward in the act of signing a promissory note.