THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Volume 14, Issue 2276, 14 October 1897, Page 29

THE WEEK.

11 Nunqutm &ltud natural, aliud sapicntli dixit."— Juvinal. "dood nature and good sense must ever join." — Pop*. The Legislative Council Speakership is perbapß the very best and finest The thing which the colony has First Prize, in its gift. It is an office which carries with it a minimum of work and responsibility combined with a maximum of pay. Among its minor privileges, which are many, the certainty of a title sooner or later is nob to be despised. The Speaker of the Upper House has no pro- | tracted and wearisome debates to sit out, no all-night sittings to endure, no unruly or truculent members to keep in order, no difficult line of division to maintain between Ministers and ordinary members. His work not infrequently lasts from half -past 2 to 20 minutes to 3. during which interval he has to read prayers, put a motion that the Council do now adjourn, and declare it carried. We must hasten to add that a considerable amount of dressing and undressing is left out of this catalogue of the hon. gentleman's occasional duties ; but even allowing for this,' such a day's work — and there are several such in each session, sprinkled more or less with whole holidays and an occasional clear week thrown in — can hardly be considered an exhausting one. All election work is clear out of the provicce of this fortunate officer of Parliament — another great advantage that be possesses over his colleague below. Under these circumstances it is no wonder that the Hon. Mr Miller's < seat was eagerly challenged, by the two mcm-

i bers of the Council who thought they might be strong enough to wrest it from him. It is no secret in Wellington that a* high officer of one Of the religious bodies gave Mr Seddon to understand in£t~ 0n&0 n& -of the coveted block votes at next election depended" upon tbe presidency of the Council falling to a member of his faith ; but it appears that tbe Minister for Education considered himself bound to support Mr Miller, who on the third ballot just managed to squeeze in by one vote. We congratulate the hon. gentleman and condole with Mr Seddon, who has suffered an irritating defeat when he thought victory lay in his grasp. The course of the election was certainly singular. At the firpt ballot, when each member selects three names, Mr Miller seemed to be clear ahead ; but at the second, when again each member selects two names out of the three leading ones, he fell into a serious minority. At the third, when once more every member of the' Council takes his choice between the two " runnera-up," Mr Bonar was beaten by a nose, the Government being in the same plight. The Council and the oountry will no doubt approve this satisfactory result.

The member for Wakatipu (Mr William

Fraier) appears to have Bushy Park devoted the whole of his

in speech on the Address- inParlinment. Raply to making the best

explanation he could of his share in the Bushy Park transaction. It appears that in the north Mr Fraaer'a name has been largely joined to those of the Premier (as seller) and the Minister for Lands (as virtual buyer) in certain unpleasant comments upon the affair. We have not noticed that down here any great stress was laid upon Mr Eraser's share in the matter, though we can hardly be surprised to learn from him that here and there it has come into notice. Mr Fraser's defence, judgiDg by the telegraphic reports, seema to have been a singularly weak one. A great deal of it was devoted to showing that £8 per acre was a fair price for the land. So far at any rate as this journal is concerned, we have from the first repudiated any concurrence with the exaggerated value placed upon Bushy Park by some of the more virulent commentators on the affair. But the fact remains that £10 per acre is known to have been specifically offered for it, and that fact settles the question whether (quite apart from the matter of the extraordinarily lenient terms arranged in the M'Kenzie transaction) it was right on the part of the j trustees to sell it for £8. We are surprised | that a gentleman of Mr Fraser's intellie' n^a should Beriously pub forward the plea tki prior to its disposal the property had batn advertised for sale. This pretence has been disposed of again and again, and it is really not worth the desperate devotion with which thoßs responsible for the transaction continually cling to it. The advertisement iv question was a mere announcement of two or three lines to the effect that the Assets Board had properties for sale and was prepared to receive offers for them. Bmhy Park was not mentioned in a specific way; and the advertisement, such as it was, only appeared for a brief period, and was withdrawn many months before the sale to the Messrs M'Kenzie. Mr Eraser skilfully describes the csmments mada on this point as complaints that the advertisement was inserted "in obscure papers." We have never se9n any such complaint ; the obscurity was not effected in that way vat all. With regard to the curious terms arranged, all Mr Fraser has to say is that for good reasons he was prepared to offer exceptionally easy terms to dispose of the property. Had the public, then, any intimation of that fact 1 It is not pretended that they had. The discovery of tha " exceptionally eaiy terms " available in this particular saee was sot made till Mr M'KoDzie's offer came in ; the other inquirers, of whom Mr Fraser admits there were " any numbsr," were never told about them. It is questionable whether a board appointed to dispose of certain assets was justified in disposing of them by lease at j all without first doing its best to find somebody among the "any number of inquirers" who would purchase and pay a reasonable proportion in cash ;• and at any rate no one had any idea that the board was prepared to listen to such a suggestion from inquirers ; generally. Of course there are political 1 aspects of the matter outside those with | which Mr Fraser dealt, some of which are 1 urged with considerable emphasis in the locality itselF, while others were pretty plainly stated by various speakers in the debate on the Address. The tendency on the part of Mr Fraser, Mr M'Kenzie himself, and other apologists for this most improper and all but corrupt transaction hag been throughout the discussion to avoid the most obvioudy questionable points and to concentrate the defence upon issues hardly worth raising one way or the other. Mr M'Kenzie's own defence would have been considerably better worth listening to had he not coupled with it the now hopeless task of actually defending the Pomahaka scandal. As it is, one cannot but feel that if, at this time of day, and in the face of what the public now know, he doggedly goes on saying that the Pomabaka purchase was a straight and proper transaction, very little importance need be attached to what he thinks or says about the rectitude of the Bushy Park one.

Mr Seddon'e attitude over the decision of the Ward Committee is exceed-

Sour! ingly amusing.

After resort-

ing to every kind of intrigue to secure to a committee nominated by himself the right to perform the parliamentary whitewashing of his ex-colleague, and almost openly exulting at bis success, the Premier came down to the committee with the resolution he intended it to pass in his pocket. Having, by a discreditable piece of trickery which the generosity of his opponent bad left open to him, literally sneaked into the chair, he considered that the rest of the business was a mere matter of form, as was the case in the Pomahaka and Banking Committees and other notorious transactions of the kind. His chagrin at the discovery that he was not going to have his own way was, as everybody connected with Parliament knew in 24 hours, only equalled by that of his colleague the Minister for Lands — these two having by this time doubtless intimated to their " pal " that things were now all right, and that he might rest satisfied that the doors of. Parliament would almost immediately

be thrown! open to him. The Premier's native audaoity, however, the course of which is seldom impeded by considerations of mere accuracy, did not desert him. Having been disastrously flouted in the ..little arrangement he had concocted for compromibln^th? honour of Parliament, the Premier took refuge in br»7^?- He declared, amid the ironical cacbinnations ot both sides of the House, that the decision of the committee was exactly what he had desired from the first. We were all familiar with this kind of thing in childhood's happy days. It used to take place in the infant class of the lower school, when questions of ; toffee and marbles had not been resolved exactly in the direction desired by an infantile Seddon of the day. It may be read of as occurring -in even remoter times, the Premier being for the purpose typified by a certain fox who made the mistake of imagining himself to be boss of a vineyard and of the natural laws of the locality. Such manifestations are, however, hardly looked for among grown men, much less among veteran politicians. We need hardly say that we commend the decision itself, as tending to a responsible determination of an interesting question. But we must once more repeat that Mr Ward's case is not covered by the order of reference, and that we cannot re r cogciee that any general decision, in whatever direction it may be given upon the points reserved, can settle a oase so entirely special as that of the managing director of the Ward Association.

Daan Fitchett, in a farther letter to the Daily Times, has entered into A Forlorn a somewhat detailed explanaIlope. tion of hie plan for meeting the educational difficulties oreated by the varying demands of the sects — namely, to " grant them all." The Dean, however, frank to the l&st degree as before, prefaces the unfolding of his scheme by declaring that it will not satisfy the religious bodies as such.' " The solution suggested in my last letter," this most utterly candid of oomplainants avows, " that the State should concede all three demands [denominationalism, clerical instruction in school houre, find Scripture lessons by tho teachers] would, I have reason to believe, be denounced ■a* unsatisfactory by all parties alike." We also hare every reason to believe this ; bufci vre must add, what the Dean apparently does not believe or does not realise, that it would be j as unsatisfactory to the public at large, j which approves of the present system, a» to the religious bodies, which condemn it. "It is in these circumstances," Dean' FUchett proceeds, after emphasising the crucial j admission just quoted, " that tha press should be appealed to." But why? If for the moment we waive the obvious consideration that a change to which the secular and religious elements in tha community are alike opposed is unlikely to find enthuriastic advocacy among those who conduct the various organs of public opinion, to what and is the force of the press to be directed 1 Can Dean Fitcbett, whose letters so abun-' dantly show that we can trust him to gloss over nothing and to make no pretesices, give to the' press — give, for instance, to this journal, whose criticism he has most Efenerously received — an assurance that the,ra is a possibility of the combined resistance of the religious bodied to his scheme being overcome by argument proceeding from the secular press 1 If he cannot, in what direc- ! tion does he perceive the possibility of effective help from the , press — the existing | difficulty being solely that; arising from the i dissatisfaction of the religious bodies, which Dean Fitchett declares would be in "no way I lessened by the adoption of his scheme 1 If i he can, and does, we can only regretfully express our emphatic disiont from such a : conclusion. The press has before now I tackled public opinion, religious and irrelii gions, in many departments of social and political economy, and has doubtless scored some successes. But here is a case where it is expected to satisfy a demand for organic change by advocating a course of action to which those who make the demand are, on tbe authority of their chief exponent, as resolutely hostile as are those upon whom the demand is made. Tbe artificial separation of press from public which the Dean here imagines is in itself practically impossible. But if it were not, the Dean's letters themselves negative all hope of useful results from the enterprise upon which he urges the press to embark. He hinißelf has written over the doorway the Dantef que inscription, " Lasoiaie ogni speranzx, vol oh' entraie."

If the earnest and anxious attention of her Majesty's subjects everywhere Indian has not for the past six Troubles. months been accorded to

events of tbe tirst importance occurring in hlr Indian Empire, what has been called " the Imperial sentiment " mutt be a hollow thing indeed. Famine, pestilence, earthquakes, fanatical murders, and a rebellion on a serious scale have together tiied to the utmost the stability and success of our rule in the great dependency ; and the end is not yet in sight. On the surface, it would perhaps appear that a widespread and most disheartening indifference prevails, at any rate in these more distant colones, to the tremendous difficulties of our countrymen in India, and to the terrible strain — physical, mental, and financial— involved in the problem of meeting and overcoming them. But we are inclined to ascribe the general coolness on the subject to another and more honourable reason. We believe that if the public sentiment wero carefully analysed it would be found that neither interest, nor sympathy, nor appreciation are really wanting, but that as a matter of fact tha handful of our countrymen who hold India for the Empire have so impressed our people with the idea of their ultimate failure in meeting trouble being impossible that a calm certainty as to the eventual outcome is more pronounced in English minds than anxiety concerning the intermediate steps between disaster and reparation. If, however, we are entitled to claim on behalf of colonists that their general reticence, instead of being attributable to coldness, is really to be referred to a confidence which does more honour to the administrators of India than the most effu-' sive professions of sympathy and admiration, it still remains as difficult as ever to explain tbe less cegativ* impatience of the House of

Commons itielf when confronted with th# necessity of devoting a few, hoars ttv the consideration of Indian affairs at this critical period in Indian history. It might have been supposed that for once at any rate thm House would have abandoned what has now, unfortunately, become its chronic attitude on " India night," and have shown a stirring; ~Z2* sympathetic interest in -the. story that Lord Gaorgo Hamilton had to tell of -thy famine, the plagne, and the frontier wars. So far from this being the case, the thin and exhausted Hog?« which faced the Secretary of State for India when making his annual Statement on August 6 was even more thin and more exhausted than on many previous occasions, and contained a greater percentage of Anglo-Indian and other cranks and bores, and a leis healthy leaven of earnest and broadminded critics, than may be considered the customary average in an Indian Budget audience. Contrasting, at this distance of time and space, the high Imperial interest of Lord George Hamilton's speech and the records of noble service to the Empire whiob it contained with the string of trivialities, fads, and flummery of which it was promptly made tbe theme, we can only stand amazed at the be:rayal — that these things involve — of a spirit of indifference and coldness in th.c heart of the Empire itself which ■, British colonists with all their outward complacency ' find it hard to understand.

The mystery of the rejection of\M£ Hutchison, by tbe inner circle of . tl^e, trades unions (and therefore by the Government) in favour' of Mr Gourley becomes deeper when the speeches of the two men are compared. We have no great opinion of either of them in a political senee, and are not interested in exalting one against the other, but we are bound to say that while Mr Hutchison's was the speech of a politician — we do not say a stateaman — Mr Gourley's was the patter of a badly-schooled dummy. No one who heard, or has read, the two speeches could doubt which of the two " Liberal " candidates would be better able to speak and act for the city. As for " claims," they were all on Mr Hutohiion's side before either spoke. There can be no doubt .that Mr Hutchison has been treated with tbe coolest treachery by a Government he has done hia best to keep in office ; and there can be as little that Mr Gourley owes a very large portion of tbe support he has secured to considerations quite apart. from, his personal suitableness. It is to be regretted that Mr Hutchison carried to excess tbe part he assumed of the faithful oanine follower wbioh licks the hand that has just ungratefully chastised it.

The occurrence of a . bye-election in tha city, the letters of a high dignitary of the Anglican Ohurch to the prais, and incidentally the little tergiversations of Mr Gourley in pliant response to certain requirements of electioneering expediency have again directed some local attention to the question of religious education.. In Victoria, where a general election is now goiog on, matters in this respect are alleged to have reached a decidedly acute.- stage. The advocates of religious education in 'the schools claim to have secured, the pledges of a majority of the 'members who have just been sent to 'the country for the adoption of a Scripture compilation as a school textbook, the duty of instruction therein to be a function of the teachers. The chief of the Roman Catholic body in the. colony/ has, of courie, followed np this, olaim by a denunciation of its unfairness to Catholic children, and the clergy of that communion are already pressing his Grace's views npon their flocks, in which proceeding they will have the sympathy of multitudes outside their own religious circle. 'The outcome of ifc all, recorded in the results of the general election (and after), will bo exceedingly interesting, and the interest will oartainlynot be confined to tha colony of Victoria itself. Meanwhile, tbe report of an officer of the Education Department who was despatched by the Government to examine the working of the New South Wales " religious textbook " system has supplied some decidedly suggestive comments upon the working of tha. scheme in the colony whose supposed virtuous stand in that respect is so often thoughtlessly quoted over here. A few extracts from MrStewart's report will not, we trust, be deemed by our readers to overburden this week's space by a too exclusive attention to one subject. . '

The general effect of Mr Stewart's report is to reveal the not unexpected fact that in the hands of the school teachers (who are not. selected for their capacity, or even aincerity, as religious instructors^ the so-called religious teaching is of a decidedly nebulous character. "The inculcation of biographical and. historical facts appears to have the place of; prominence in every lesson. Next in order of importance are the geographical allusions ; last, and apparently of least importance, may follow some moral lesson or lessons. As %. rule, the questioning was almost entirely directed to impress biographical, historical, and geographical facts, it being the exception to deal with ethical facts." He could not say that these lessons were religions in the true sense of tbe term. They were not taken at any particular hour of the day, and might be sandwiched between, say, the grammar and arithmetic hours. Mr Stewart concluded that, so far from religious teaching being carried out, it was absolutely avoided in these lesEons ; so that the children would conclude that the benefits of Scripture consisted r*ther in the conferring of knowladge concerning the rivers of ancient Palestine or the personal history of Methuselah, Abimelecb, and others than in anything connected with religious or moral improvement. Mr Stewart quotes one of the teachers a« confessing to him that, as treated in the schools, " the life of Christ would have no more influence on the minds of the childrea than, say, the life of Captain Cook " ; wbila several ministers of religion could go nofurther in praise of the system than to say "it was better than nothing." Even that appears doubtful to Mr Stewart, who was. evidently great'y struck by the facb that the " Scripture lessons " would induce/ the children to conclude that hu never desirable morality might be it could have r.» possible connection with Scripture. \m reiDonse to a itaUmeatfrom. the Mini»t« i£ ?•

Education in Victoria explaining that in ' that colony scriptural allusions in textbooks " must not be accompanied with comment " by the teacher. Archbishop Carr put the case against such a device in a nutshell. He said : " Whatever the children read was supposed to be intelligible to them, and was it to be supposed that these were the simplest lessons of the day's work? Rather were they not. .the most difficult? What. thsV f.ZM The object of the cbildrs^. reading them if they could not understand them ? " To which it may be added that, as expounded by either rigidly sectarian or by " agnostic " teachers, they would be apt to sow positive dissension among both parents and children.

The "Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company " has, it is announced, taken steps to protect its rights in New Zealand, and some good people appear to be expecting that the Telegraph department will shortly invite offers for several thousand tons of secondhand galvanised wire, " of no further nae to the owners." No such era is at present at hand. The Marconi invention is of considerable interest, and its evolution sbows high iDgenuifcy and skill. It is a distinct advance, from the point of view of practical promise, upon anything hitherto done in tbe »am« direction ; it can be made to work, in an experimental fashion, and undßr favourable condition?, at short distances. And that is about all that can yet be said. The particular nature of tha advance made by youßg Marconi is somewhat difficult to explain in _ other, thiui technical language. It consisfltin introducing - what is called the " relay " . -priociple into the art of receiving definite electrical effects from non -connected transmitters — an art which itself is as «ld as the discovery of the loadstone. The use of a " relay " is to put in force a strong electrical current by means of certain motions produced in a very light body by exceedingly ! weak one?. The light body is made to connect and disconnect a powerful battery and a" receiving instrument when it moves ; and it moves so easily that a current many thousand times weaker- than the current from ths battery so actuated is sufficient to '• wag " it about. Hitherto all systems of electric signalling without wires have been systems of direct action between transmitter and ultimate receiver, without the interposition of a relay. As there Is no limit to tbe power , of the current which the relay can set to work if you can only " wag " the relay itself, the essential character of the advance made by Ka-coni is sufficiently apparent. The i weakness of the invention as far as at present developed lies in the initial stage of j moving tbe relay — and, concurrently, in preventing other people from moving ie at the ■ tame time, with naturally confusing effects upon both relay and receiver. The whole thing is far from being worked oat yet. We shall hear plenty about it if. it ever is.