THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2287, 30 December 1897, Page 29

THE WEEK.

WITH WHICH IS INCOUPOBATHD THH SOUTHERN HEHCU&Y.

(THURSDAY, DECEMBER SO, 1597.)

" Kunquam aliud natural, aiiud san'ientia dixit." — Juvicstu "Good nature ami good \ease must ever joiu." — For*.

Members of Parliament, and more erpecially members of Ministries, are in End of the the habit of talking as if the Session. general public summed up

the results of a session in terms of bills and motions. The mistake is a natural one— the ideas of parliamentarians having for several weeks been drilled into line with standing orders and euch like — but a mistake it is. The average critic, when asked what he thicks oE the last (or any} session, answers for the most part in a way which shows that he has been impressed rather with the general " hang " of things as evidenced in Welling* on than by any details of the proceedings. This condition of thiDg3 must be more than ever marked on an occasion like the present, when it is for once about as true as it is ever likely to be that Parliament has " done nothing." Members of Parliament would no doubt be much pained if they realised how often they are credited, after months of labour— usually, too, with more or less real results, good or bad — with having " done nothing." This time there has in reality been veiy little done, and therefore the tendency to sum up the whole business rather accordicg to wha,t the proceedings have indicated than to any formal results they may have shown will be accentuated. Thus with regard to the position of the Ministry, for instance, it is quite hopeless for Mr Saddon to attempt to bluff people off their inevitable conclusions by quoting this or that bill which has met with such and such treatment. All Mr Ssddon says might be true, and yet would not affect the general instinctive perception, that .greed and revenge have been

the cardinal principles actuating the leading members of the Ministry throughout the session. The instances of greed have been truly painful — the scandalous struggle of Ministers to retain by the vol;e3 of their party, and even by their own personal votes, the foreign hire which binds them to the syndicates which find them so useful being to our mind far more demoralising than the cool claim by Mr Seddon for some two or three thousand pounds in extras for purposes which he has totally failed to explain. The prostitution of public power for purposes of private Blander and revenge has been carried to an extent which even 12 months ago would have been incredible, and the Ministry threaten that the end is not yet. It is still questionable whether to these things may not be added a crafty scheme to doll the national system of education to its enemies in return for a fixed price in the shape of political support. We are not saying that these things are the points that most people ought to pick out by which to remember the session of 1597 ; we are merely recording the fact that those are the points they will pick out. Horowhenua, the fraudulently unpaid costs, the £1750 claim, the £51 S demand, the Barns scandal, the infamous persecution of Judge Kettle, the Ministerial fight for syndicatial hire — these are the thiDgs of which you hear from the man in the street, whatever his sympathies and whatever his politics. The Banking BjII, like last year's, was an all but confessed sham, and the State Fire Insurance Biil in its present shape is about as real as a Christmas pantomime ; nobody ever really heeded either. Aa regards the O.d Age Pensions Bill, which is the one measure that did arouse interest, it is bard to find (except at tbe end of wires that are pulled by Ministers themselves) anyone who really regrets that the Legislative Council have insisted upon a further consideration of the measure. Ministers have no right dump down before Parliament bills which in form are utterly incomprehensible and in scope are absolutely chaotic, and then shuffle out of their responsibilities by seeking to throw them on the shoulders of men who are serious enongh to require a measure to be workable even btfore it is popular. The session has been to Ministers a thoroughly humiliating one, and they must be inexpressibly relieved to see at lafct the backs of those members who are real representatives of the people and not the expectant hangers-on of the distributors of spoils.

Either the Public Trust Office will have to be remodelled in certain not very Queen's radical directions or a growEvidence. icg disinclination must be

txpected towards makirg use of the facilities it oilers. The report of the present Public Trustee, who has been in office a little more than a year, is very frank upon certain drawbacks to the proper administration of sffidrs by his department. His frankness is to be commended ; but, having been indulged in, it involves facing one or other of the alternatives we have mentioned. -The matter, of office accommodation, which is made a ground of complaint by Mr Martin, can doubtless be adjusted wichouc much trouble. There is always a time when a growing business tends to overtake its housing arrangements; and wise men usually piefer to suffer a certain amount of inconvenience for a few years while the crowding i>p process is going on, so that when charges are made they may be thoroughly adapted to more or less permanent conditions. The only point in the present growing confusion that appears to want immediate attention is that private business must, the trustee says, at present be discussed at a public counter in the presence of any persons who may be waiting in the office. We cannot admit that utider any conceivable conditions this would be inevitable. It is a thing that there is a way to get over in every case where the will exists, and, pending the alterations' he desires, the Public Trustee should arrange to obviate it in the way that private people would in their own cffices. The really important defect in the arrangements of the office is that, according to the trustee himself, private estates placed in his care by will or otherwise are virtually seized upon as so many milch cows for providing office eu3tenarice in respect of wdrk " with which those estates have nothing whatever to do." Parliament is continually placing new duties upon the Public Trust office without making provision for any part of the cost of. executirg such duties. The result isthat, as Mr Martin tells us with all the naive frankness of the infantile burglar in the domestic storeroom, " the estates placed ia the office have to pay for this work ; and, again, " the work under these [vpecifiea] acts is really paid for by the private estates which are placed in the office. This, I cannot think, was the intention of Parliament." We should think not, indeed. If is a pleasant revelation this, made on the highest authority, to the confiding persons who are attracted by the seductive advertisements issued by the office. Pleasant, too, to think that every client of the Public Trustee is going to be requisitioned pro rata for the costs of woiking off the Hon. John M'Keczie's spite against a private enemy, whenever those costs, ab present fraudulently and illegally withheld under cover of a miserable legal quibble, come to be paid, Mr Martig, has made his confessions with amazirg candour, for which he is doubtless to be commended, but, as we have said, having made them— and they are virtually not so much confessions as Queen's evidence against Ministers—matters cannot possibly be left where they are.

The last Federal Council brought Australian

Federation clearly within, the Easy to Hold, pale of practical politics. It

worked, for the first time, with enthusiasm, its debates attained a high level of patriotism, and its manifestations of local jealousies were reduced to a minimum — outwardly, at any rate. When it separated we were for the first time impressed with the notion that actual business was meant, and might even in time eventuate. The financial difficulty was shelved for separate solution — possibly by the unborn Federal Parliament itself; the great crux of " State rights" was made the subject of a satisfactory compromise (rather too complicated to be now reproduced here) ; and the tariff question was deliberately relegated to tbe future Assembly of United Australia. Thus the

way was really cleared of the worst difficulties; and in all this work the tono of the dißcugsions had been almost uniformly high. During the months that have since elapsed, however, it has once more become evident that as yet the Australians are not eDgaged in nation-building, though some of their statesmen may be. The Australasian, a convinced apostle of the movement, writes gloomily of "The Destiny of Australia" in the last received number, declaring that "it is notorious that the Federal Convention, elected by the people at large, has found its most captious critics in the local Legislatures," a remark which we have frequently made ourselves in these columns iv commenting on former assemblings of the Federal Council. " The general impression is conveyed," our contemporary says, " that obstruction rather than help is to be expected from the existing Legislatures, and that the hope of federal union lies in the determination of the people." The immediate causes of these lugubrious reflections are the passiDg in New South Wales of an act providing that 80,000 positive votes for Federation (absentees thus counting against) must be given in that colony before the principle can be affirmed ; and the laying aside of the Queensland Enabling Bill owing to " a local controversy which bad nothing on earth to do with the true issue." Well, we can only say that all. Ibis e eems to leave* things much where they were a year or two ago. The symptoms have not improved after all. Our disappointed contemporary must know perfectly well that it is futile to talk of "the determination of tbe people" being able to drive unwilling Legislatures into smoothing the road for federation. No such determination exists. It is, as we have often said, a statesmen's movement; the people as a whole, if not hostile, are indifferent. They can be led to the goal, or cheered on to it ; but they will never take charge and bolt there. If the Legislatures are, aB the Australasian says, bent on obstruction, they will find they can restrain the most " determined " people in Australia with a sfcrand from a spider's web.

We are in the presence apparently of the long - predicted continental The Bear move upon the rich inheriin the tance of China. Tho position China Shop. j a intensely interesting, not only on account of the enormous stakes in the game and the grave involvement of British interests, but because of the play of forces as between the continental Powers themselves which the Eastern developments seem about to bring into view. European diplomacy entered upon a new era with the St. Petersburg negotiations of the present year. President Faure's visit to the Czir having teen made a fixture, the German Emperor devoted himself to tbe atnicspatory. destruction of the French President's bopep. He got to St. Petersburg first, and be and the Czar toasted each other to thsir hearta' content, and generally bad-what seemed to be an exceedingly friendly time — the Kaiser ultimately having only just time to gt;E clear of Russian waters beforß the French warships with the President on bosrd'hove in eight. Then the feasiing was renewed with the newcomer; ami finally the Cz?.r sent an electric tbrill through the heart of France, actVin some degree through the-nerves 6£ all Europe, by referrlr-g to -Russia and Frar.ce as i; naiions alliets" a phrase which, however, according to a prompt comment by Pri&ce Bismarck, does not necessarily bear tbe translation " allied nations." Since then the Dual Alliance has been generally looked upon aa a fact, though 4 fficial Germany haß distinctly gone out of its way to hint in mysterious fashion that it could tell the world something about that if it chose. Now it seems that China has been pitched

upon as the scene of the final avowals for

which Europe has been looking. Germany, it seems pretty clear, went to Kiao-chan under a thorough understanding with Russia, and now openly boasts that if other nations

question her claims Russiau support is already

assured to her. Russia has warned the Japanese out of Weihaiwei, politely offering

to find the money which their occupation ot that stronghold is supposed to secure. Meanwhile the accentuation 'of anti-German feeling in Austria consequent on the threatened split in the Austro-llungarian compact has sensibly weakened the solidarity of the Triple Alliance, and so Viennese newspapers are clamouring for tbeir Or svernment to take separate action in China. France is frankly bewildered at the Russo-Garman position, aa well she may be, and " senda a cruiser to China" — which is oce of thoEe things that

Governments do when they have not the

slightest idea what it going to happen, and are simply atxious to appear pretercaturally

wise without committing themselves in any

way. Japan has probably recognised that she has received a serious warning to the effect that the absurd pretensions in which she indulged under the natural stimulus of her victories do not suit Russia and bad

better be abandoned. Her statesmen are holding Cabinet Councils, and England will hear from them in due course, but probably with no result. The ad qaata protection of t xisting British interests in China will probably be found no difficult task while tbe jsalousies of the Continental nations continue, though the Russian claim that Russian guarantees of Chinese finance give that country immense moral rights cannot be withstood. As for the affections of the Chinese Government — at present said to be centred on the Czar — they are a very unsubstantial element in any position. Matters, of course, are not yet by any means developed, but it is already clear that the Kiaocbau occupation means a new epoch in tbe history of China if not indeed of that of Europe itself.

One of the undeveloped possessions — we can hardly say resources — of this country is a varied assortment of earthquakes, all magnitudes and intensities, tbe available stock of which is apparently inexhaustible, though the output is pretty nearly continuous. " Sir James Heclor, who has been discoursing fa his usual pleasantly instructive style on the subject, tells us that we have not hitherto made the most of our advantages in this respect. Other countries similarly endowed have provided themselves with automatic seismic recorders — the rather portentouslooking phrase merely means a machine in which,, as it were, you pat a peony in the

slot and the earthquake does -the rest — an# &ro in a position to exchange congratulation* (strictly, we should imagine, of the scientific! variety) with each other from time to tim«. 3 ! Everyone must have been struck with .the glorious multiplicity of directions, intensities^ and characteristics generally of our earthquakes aa recorded in press telegrams from "oar own correspondents" everywhere. From these records it would occasionally seem that a given earthquake arrives from every point of the compass at once, and it is no wonder that we have been nnable to impress the scientific staffs of other countries with the reality of this unique property of tho New Zealand ear tb quake. Sir James announces, howover, that two sets of up to-date recorders are on tbeir way our, so that in a short time we shall be in a position to exactly compare the local article with the foreign one, and our meteorological office will have a chance to learn how to predict a shake. This ig a very desirable move on the part of onr slender official staff of scientists. It ought to have been effected long ago, and whoever the Minister was that first recognised the necessity ought to be complimented.

We sgree with the Chamber of Commerce that the time' has arrived for a material reduction in the cable rates. When the Hon. HrWard was Postmaster-general be effected a very substantial cheapening of the tariffs to Europe and Australia, a service we warmly acknowledged at the time. The community has remained contented at that for, some years, and is cow .entitled to a further readjustment in the same direction should that be found to be practicable. Mr Seddon's claim to have cheapened freights wa& largely bogus — the cheapening having, as a matter of fact, taken place before he thought of any steps in the matter at all — but the Postal Conference in Tasmania, for attending which he charged the country £518, gave him an opportunity for initiating a really useful movement towards economy in communications of another kind; an opportunity of which he failed to avail himself. As a matter of fact, nobody that we have ever heard of has been able to suggest anything that the Postal Conference did or attempted Ito do, except draw its expenses. It do6s*not, moreover, seem to have been actuated by any urgent spirit of economy in doing that.

Mb Seddon's idea of "improving telegrapbic communication" is to pay somebody £500 of public money to send extravagantly laudatory telegrams Home to the Times about himself and his colleagues. These telegrams, he has now been forced to admit, are submitted for bis approval by the sender (whoso principals have £500 to loea by neglecting thU pleasant little ceremony), and having been duly altered "to suit " are despatched virtually at the cost of the colony. Thus we have at last an explanation of how it comes about that painful and cheerless incidents like Mr Seddon's " reception " in Wellington are represented > at Home as frantic popular rejoicing*, while the Ward revelation?, which transcended all previous political scandals in New Zealand,' were described as almost reflecting actual credit uptin the political managing director. "This," said one member, when it was announced that tho cost was only £500, "i« cheap." . Tbe irony did not prevent the passing of the item, but it rerveel to indicate what Mr Seddon's idea of the true direction of cheapening oable messages is. It is to glorify himself ,and shield bis erring friends, and charge the cost (which in. such cases should be^ paid by himself) to the colony. He now propc ses to add a further arrangement, also virtually at the cost of the colony, for preventing " the Opposition pre&s " from getting telegrams sent over the public wires tending to reveal unpleasant truths about Ministerial doings. "The Cabinet would consider during the recess " how to curtail the facilities at . present existing for loosening the grip of the present Ministers upon tbe sweets of effice. Perhaps our telegrams are also to be submitted to Mr Seddon for approval before being despatched to us. Then we should only have further to get The Wsek visi by a local press inspector prior to publication in order to make all things comfortable and happy for our subscribers.

Oon Auckland correspondent comments upon the indifference with which the news was received of the death of Wahanui — last of the Maniapoto chiefs. The time has been, ' he truly remarks, when colonists opened their morning paper eager for an indication of WahanuiV views ; jetto the present generation the' old Maori's very name only suggests an effort to collect some fleeting and evasive memory. Our correspondent is ' light ; but the fact is on the whole not to be deplored. It simply belongs to a whole department of colonial history which is now hardly more than history, and happily not current history in any sense. We are far from meaning that the old days and the old troubles should be forgotten — on the contrary, we have frequently deplored the faofr that the pioneers of this country have no sufficient honour in these piping times of peace, — but that it should be possible to forget the ; scenes in which Wabanui was doncerned is indicative of the almost total disappearance of a trouble which in those old days led to so, terrible and so constant an outpouring of blood and treasure. The man himself was not fit to hold a candle to such men as Rewi or Wiremu Tamihans, any mora than either of the " kings " themselves were; but he typified a system which was very much and very threateningly alive once, and the utter decay of which is strikingly manifested by the fact that he could die and be buried almost without a white man turning his head towards the open grave.

— Maud : " How is Mr Blushman getting along 1 Has he proposed yet ? " Edith : " No, but he is improving. The first night he called be held tbe album in his bands all tho evening ; the second night.be had my pdg dog in his arms ; last night he held Willie on his lap for an hour. I have hopes."

— Hia Happy Thought. — Blink*: "Beg pardon, sir, but I think you have my umbrella there." Stranger: "Your umbrella, sir 1 Of course, it may be ; you know how umbrellas change hands. Ha, ha 1 Permit: me to restore it." Blinks (to himself, walk* ing away) : " Those happy thoughts of mine are simply inspiration*. M» naabrella I Hat ha! bal'- 1