PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2526, 13 August 1902, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Diily Times.)

In appearance we are taking the Coronation a good deal on trust. The great event is to l»ear the date of Saturday. August the 9th, and for us that date has- come. T:i

New Zealand this piesent morning is the morning of Saturday, , August the 9th. But in London, where the King is and where the actual ceremony is to be, it is not morning, it is not Saturday, it is not August the 9th. The King and his Londoners are as yet not rid of Friday, August the Btb. For them, to-day i« not to-day, but yesterday, and to-morrow i.s to-day. For us, similarly and likewise, Saturday is Friday and Sunday is Satuiday. In these paradoxical and bewildering circumstances nothing seems left to us who are New Zealanders but to stick religiously to our August the 9th and crown the King by an act of faith. Which faitb will be justified, I don't doubt." Nevertheless, in case there should be any contentious and pernicketty person who desires to aigue, asserting that we ob^Tve the wiong day. 1 may point out that a British Kmpire day is not a mere sequence of 24 hour 1 !. That may be a Fietich day. a (reiman day, an American d«y. even an astronomical day : but it ib not a British day. A Britis-h day is 48 hours long exactly, not a second more lor le^^. (.'an I-piove it? — -of course I can prove it ; nothing easier.

Take ;!<■■ an pxaniple tb'^ sime fateful Saturday, though any other d.iy of the week would do as well. 1 -uppose "\\e may say that m Buhmi Uni'tiiy it i> v British Saturday. Well, wlun in London the fii*t moment of Sat ui day .uii\-- them will be already have bi-fn 12 houis nf Satuid.«y to the KaMwaid: ulicn .t/ium. in the mdip London 24 hmirf- Liter I 'ie la^t momput of Saturday :uin\>-, liicie will iiiwin and will follow 12 hours ir.oie <■! the sime Saturday to tl.e \Y< s>tw.»r<l. 'Hip, whole of it Biiti*h Satin dny. «>b*eivp, becau'-f m Briti.sh teintoiy both w.n-. Add tlie<-e figuies to^Pthpr. and yen tlie Mirpi i^;n^ scientific 'fait that a Bnii-h Km p. re day is 48 hows long For ihc j.utpote of crowning the King on a :mn d ite in all paitb of lm dominions we lpqune the whole of it and couldn't do with le<>>-. From this point of view our New Zeahu.d cekbi aliens aie, in time nnd luiigitudc, exactly rigiii. They have pl.i<_e, as the tt-ntral function itself ha<- place, on Saturday, August the 9th, which Satin day i" one and tjie same Coionation Saturday. continuous from hemispheie to hemi«plieie and A 8 horns long. This icfcult come<- a« a con^quence of our mere bignef-«. 'Hie Aineii<an c =, thinking that they alone of the Englishspeaking peoples Lave anything worth calling big, are wont to make fun nf the tight little island which was the onginal home of thfir Tdte. His " home- "' th" "Western giant lnughs, And tv.ir!s, the sj-otty globe to find it!

Need-- a magnifying glass to pick out so teem'-weeny a place. Probably the Coronation" with Its* world-encompdfc:-ing grip, will be as eujihi.c-y and iuc to puige hib vibual neive.

lor moatßj jyvst British periodical* have

worked the long record of coronations at Westminster for all it was worth, chiefly in quest of the comedy seldom absent from great State functions. Thus the crowning of Queen Anne was made a droll affair by the physical peculiarities of the principal figure. Vnough only in her thirty-seventh year the Queen, poor lady, had lost the use of her feet " by reason of gout and excessive fatness." She had to be carried in an armchair when she should have wa v lked ; when it behoved her to mount the .throne she had to be hoisted and levered up like a bale of wool. As for George I, "it still remains a mystery how the chief authorities in Church and State ever succeeded in crowning him."'

Having come fresh from his native Hanover, the first monarch of the Brunswick dynasty wns his new subjects little better than a Melanes,ian 'from tbe South Seaa. Not a word of English could he muster, while the chief officials were almost equally ignorant of German. Latin, therefore, had to be resorted to as being the. one possible medium of communication between them. A highly popular joke originated from these, singular proceedings, which stated that /an immense amount of " bad language " had. passed between, the King and His Ministers on the great day. Why didn't they seek., skilled assistance? Even a Melanesian may be communicated with through an interpreter. There, is a pleasant story of George II and the Gunnings, two Irish hoydens "who had captivated the town as much by their .ingenuous savagely as by the beauty which in the end brought each of them a ducal coronet. ■ They were presented at Court, when the King asked one of them had she " seen all the sights." She had, she said ; — all that she wanted to see, " except a coronation." The King, though by way of being very much a bear, took this gaucherie in good part, laughing at it loud and long. The coronation hankered for by the Gunning girl came in its turn, and was a preposterous fiasco. The procession started without some of its most essential implements ; the eword of State and the canopy had been forgotten, lost or mislaid. In the Abbey the service, which lasted sit hours, was sir hours of congested muddle. Lord . Effingham, Deputy Earl Marshal, was the functionary chiefly to blame.

George 111 seemed to have been very goodnatured under this trying ordeal, but at last he found himself constrained to utter a somewhat mild protest to the Sari of Effingham. 'rh« latter, however, having once started upon hi= blundering career, made no attempt whatsoever to turn over a new leaf, and 'vrs foolish enough to reply to the young King . " It is true, Sir, that there has been some neglect, but I have taken care tjiat the ' next Coronation ' shall be regulated in the exactcst manner possible." Our admiration fcr George 111 is heightened when wo learn that, instead of sending the foolish nobleman to the xight-about, a* he so richly deserved, he actually insisted upon the unintentionally facetious remark being repeated sev«al times over. George 111. equally with hi? rough prandsire and immediate) predecessor, could, it seems, give a pleasant turn to " things that might have been otherwise expressed."

The coronation of George IV. thongh it had cost the King himself an infinitude of Hbonr" and pains in the excogitating, v, oiked out badly. It wai to excel in splendour anything that had ever been witnessed by English people. But what it excelled in was comedy. Ju.*t as he was starting to march up the Abbey nave in solemn procession George got woid that his repudiated wife, Queen Caroline, iv.is at the west door, and trying to get in that she might be crowned along with him. This alarming invasion was repulsed, it i.s true ; the King, steadied as to his nerves by a stiff glass of grog, made his way up the church ; but it was in a " half-fainting condition " that he reached the dais. Hie collapse was charitably attributed to the weight of the loyal robes assisted by the loyal corpulence. The robes may have had some tiling to do witli it ; for after a time, whilst the ceremony was still in full swing, (»eorge was suddenly missed. He had slipped away into the Confessor'o Chapel behind the hish altor and was found there, st lipped of his cororjitiun trappings, endenvouiing to cool down. In s-horl the Coronation of the "First fJentleman in Kurope " cannot be said to have been .a success. Repetition of these Slate comedies seems impo'sible^ — so - greatly, in a space so short, the times have changed. (Jravc and reverend will be the high function at Westminster to-day. If any touch of sniou«ne«s were wanting, it will be supplied in the thought of the catastrophe we luve but narrowly escaped. The Empire waits to hear, and expects to hear, that with all good omens the King has been ■-dfp'y and happily coiT-euated to his office.

Mr .^fddon. il-oinjh lie ivpit fh.T-te as lot and jimp :ih snow, would ht'll be (lie kind of politici.ni that t«<ii never escape (\iluniny. I umsidei- this reinaik a compliment ; anil I am not in the hahit of p.-iviiii; compliments to Mr Seddon. I hiive never crai-kt-d up his political chastity and punty ; vet I admit that much of the detraction ihrit dogs his heels in Bntain just now is of the nature of calumny. What helps me to that admission is the fact that his detiaclors in the .same breath calumniate New Zealand. Tactically that is a mistake. Ho far as we, the Now Zcalanders i"c co.icerned, it is- to i .it thenr-eke 1 - at once out of court. Here, for example, from the Liberty Review, is p.u-t of a letter headed 'Advance Australia. -Nothing.'

| Our «-o-called Statesmen, and some of cur 1 riPWHpapers, °eem to hdv»> lost liieu senses over this bastard ImpcriPlifm which is now the rage. The two dictator, of the Br-tisli Empire at thfi in^sctit moment appear to b* Joseph Chamberlain and Richard Seddon ; iv fact, " Seddon Day by Day " might well be kepi as a standing heading by the " leading journal " and at* jackal, the Daily Moil. The ex-pubhean aud pceaent " Right Honourable seem 3tohe as inflated with vanity and egotism as Herod when he set himself tip on high among the people and was acclaimed as r god by the dupes who wo:shipped him. The "Premier" (Heaven save the mark 1 ) of a ridiculous little colony of 750,000 people poses as the instructor of tlje ■whole British Empire in the. art of governirent, and brays out his ukate that he must renounce our sound economic system in order to conform to the Savoy-opera state of things, jwki&i M the tcAdx si the ask ht km sux-

ceeded in establishing in New Zealand. The worst of it is that the ignorant press in this, country seems to take the man at his own. valuation — a very high one it is needless to say. It is all the more to be thankful for that the Liberty Review has so manfully exposed the imposture, and .pointed out the abyss of ruin to which New* Zealand and the other colonies of the antipodes are being hurried 6y Mr Seddon and the rest of the demagogues who have been hoisted to power on the " swinish multitude."

" Meanwhile," concludes this correspondent, i\ho signs himself " T. D. P.", '• I earnestly entreat investors to refuse emphatically any _ further pouring of their savings into the sieve ~ of Australian bankruptcy, ar.d to adopt with regard to tnafc portion of the Empire the motto which stands at the head of this letter: " Advance Australia— Nothing." I reprint this by way of giving a lift to Mr_ Seddon. The" writer, it will be observed, sees in Mr Seddon pretty nearly everything that is bad ; but also he sees in New Zealand "a ridiculous little colony" and in its people a " swinish multitude." That settles him on both counts. Why cannot the detractors of our worshijiful Premier learn to discriminate ?

I thought we had done with pro-Boerisn. But the snake is scotched only, not killed. A pro-Boer " Message to South Africa " has been prepared, "arid, in the form 'of a circular," is being passed round for signature in Britain and the colonies. " A very large number of signatures is expected ; when these are affixed the Message " will be, presented to' the leaders of the late Republics." And this is the manner of it :

We wish to frankly confess that you have not had ifrom- us just or friendly treatment/, but, on the contrary, that a masterful and e elfish temper, inflaming an ill-informed mind, has led to the doing of a great wrong (some of U3 would say — to tho commission of a great crime) in the conspiracy against and the assault upon your two meat interesting Republics.

For the time being, this wrong or crime is triumphant, and those who are responsible for it loudly assert that what they have done ia

" for all time. ' But the history of the world abundantly shows that nothing here is ever dene " for all time," — that, in fact, it is a world of constant changes: and it is perfectly conceivable that good will come out of this, evil, and that, because of it, the advanced cry of " Africa for Afrikanders " may yet beat describe the ultimate result. These canting mischief-makers then go on to express the hope that " history will repeat itself in the creation of another United States, The United States of South Africa." Sympathisers with this pious aspiration will please communicate with tb) Rev. Page Hop£s, South Croydon, London. To what group of ecclesiastical Anarchists^ the Rev. Page Hopps belongs I do not know. But Ido know that the Rev. Page* Hopps was an authority often on the* lips of Mr Charles Bright, at one time a Freethought lecturer in Dunedin, if anybody remembers him. This fact lends rt clue ; indeed, the two things naturally hang together. A pro -Boer treasonmonger is seldom- merely that. It may be a duty to suffer" these fools gladly ; if so, I find the dutydifficult. I could suffer them gladlier if I could first see them ducked in a horsepond. Cjvi.v

We have great pleasure in stating that Messrs Ro=s and Glandining (Limited) have intimated to th© editor of the Times thafc they will give a donation of £500 to the fund that is in course of being raised to place- the University on a permanently sound footing financially. We defire to expresa to the donors oi« behalf of the University our cordial appreciation of their generous donation.

The amount taken at the gates for admission to the garden party held in tho Triangle on Tuesday in honour of the return of the Ninth Contingent reached tho satisfactory sum of £33 14s 3d. Although heavy demands were made on the provisions provided, there was sufficient over to cause gieat joy among the troops of small boys who imaded tho ground immediately th« gates were thrown open.

When the Pnblic Works Act of 1894 authorised public bodies to acquire land from, private owner*, provision was^abo made for a Compensation Court, before which the parties could appear when unable to agreo on the amount of compensation to be paid. The first ea=e of the kind in Dunedin was heard on Tuesday, when the com t, consisting of Mr E. H. Oarew, S.M . with Mp»sts AM'Kerrow and J. A. Park assessor*, sat to hear a claim by Mrs Mat-Ley for £152 12s compsn'ation against the Mornington Borough Couiv il, the land having been acquired for street-widening purposes. After hearing t lie evidence tendered on behalf of the t'aimant, the court adjourned till today t-o that a personal inspection of the land could be made. The acb prosidps that where the claim does not amount to more than £250 the magistrate. *han preside over the court, and where it exceeds that amount the president shall bo a judge of the Supreme Court, but the latter may, under certain circumstances, depute a District Couit jui'ge or a magistrate to act in his stead.

When the qiiestiuw of confuaiat.on of the icsolution making a frrr.eial rate of . gd in the pound on all thp outlying portions of Urnee County came l^fore the County Council on Tuesday, Cr Martm, member for Toko* mairiro Riding, said that under the new valuation the rateable value in his l idiiijj bad .been raised by £31,000. The genera! rate on this would come to within a small sum of the interest on the speciaJ loan raised recently. He would object to tha rate Joeing applied to hi= riding unless the interest on that loan were allowed to como out of the general rate. This was acceded to by the council, and the rate s-truok accordingly. - •

Everybody who has tried TUSSICURA testifies to its wonderful efficacy. One do*e» will £iy« sufficient j>r«ei»