PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2671, 24 May 1905, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

Since Mr Seddon began the practice of bestowing upon us an annual surplus he must have enriched us in this way by some millions sterling. Last year alone the result of his operations — yes, we will say his operations, it is a better word than manipulations — was to bestow upon us a solid half-million. Public ingratitude takes the form of denying outright the existence of these benefactions. That I consider peculiar. Dame Partlet lays her morning egg and cackles ; the whole poultry yard echoes sympathetic. Mr Seddon announces his annual surplus and chortles ; for answer he gets a chorus of denial and derision. The odd thing is that we have no motive to pretend. Apparently we affect incredulity out of mere cussedness. For, if even there were a surplus (which we deny) we should have a perfectly good answer. We should be able to explain it without any credit to Mr Seddon. We should say that what he gives he must first have taken away, that the " surplus " presented to us with demonstration as evidence of our prosperity had been feloniously abstracted from our own pockets. Yet with this incontrovertible answer at command we take the other line— denying the existence of any surplus whatever, big or little, now or heretofore. A cruel situation, "for our benefactor is clearly helpless. He can go on talking surplus, but can he- show it? I am not suggesting ttiat Mr Seddon should appear before the lieges witn a cart-load of bullion, bidding them handle it and feel its weight. But, if he were really half a million to the good, we might reasonably expect him to say, Now let's finish the Otago Central, or the Northern Great Trunk ; let's endow the Dunedin Mining School ; let's knock off half a million from railway rates or Customs charges. None of these things does he say, nor will, nor can. There is only one inference — the " surplus '' is merely an affair of hocus-pocus and thimble-rigging in the Government accounts.

Mr Balfour has either announced in clear terms, or has allowed it to be understood, say the cables, that he intends to continue in office until the conclusion of the war. For months past — as I myself who love him well and desire his continuance have ruefully admitted — he has been staggering along on what seemed his last legs ; yet these same last legs are to serve him until "the conclusion of the war." It is a bold proposition ; is there any visible reason why he should not make it good? He still commands a working majority in the House ; — then let the heathen rage ! As represented by Sir H. C.-B. and his following thft heathen will do that very well. In fact they are raging all the time. The Liberals are a great historic party ; they are entitled to their turn at the helm of State, and their turn will come. Just now they rage and gnash their Eeeth partly at Mr Balfour's unreasonable vitality and the impossibility of dispossessing him, but partly also because of a fear that when their turn comes they will not be able to use it. The crew unSer Sir H. C.-B.'s "orders" are divided, factious, mutinous. Or— dismissing this maritime metaphor, which will grow unmanageable — there is a skeleton in the Liberal cupboard, a skeleton that audibly rattles its bones and insists on getting out. Mr John Morley has just affirmed himself the same Home Ruler that he was when Irish Secretary tinder Mr Gladstone. On the other hand Lord Rosebery, who must sit in the next Liberal Cabinet alongside Mr John Morley, has simultaneously protested that he will not have Home Rule- at any price. But perhaps Home Rule may be shelved for a time — a counsel of perfection to be "steadily kept in view"? Hardly so;

the Irish Brigade will have a word to say ' to that.

The position of the Irish party was perfectly clear. -They would support and keep in offige in the next Parliament no Liberal party, no Liberal Government which took the Rosebery view of Home Rule for Ireland.' — (Great cbe-oring.) And in a spirit of trie most complete friendliness to ihe Liberal party he gave them tliis word of warning that es§n if they succeeded in the coming election in returning to the House of Commons with a majority vhich was nominally independent- of Irish votes they would find the government of Ireland a sheer impossibility, and it would be the duty of the Irish party to make it so if it was attempted to be run on the lines of Lord Rosebeiy's dishonourable recantation of his t pledges on Home Rule.— (Cheof s, and a Voice : | "What about Asquith?"). This is Mr William Redmond at the Irish National Banquet in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. I admit that the Liberals may justly be disgusted at Mr Balfour's t unwillingness to die ; but their real trouble | is domestic. It is the Home Rule skeleton ' in their own cupboard. I

In the London papers may be read — and it is not at all bad reading — an official report on the Ventilation of the House of Commons. Here is a paragraph :

With, a view to diminishing the liability of the air of the chamber to be* polluted by material continually being brought in upon members' toots, as a makeshift nrrangeiiiezrfc, a tray should be placed beneath the grating of the oentre gangway, between the bar and the lobby door under the clock. An alternative plan, also makeshift, would be to place a movable metal plato over the top of the grating and under the present matting. This reads mysterious. "Is the whole personnel of the House — 660 odd, by count of heads — to deposit in a tray the material brought in upon its boots? Other ventilating arrangements previously specificd — fans, air filters, spraying, apparatus — are intricate but intelligible ; this tray for the dirt on members' boots I give up as hopeless. Another paragraph reads as though writ satiric :

In view of the unsatisfactory restilts of the present conditions at the Chamber, some better means of dealing with the particulate contamination to which tho air is continually subjected during debates is desirable, and Dr Gordon submits that slick better means should be sought diligently. " Particulate ' is not the printer's error it looks. It Is a term of high science. " Particulate contamination " is contamination by atoms, or particles, aerial and gaseous. Which peril, it seems, threatens chiefly " dui'ing debates." That, I think, we may understand. The amount of carbonic acid and other maleficent gases disengaged during a debate on a want-of-confidence amendment must be considerable. The remedy, says Dr Gordon, " should be sought diligently." Then apparently mere ventilation is no good. I should be disposed to rely on a rigid ten-minutes rule and the closure.

Bishop Julius returns from a recent visit to London as from a voyage of discovery. He did not take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's ; that is for some New Zealander of the futur-e. But he discovered the London " smart set," and in Christchurch last Sunday froze the blood of a cathedral congregation by lurid pictures of the ruin, the moral ruin, of English society. At one time "obedient to religious control," English society has now "broken loose," he says, and " the Commandments it obeys " may be summarised fhus:

" Thou shalt enjoy thyself." " Thou snalt make money." " Thou slialt commit adultery." "Thou shalt get into the divorce court; and when thou bast fulfilled all these thy duties " Ttou shalt commit suicide." Well it may be so ; the Bishop speaks from personal investigation and we must bow, I suppose, to his superior knowledge. At the same time I take leave to offer him a little advice gratis, with a view to correcting his historical perspective. The novels of Fielding and of Smollett— did he ever read them? Probably not. If he possesses a judicious friend who can be trusted not to give him away, the Bishop might perhaps through such an agency obtain a perusal of those invaluable pictures of eighteenth century English life and manners. Then let him descend to the period, less remote, when our own grandfathers were setting' the pace. They have been gibbeted for ever in Thackeray's " Four Georges." The period adorned by our grandfathers was one of which, in Thackeray's phrase, " the dissoluteness was awful." Drinking, dicing, debauchery, grossness, profanity — the everyday amusements of a gentleman— went shameless and unrebuked. It is impossible to transfer to

this chaste column Thackeray's examples, but a bishop might conceivably inspect them unharmed. At what point in the history of the last two centuries would Bishop Julius place that obedience, to religious control from which English society has now broken loose? When he has satisfied himself of his inability to name the date, perhaps he will kindly explain how and why the literary education of the higher clergy is so grievously neglected.

Only a Jeremiah predestined to jeremiads could miss the truth of this matter. Wherever th«re is idleness and fulness of bread there will be vice, and by that rule English society of the " smart " sort stands condemned a priori. But, however bad to-day, it was vastly worse a century back. And if worse then, it must needs be better now. That is logic, I fancy. For comparison take some of the lesser immoralities — drunkenness, say, (by leave of the prohibitionists!) and profanity. A century back no man of fashion, from the Prince of Wales downwards, thought it shame to go drunk to bed. A man of fashion seldom went to bed sober. The clergy, fellows of colleges, university professors, might tipple without scandal ; at Trinity College, Cambridge, there was a celebrated classic, Person, who in his cups would " pour out Greek like a drunken Helot." Many are the stories of Porson, his chronic intoxica-

tion, his muddy wit. A certain Gilbert Wakefield had written against Porson*! edition of the " Hecuba " of Euripides.

At a dinner party at which a toast -w, a ai appropriate Shakespeare quotation v..= required frcrn eaok guest, Porson, before .us turi came, had disappeare- 1 beneath the table anc was supposed to bt ...sensible to what waf going on. Not so, however. Staggering up he gave his toast: "Gilbert Wakefield!— What's Hecuba to him, or he to Heciiba?* Then cnee more he subsided out of sight. Coarse language, such as is now accr-'" ' n ' profane, was then a grace no could afford to be without, princes set the fashion. Willie*- •- . , agoing the accession oath in solemn assembly of his first Privy Council, snapped out, " You've damned bad pens here." Tha Duke of Wellington (a bettei gentlemar than his royal master) could hardly open his mouth in familiar talk without a bia big D. -Sometimes the same bad won! lent unlawful emphasis to his speaking ir Parliament ; e.g. —

" My lords, the noble and learned lord hnn ■said that I do not seem to understand this bill Well, my lords, I can only say that I read th" bill carefully through, once, twice, and tbre" times, and if after tfcat J do not, understand thig bill, why then, my - T "— '-' j clamnecl stupid fellow!" These are trifles. So is the straw a trifl( that shows the direction of the running stream.

All this is to say that Bishop Julius, talking of English society as broken toost from a religious control to which formerly it was obedient, must have lost his bearings ; — 'e don't know where 'c are It may help him to orient himself if I add a story or two about his own church, whereby and wherefrom he may infer that his own church has changed for the bettei within livinc memory. My stories are from the Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson, 1800-1867. This well-known diarist was a barrister in large practice and a decent Christian, an intimate friend of the Laker^ — Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge ; indeed a Lake poet himself, except that he wrote no poetry.

ISIG Sefj.enijer lat. — oiio lln o .into the old clntrch at Manchester, I heard a strange noise, which I shou.ld elsewhere have xnisiaken for the bleating of lambs. Going to th-e spot, st distant aisle, I found two rows of women standing in files, each, with a babe in ber arras. Tho niinister went down the line, sprinkling each. infant as ha went. I suppose the efficiency of the sprinkling — I mean the faci that the water did touch — was evidenced by a distinct squeal from each. Words v/ere muttered by the priesf; on his course, but one prayer Berved for all. This I thought to be a christening by wholesale ; and I could not repress the irreverent thought that, being in the metropolis of manufacturers, the aid of steam or machinery might be called in. How the essence of religion is sacrificed to these formalities of the Establishment! The other story is of a prosecution ' r.r>nattendance at church !

1817. March 14th.— (At Bedford), uxj_y one case was interesting. It was a Qui tari action by I>r Free, rector of Sutton, against Sir Montague Burgoyne, Bart., the squire of the parish, to recover £20 a month for Sir Montague's not going to church. This was founded on an ancient and forgotten statute, unrepealeS by th« Toleration Act. Said Serjeant Biwse*, who defended : "My client -would ratier b» convicted than thought to be a Ifcssentrir.' But he -was able to prove that ditring many of the months there was no service in the clruxcn, it being shut up, and that- the defendant *»g ill during the rest of the time ; so that on the merits he had a verdict. To complete this happy illustration of hovr the Church of the period schooled the society of the period to obedience and religious control there needs only on& detail: "A little later Parson Free was, after much litigation and great expense to the Bishop of London, deprived of his living for immorality." Cms. Our Naseby correspondent reports that the first winter snowfall this year tookplaca on Tuesday evening, 16th, when about two inches of snow fell. The ground was white throughout the morning, but most of the snow disappeared during tEe day. Wednesday afternoon's meeting of the Benevolent Trustees was attended by Messra R. M. Clark (chairman), W. Burnett, A. Tapper, J. Hazlett, and R. Wilson. Accounts amounting to £99 16s 4-d were passed for payment, and- 36 cases for relief were dealt with. The "Visiting Committee for the week recommended that the present contract for the supply of bread to tha institution be cancelled, as the bread was not fit for consumption. It was resolved to ao? on the committee's recommendation, and to offer the contract to Mr A. P. Miller, subject to arrangement with tho Finance Committee. It was stated that this was the second time this question of tha bread had come before the trustees, and ( that the flour of which the bread was made I appeared good enough, but that the fault seemed to lie in the baking, the bread being really not fit to eat. The trustees decided to wait on the Premier as a deputation in order to urge on him the desirability of setting aside the fund accumulated from the poll tax chai-ged on ChinetS immigrants for the purpose of paying theii.* passages back to China. It is understood that some 12 or 14- Chinese are now in tha Benevolent Institution, and others are or*. the books, while at yesterday's meeting an application was made to the trustees by the secretary of the Naseby Hospital asking

at a destitvite Chinaman in that district might be admitted to the institution.

Speaking at Picton on Thursday, tho Hon. C H. Mills referred to rumours of 3i change in the Ministry. He said thai he had heard and read statements of late that he did not intend to come forward at the next election, and that he was likely to be relegated to a quiet seat in a cornet of the Upper House. He could tell then? that he was not quite used up yet. Iv his own opinion he was a better man' novr than ever he was. He could emphatically, state that he had no intention of retiring. '

_It is the present intention of fche ISTo- j license party to nominate a candidate for ' Invercargill so as to ensure a parliamentary I JContest*

The Bruce Herald states that it is understood that the whole of the shines in the Bruce Colliery Company ha'^ c beeu taken up by a syndicate.