PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2686, 6 September 1905, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

All sovereigns and statesmen, with responsible politicians of every name tlie wide world over, welcome the Peace. It is the irresponsibles who are disappointed — myself for one. We looked for a swingeing indemnity and the cession of Saghalien. By and by, however, we shall probably settle down £o the. belief that Japan has done better for herself in making peace than she could have hoped to do by continuing the war. - How near her resources have come to she is not likely to say. The story of Pyrrhus comes to mind, — how he exclaimed after winning a hard-fought battle against the- Romans, "Another such victory and we are undone !" The Japs, it may be, are in much the same plight, though only their statesmen may know it. It is to be noted that whilst joy-bells ring elsewhere there seems to fes at Tokio an ominous silence. The Czar is deliriously happy, or professes to be, and the Kaiser telegraphs congratulations to all points of the compass. But the Japanese so far make no eign. No doubt they asked for more, and expected more, than they have consented to take. Yet all the honours of the war are theirs, and all its gains. If the peace is "a Russian victory," as the papers say, it is the first, — a victory of a kind, moreover, which is an ignominy. The case of Russia, is that of a misdemeanant who deserves twelve months' hard labour and gets off with three. , Not much of a victory to boast ! Summing up the voucher incident so far, a Northern paper says, '"Two things at least are clear — viz., that Captain Seddon did not receive the money, and that Mr Fisher had good grounds for believing that he did." Accurately put, and at this stage there is little more to be said. Before the Auditor-general reported we knew that Captain Seddon had not received the money, for we had his sworn affidavit to that effect, which affidavit we all, as in duty bound, accepted at its face value. The special contribution we owe to the Auditor-general is that Mr Fisher had good grounds for believing the contrary. Even now wb are left with an insoluble mystery on our hands. What is to be made of the phenomenon that four officials in the Christchurch Post Office swear to the existence of a Seddon voucher for reorganising defence stores? It is such evidence as would amply suffice to hang a man. How is it going to be explained away? Nobody has the courage to suggest that these four witnesses are fools, still le&s that they are .rogues. Could they have been simultaneously hypnotised? Were there v-isions about? It might be indecent to set up another j inquiry ; but if I were in Mr Seddon's boots "nothing should stop me from that same indecency. I would fathom the Christchurch Post Office mystery or j perish in the attempt. For some days now this mystery has been offered to the New Zealand public as a guessing competition. '' But nobody has guessed it yet. Moving his series of Yes-No resolutions on the land question the Premier cut 'a sony figure and 6pent a bad quarter of an hour — pilloried, simply pilloried, epithets and comparisons whizzing about | his ears. He was the Vicar of Bray ; he was the Russian general who announced an offensive movement to the rear ; he was Mr Facing-both-ways. When an hon. member, attempting to read a passage from the Pilgrim's Progress, was vehemently challenged by Mi* Flatman, whose name inighthave come out of the ! same book, ai^H^teu^^ierlion. member began to^^^^^^^^^Mfe^^l and [ the HjU^^^^^^^^^HMp

the words from oblivion that the Premier moved that they should be taken down; nor had he running in his head the precedent of Dogberry. Let's see, how dees it go?

Borachio: Off, coxcomb! Dogberry: What! Where's ih© sexton? let them write dov/n — tho princes' officer, coxcomb— Conic, bind them.— Thou naughty varlet !

Bci-achio: Ay.ay! jon are an ass, you are an ""Dogberry: Dost thou not suspect my place' Dost thou not suspect my years?— O that he were hera to write me down — an ass!— but, masters, reinennber that I am an ass; though it be not -written down, yet forget not that I am soi ass. - > There is an uncomfortable suggestion of this passage when' one "hon. member, aspersed by another, demands that the words be taken down. But- Mr Seddon, I am bound to admit, had nothing of this kind in his head. Be was xising a form of the House, the established form, preliminary to bringing Mr Bedford to the stool of repentance. Which in due course was done. But bringing Mr Bedford to the stool of repentance, leaves the Premier still in the. pillory. There he stands, his Yes-No resolutions strung about his neck, and here is he likely to stand. Let nobody 'cave 'arf a brick at him, certainly not, — no violence ! It is enough that ho offers a spectacle to men and angels, and that the longer the country look's at him thus exhibited the more instructive will it find him.

The Hansard report of this debate, unless Bowdlerised out of .all semblance,, should be of antiquarian interest by and by, a monument of political manners, and customs, Consule Planco, — that is, under Richard the First and the Last. I cheerfully admit, however, that in charm of a certain kind our Hansard is Jeagues behind the Hansard of New South Wales. On th& 28th of June last the New South Wales Legislative Assembly elected a Chairman of Committees, and over that business abandoned- itself .to a pleasant evening. Mr LcA-ien : Do not have a Ronfan Catholic for God's sake! Mr Thrower : Outside of a, Roman Catholici possibly the woist> man you co-uld get is the man who goes to service with his hat on. ■Mr Levien, I infer, is a Jew, as indeed his name would seem to hint. Apart from this fact, and from a tendency to digress upon Orangeism and the theological significance of yellow boots, Mr Levien .intimated an intention of being "as"gentlemanly as Parliament' would permit.'' Which pious resolve he at once proceeded to exemplify: Hr Levien: Of course, referring to th© Orange boots — • Mr Jes_sep: Yellow Loots! Mr Levien : Ido not know the colour of your stomach, Thomas. We are told that the hon. member for G-ougk moved "the motion in a most gentlemanly way. A blue pill and a" black draught goes through you in a gentlemanly way. A seidlitz powder goes through you at any time, and yem know nothing about it. ... Presently we come back to the yellow boots. Mr Thrower is said, when at the Trades Hall, to "follow the principles of the Mahometans — in the presence of the chairman he takes his yellow boots off in order to worship him." | Mr Throwev-:, Jjpay my washerwoniaoi, anyhow! -^ — — Mr Ivorton : I should not "think it from the ! smell of your seeks. Mr Speaker: Order! This is Hansard, observe, — not a newspaper caricature. It is t"h© official record, and it will be laid up in the national archives for the edifying of posterity. Our own Hansard is said to be a miracle of unveracity ; e.g., testimony of Mr A. L. D. Fraser, member for Napier : After seine six yefra' experience Le had no hesitation in saying — and without any qualification to add to this statement — that there was no more misleading publication in this colony of what honourable amembers really said in Parliament than Hansard. We are only mendacious at present ; by and by we shall become indecent, and the difference.' between us and New South ! Wales will be the difference between pot and kettle.

According to one of this w-eek's cables the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is excited over the discovery that " a popular mine field " in Madagascar had bsen "largely salted." In Madagascar, observe. For Stock Exchange purposes a mine that i& popular may be far or near, locality is nothing ; for salting purposes, if that detail be added, the further away the better, and Madagascar seems just about the right sort of place. At the height of our dredging boom, when any huddle of rocks in a Molyneux gorge was good enough for Stock Exchange uses, we never salted our claims— oh no ; salting would have been sinful waste and a work of supererogation. Not till the boom burst did we begin to salt, and then in regions decently remote. The only case I distinctly remember was a case in which we were found out, and that was on the West Coast. But why revive these painful memories? Bygones are bygones. I pass to a story sent me by a correspondent apropos of the Johannesburg trouble. It is a story of diamond salting : Some representatives of a well-known Cape family, living on a. farm close to Koffyfontein, tried to float it into a company on the strength of diamonds having been found on it. A party oi capitalists was invited to inspect tha property and do a> bit of prospecting. Out went the capitalists, and things looked rosy when as the resuJt. oi the wash-up, five really good stoi.es weie found. Highly elated, they returned to the homestead, where the family provided a good spread, and there was mutual satisfaction. The diamonds wero care^aikta spread out on the table. "We found thcs^^^H stones in the wash-up," announced one J^^H prospectors. " Oh," blurted out the the owner of the farm. " but there ouglix^^^H fcjx." The deal was off. — |Hta|^^^vmxl fields

found in possession of klips is sever^ Ihe story goes that a " hatter " on the' field, the proprietor of certain mud heaps which he called his claim, occasionally shot a hare or two in their vicinity, ana next day would have a profitable wash-up. The explanation of this invariable sequence at last dawned upon his neighbours. For shot he used illicitly-bought diamonds, firing them into his heaps of mullock witii a light charge of gunpowder. A most interesting case. The good man certainly salted his claiir, but he salted it for his own consumption.

A Protestant Vigilance Committee, presumably self-appointed, has approached the Dunedin Council of Churches with a view to promoting a better observance oi Guy Fawkes Day. In particular it is desired that there should be some suitable celebration of the ter-centenary of "God's most merciful deliverance from the contemplated fearful outrage of November 5, 1605." The Council of Churches, much to its credit, had diplomatically for-gafci_£ij_ what took place on that day. It was the old appeal — Please to remeinbsr * - The Fifth of November; — but none of them remembered. From the chairman downward the Council adopted a non mi recordo attitude— most judicious. Nevertheless they empowered, the executive^ to "investigate and act." Investigation is right enough, and it may be hoped that with due diligence the executive will come on the historic traces of Gunpowder Treason ; the question is, how wilMhey then proceed -to act? Shall we ' see Guy Fawkes carried in procession by the Council of Churches? Pending an answer, I should be glad if I might refer to the_ same committee of iivesti^ gation a correspondent . of any own, ,who, as he says, -having , interrogated ■ a Dublin. , man, .educated at Maynooth, on the subject of mediasval excommunications, much! debated some short time back in the Daily Times, is able to give chapter and verse .for the excbmniuniction of "-Canker-worms^ and'caterpillars." He expects his authority to be challenged, but — ' The challenger shall pny ten pounds .^ tie Dunedin Hospital if founcTto bo in the right, out of thankfulness foT being right, and twenty pounds if found to be wrong- as a penance for being wiong; and he shsdl act as judge in his own cause. These terms must "be acknowledged as very liberal. ' Perhaps the Council of -, Churches will kindly lake over the papers from m 'ie, investigate, and act. Foii^my own part I am just now at peace with "St. Joseph's, and in that state of salvatioir-ussire to __ abide. . Cirisr'' The evidence of, Messrs W. D. Snowball and A. Hamilton was taken before Vs- G--Cruickshank, S.M., at the Magistrate's Court on the 29th in connection with tha Lawrence action in which' H r . Craig seeks to recover £33 damages from Sinclair Arthur. The claim arose through the hire by defendant from plaintiff of a waggon ette_£nd_twa _ horses, and the plaintiff's contention is that: the horses" were driven so negligently tha<J one of them, a dark bay mare, valued a*' £30, died on the following day. Mr Solomon appeared for the plaintiff, and Mr Hanlon for defendant. During the- hearing of a maintenance ca&e- at the City Police Court on the 29th, Mi? H. Y. Widdowson, S.M., raised the question whether in a. claim for support by a destitute _person against relatives the amount received ~as old-age pension should be Included, ill- _Galiaway contended that i& must be incluctecL-as it formed part, of the income for the year r .jmd to this the B.M. replied that if the applicant was entitled to support from relatives and' did not receive it, that fact might entitle the porsojt affected to receive from the State a larger pension than would otherwise be "granted. His "Worship also remarked that in cases where orders were made against relatives for the support of destitute persons who were in receipt of pensions the grayling of a pension would be reviewed when a renewal was applied for. Some progress has been made in conne<j»*- - tion with iho proposed method of reserving seats in trains on the Government raihy«*y», and a scheme is at present being -I^estefl on a portion of the North Island line 3. The salient points of the scheme are understood to be as follows: — Each seat in a train wiU be numbered, and a disc attached to tK« seat displaying the number, andr also indicators intimating that the seat is eithe* "engaged" or "disengaged." These indicators are tinder the sole control of tha guard, and cannot be altered by anyone else. A passenger on getting his ticket 4 reserves a, particular seat, the number which is written on the back of the tickefi^^ and he retains possession of it for tb* whole distance he is travelling. The system of reserving seats is intended primarily for through passengers, but in the event o? seats Leing disengaged passengeis going only part of the whole journey will be able to reserve seats.

Definite arrangements have now been, made for the duplication of the railway line between Dunedin and _MDogiel I _^and__tlie.. undertaking will bo pitt in hand" almost immediately. The work will be carried out under the supervision of the district engineer, and a start will be made with tha section from Dunedin to Caversham first. From the overbridge to the crossing ab Anderson's Bay the lin« will run on att up-grade of 1 in 100, and at the crossing referred to it will be 20ft abojZgmgw^ roaj^ an overh^^^^^^Hj^^H