PASSING NOTES,

Otago Witness, Issue 2707, 31 January 1906, Page 3

PASSING NOTES,

(From Saturday's Djily Times.)

Unionist criticism of the new Cabinet, and of the new Premier as a Cabinet maker, so far as I have been able to sample it in newspapers by tke mail is correct in tone and even amiable. Take as an example the Saturday Review, which is definitely Unionist with a disposition to play the candid friend. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman the Saturday Re-view-er conceives as no parliainentaiy tactician, though a good man and an honest, with abundance of shrewd common sense. Yet " impartial scrutiny cannot disguise the fact that he is of inferior calibre, whether in intellect or personality, to nearly all his predecessors since the days of Lord Liverpool." From this judgment probably none but a CampbellBannermaniac, if such there be, would dissent. Though not the ablest man in hi 6 own Cabinet, and in this unlike Mr Balfour, he nevertheless has got together a team which in collective ability is certainly not inferior to Mr Balfour's. It includes Mr John Burns, respecting whom we may listen to this oracle a little in detail : Mr Burns as Eight Honourable and as potential Minister in attendance has tickled the public imagination. There is talk of it in every bar, bun shop, aud barber's saloon; at the clubs, too, the newspaper offices — eveiywhere. Some people are downright scandalised, and even seem to regard the appointment as an affront, or menace. We fancy tins is rather an inflamed view. Mr Burns has plenty of common sense. Many people have found Mr Burns's voice in public affairs rather too loud for their taste. Well, Gargantua is now gagged. The last remark was premature. Not many days later Gargantua Vud blurted out hie desire to " abolish all hereditary authority." P«esibly C.-B. has contrived to clap the gag on since. Altogether I consider the Unionist tone as represented by the Saturday Review fairly gtnerouv Whether this Christian feeling has survived the Unionist leut at the elections is another question. The French press, if Figaro may fee taken as representing it-, offers to the new Liberal Government a sympathetic salutation and a confiding welcome. The London correspondent of this journal reinaiks that English Liberal politics have oidinarily le^s of decihion and moie of leserve, or caution, than Conservative politics : — " In England it is the Conservatives who are enterpiising, it ie the Liberals who are for kerping things as they aie." Which sounds a suipriaing Fiench paradox. Probably, h«we\er. no Libeial <!overnment would have made the Bo^r tvu, or the Japanese alliance, or s-ent ( limese to the Rand. From the tone Loi r d Robbery has taken on the subject it may even be inferred that the Liberals if in power weu'.d have hp<sitaWl over th? •ntente with France. But it is not by these examples that the French journalist seeks to piove hi.s point. The middle class, wh°ncc ihe Liberal warty recruits its cbaracteri-tjc .inherent* slid ths greater p?rt of lis <hief=. places prudence in the fir3t rank of virtues It di = hkes risk and doesn't care to ditp'ace its centre of giwii) — which is heavy. In what way ;> cMitr* of <iia\nv can hi heavy remains foi explanation. It appr.ii-> that" we arr on the verge of a ltfin 'I Fiench joke. In -writing tlm- T am iiiii'kir>g fi iim°c fsr di = liJit, and rf t*ie qiune! betveen Fox. w}i<> was pbyiically a. big man, ahd Pitt, wlio \\vcf substance les° massive. There tv^s a Conservative pleasantry, a, tufle <?ros% u-ed to define any and every Libeial Government —it was an admimsliation, they s-aul. by statei^en j with spacious sitting-pail^ (an.-: arises la.grs*. I carnot pci nit myself to translate literally. 'OT there -would need the audacity of a Shakes- , peare, arc! I am not disposed jtint jiow to lecite 1o you the "Midsummer 2\':^ht'-s Dieani " All this circumlocution to avoid the name Ijoitosi, and the mention of the Broad Bottom Administration. What delicacy! Moreover our French friend's liistoiy is till

wrong. The Broad Bottom^ Administration, had do concern with Fox *and Pitt, who were not yet in their cradles, nor was it co named in satirical allusion^ to the physical peculiarities of Liberal" statesmen — perish the thought ! It was broad bottomed because a coalition, merely that and nothing more. But all this is a little wide of the point, which point is that our change of Government has not thrown the French into Opposition nor in the least alarmed them on the score of the -entente. The newspapers are reminding us that the life of George Jacob Holyoakt. •' famous Chartist and reformer " who this week passed over to tlie majority, is to be measured rather by the political^and social changes that it witnessed than by "its appalling stretch of years. ,1 agree, talcing leave to add that if it may be measured by the amount of fun he got out of it Mr Holyoake's period of nine decades was longer than Methusaleh's nine centuries. The English word " fun," if objected to. may be etherialised into the French " joie de vivre,'' which will -mean pretty much the same thing and show that I intend no disparagement. TVe should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives "Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the b;su This respectable old tag is altogether in point. A 'knight-errant whose valorous tiltings were not alwaj-s at windmills, ilr Holyoake enjoyed his due share of heartthrobs, and the}- of the woithiest. As for the knocks he came by — his six months' imprisonment on a ridiculous charge of " blasphemy,' 1 for instance — they were all in the day's work, affording him the joy of martyrdom and making his life a life worth iiving. Holyoake was an honest patriot ; also he was, as the cables say, a great reformer, though his own more modest Avoid is " agitator," — " Sixty years of an Agitator's Life "' being the title he chose for his autobiography. I am moved to one or two philosophical reflections — the fiist, that a great reformer J6 seldom necessary to a great reform. Changes social and political are the product of general causes. The influences that make for reform come in as a flowing v tide and the great reformei ie merely the crest of the wave. But this needs another paragraph. All nineteenth century political and social reform in England has been a5.30.ciated with the spread of elementary education. Before the Reformation, of blessed memory, there were elementary schools ; after it — explain the fact as yoii wi)l — there were next to none, — " the education of the lower classes was almost entirely neglected." I am quoting here a Cambridge Lecturer on History, Oscar Browning, a sufficiently good authority. This relapse into the Dark Ages had to be corrected by a new Revival of Learning. Agencies of education were slowly created, — the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which before the end of the eighteenth c?ntury had founded 1600 free schools in England ; the " National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church " — Avhich title has a curious sound to-day ; — also the non-sectarian " British and Foreign School Society." By the time George Jacob Holyoake arrived on the eceno the leaven had begun to work. Tho schoolmaster was abroad and the thoughts of men were widening with the process of the suns. Holyoake as a reformer was himself a product of these educatiSn agenci(s. — possibly of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The same may be said of all his Chartist comrades. That the governing classes opposed reforms the most rational is nothing. Such is ever ouv British way with revolutionary novelties. Read in Wallace's book "The Wonderful Century " how the same classes opposed railways ; e.g. — Quarterly Review. 1824: — "As io those persons who speculate on making railways throughout the Kingdom, . . . we deem them and their visionary schemes unwoithy of notice." The same. 1825, aiient a proposed railway from London to Woolwich, by which people would travel "at twice the speed of stage coaches with greater " — " We bhould as soon expect the peop'.e of "Woolwich to buffer themselves to be filed off upon one of Congreve's rockets as tiust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate." So also in Parliament. — ' Was the House ay.are of the smoke and noi««, the hiss and whirl, which locomotive engines passing at the iate of 10 or 12 miles an hour would occasion 9 . . . Such schemes were dan- | geroiiH, unsatisfactory, und. above all, unknown I to ihe constitution of the country. He [the speaker"! hated the veiy name of a railwayhe hated it as he hated the devil." In the same spirit the baine people hated political and social lefoim. They were (omfoifjble a<^ they weie, thfy ueie unwilling to be disturbed. It i& our customary Bntieh attitude Hir<=- in New Zealand ivt hold in possession all tin wtinh George Jacob Holyoiike a ixl his In other Chartists of 1848 were lighting — iiniveisal niffrage. tho ballot, payment ot membeie, short parliament*, — t lie.>e bouii.-s and b!esMng*> aie ours. And, if of. lato yeais he ever turned liis eyes cur way. it mubt havp given George Jacob a peculiar qualm to &c-e the things he saw. What W'uld ho see? He would see in New Zealand what before 1870 he taw in France, the piinciples of Cliaitism con-duct-ing to absolutism and autocracy. An unintelligible fact, but fact it is. Universal suffrage, the ballot, payment of members and the lCit procluce and maintain in New Zealand o brnmniagdm Napoleon HI. Mr Holvoak-f-'.s reflections on this paradox would lijia<- been interesting. Also anent the great precedence dispute —still unsettled, or settled the winng wav — of ■übi<_h Rir Robert FHouTs wclconv u> his old haunte may be peimitied to iuuu..d us. In this moil el democracy, where Chaitist principle attain their ultimatn development, tli« in*]<'« tv - of the law in the person of the Chief Justice must it-Id place to tne majesty of RirlMi<i the Fust and the Last. I h*ve j-J-t chanced on ;i story that stuket me as no' irrelevant. The Chief of. the Macdonaklo T?em once fioni

T his native Scotland on a. visit to Ireland. A* ' a banquet which he attended Macdonajd took his seat near the door. When his host saw this, and learned who he was, he sent a messenger inviting him to the head of the table. The chief, pulling out his dirk, stuck it in tihe table in front of him, and sent back the message tj-at -where the Mta 13 *always theTiead of the table.- ■' The moral would 6eem to be that somebody should present Sir Robert Stout with, a dirk. At this special time it is a gift that would come gracefully from the University students. In every self-respecting University therS are undergraduate liberties with which no man may tamper ; chief amongst them, is the right' to- play the fool at a capping ceremony. With Sir Robert Stout this is an old 'controversy, as we all know. There exists a tradition — prehistoric, doubt* less — of a Dunedin capping ceremony at which the presiding dignitary challenged the students' privilege of lawlessness and talked of calling in the police ; whereupon there ensued a marked want of harmony between platform and floor. Nothing of the sort could occur now, of course, yet we stijl have to lament a certain dulness; an incapacity of humour, in our academical authorities. At a recent Ghristchurcn capping a. student, by arrangement, Bufferedan epileptic seizure, falling to the floor 3 in the middle of an important speech and wallowing like a demoniac , with howls un> earthly. There was much sympathy, students and big-wigs tumbling over each other to render first aid. the Chancellor himself de&cending from the platform with a glass of water/. When, later-, the nature of this little comedy was revealed, nobody showed any> gratitude, the dignitaries professing themselves outraged and proposing by way of revenge to abolish coping functions altogether. Says the Chancellor,— How can we ask men of light and leading to speak when it ' is impossible to ensure them a hearing? Well, don't invite them. Let the men of light and leading go elsewhere. Professor Macmillan Brown alone seems to have got the true hang of this matter. Not having attended a capping function for 12 years he is in a position to affirm with confidence that the speak <"•<• put up are such as no student can be expected to listen to. What ie really wanted, though he didn't say so, is a programme of comic songs, the Chancellor, if only he had a voice, leading off: — The Law is tbe true embodiment Of everything that is excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw. And I, my lads, embody the Law. It is lamentable to think of the opporfnnitieo our University magnates are missing. Civis. A most extraordinary case of blackmail is at present before the New York Courts. The defendant is Mr Tljmas Wickes, & well-known and respected lawyer, formerly, assistant-advisor to the City Corporation. The evidence has revealed a . Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde case in real life. It was to the effect that Wicke- availed himself of knowledge acquired in his practice to write to certain partic demanding money, and always signed himself "Lewis Jarvis." The letters always contained allusions to the great learning, ability, and trustworthiness of Mr Thomas Wickes. These glowing testimonials, indeed, led ultimately to the disclosure that Wickes and Jarvis were one and the same individual. Wickes admits writing the Lewis Jarvis letters, but' denies blackmail. An interesting point has arisen in con-> ncction with the fidelity of the Admiralty to the terms of the naval agreement signed by the Commonwealth Parliament in August, 1903. Under the agreement (say* the Melbourne Age) Australia pledged herself to pay the Biitish Government £200,000 a year— an increase of £94,000 a' yoar on her former contribution — provided the Admiralty sent out at oneo two new second class cruisers of the latest type. Subsequently the allotment of the vessels on the squadron of all classes was rearranged, and a promise made that thre« second class cruisers should be sent. The agreement has been in operation for two years and some odd months, but down to the present clay only two new second clasi cruUers, (he Challenger and the Cambrian, . have made their appearance on the Aus« Dalian station. The second cruiser, the Cambiian, only arrived a few months ago, ~o that for over two years one, not thre<?, fresh cruisers were provided by the Admiralty. This is regarded as a distinct breach of the contract. The Commonwealth Government is no*-, anxious to embarrass the Admiralty, but it is obvious that there are limits to the amount o? disregard of agreement obligation whicU the Commonwealth is prepared to tolerate. An attempt is now being made to foster cotton-growing in Fiji, and the prospects ar« encouraging. Mr T. F. Burness, a well* known resident of that colony, who is ab present, in Auckland, was interviewed by a Xe\v Zealand Herald reporter a few day» ago on the subject. He said that h© had! been experimenting iv cotton-growing ia Fiji for three years past, with a view; to ascertaining what kind of cotton plant: would produce the best results. He had! produced 20 distinct varieties, and out of thes« he hal selected the 10 best, and had sent sample;., to various parts of the world. In oach c&j-e be had received most favourable replies. X Manchester firm, to whora he s«nt a sample, advUed him tha.t there was a great future before that particular Imp while a J&pzno^ firm said that they uonW take all Mr Burness could send, preferiing- ifc to the American- M* Jiurne?- intends to exhibit theso 20 varieties at the Christchurch Exhib.tion. The climate and ground in F'U, he says, aie ."-pecially suitable for otton-growing, and ihe yield is about three t.mes as great per acre a.s it ifi ia the SouUieni Sfca'.sa o£ i America.