The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY JUNE 21, 1911.) THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2988, 21 June 1911, Page 67

The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY JUNE 21, 1911.) THE WEEK.

" 'Nunquam aliu-d natura, aliud sapienHa dixit."— JITVBSA.I.. " Good nature and good sense must ever join. POPB. To-morrow (Thursday, June 22, 1911), in the historic pile of Westmin-

God Sare 'l'm: King:.

ster, George the Fifth, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great

UlllOtHl XXULgUVUU ui "iv"» Britain and Ireland, and cf the Eiritish Dominions Beyond the Seas. King, Defender of the'Faith., Emperor of India, will be crowned with all the stately ceremony and solemn ritual that so great an occasion demands. For the Coronation service rightly considered symbolises all that is best and noblest in the history of the British people, focussing, as it we.ro, the grandest traditions of the Nations and

the Empire into concrete and comprehen- , Bible form. The Ritual of the Coronation, : the Recognition, the Oath, the Anointing, the Investiture are forms dating back to the earliest times. In the Recognition, ■ the Archbishop of Canterbury, with all the great officers of State and the Gai-ter-Kin« of Arms comes forward and presents the Tying to the people, saying :—"I present you King George, the undoubted Kin"- of the Realm, wherefore all you who"are come this day to do your homage ; and service. Are you willing to do the same?" At once a great shout in reply will go through the Abbey, "God Save the King God Save the Queen," while outside the Abbey the heralds' trumpets will sound out j Ihe tidings to the assembled popu- ; lace. In the Oath, the King pledges himself to three, things, viz.—to govern ttie kingdom by the laws of the land only; to maintain the religion of the Church of England as established by law, and to preserve the rights and privileges of the clergymen. Then, placing his hand upon the great Bible brought from the Altar by the Archbishop; the King says:—"The things which I have hare before promised, I will perform and keep, so help me God." Both of which imposing ceremonies are , relics of the days of long ago, when monarchs were placed upon the throne by the people, and in the act of their Coronation pledged themselves to conserve and maintain the rights of the people. But theire is much in the Coronation service , -which dates back to the time of Charle- ' magne. This is especially true of the anointing and investitiue, of which the crowning is the final act. Thus the following description of the Coronation of Charlemagne at St. Peter's, in Rome, A.D., 800, is especially appropriate at the present time:—"lt was Christmas Day, and the Pope was oayiug mass. The King , with his. sons, Pepin and Charles, knelt i in a conspicuous group before the altar j shrine of the Apostles. The scene must j have been strange and impressive. Purple curtains draped the interspaces of the column in the central nave, and formed a sombre frame to the sea of upturned faces. A pale winter light struggling through the rudely-glazed windows of the clerestory left the body of the church half in darkness. The eastern apse formed the solitary spot of brightness in the pervading gloom. The entrance to it lay through a .great trimphal arch ; from this depended the 'Pharos' of 3000 candles, always lighted on such high festivals. Beneath the arch was the shrine of the Apostles, studded with jewels, and completely encased in plates of gold and silver. Behind the shrine, and around the apse, were mosaics of rainbow hues, commemorating Constantine, the buildor of the Church, the first of Christian emperors, and the chief benefactor of the Papacy. Amid this splendour flitted to and fro the" figures of Leo and his attendant priests, arrayed in their sumptuous Byzantine vestments; and the mystery of the eternal sacrifice unfolded itself to the gaze with all the stately circumstance, of Cinkling bells and smoking incense, sonorous ohantings and muffled prayers, crossings, and genuflexions, advaneings, retreatings, kisses of peace. . . . But we may well believe that on this Christmas morning the congregation had no eyes for the familiar ceremonies. Their gase would rather fix itself upon the figure of the King, as he knelt with his sons before the shrine, a little way apart from the crowd. They had been warned that something unusual was to happen—that he would not leave the church as he had entered it. As the King rose from his knees at the end of the mass, the Pope suddenly produced a crown of gold and set it on his head. In a moment the whole church thundered with the antique formula of acclamation. 'To Charles the Augustus, orown&d of God, the great and pacific Emperor long life and victory!' Led by the Pope, the congregation broke into the litany oalled Laud us, in which the saints were invoked on 'ehalf of the new Emperor, his children, and subjects. A demonstration so elaborate can hardly have been unconcerted; and Charles, it would seem, was not altogether taken by surprise, for he patiently allowed himself to be invested with the Imperial insignia." There is a mournful contrast between the spectacle of a joyous popu-

Condemiied to Death.

laoe waiting eagerly to acclaim the Coronation of a Monarch, and the same

people soTTowinig because a Maori youth lies under sentence of death or murder. And the sorrow is deepened in the fact that despite the strongest representations made for mercy, the Government has declined to grant a reprieve. To adapt one of Maeterlinck's poetic phrases, it would seem as if "fate in sinister fashion with one hand held to the brow of the King one of the most magnificent diadems that the revolutions have spared ; and with the other it forced the brow of a criminal, moist with the sweat of death agony, to bend down towaivds a wide open tomb." And because it has always been the privilege of a King at his ■ Coronation to extend clemency to the condemned, and also because Tahi Kaka., the youth of some 17 summers who now lies under sentence of death, belongs to the Maori race, we have hopes that even at the eleventh hour a reprieve may be granted. We have no desire to condone the crime of muirder, but we venture to express the opinion that in this case justice could be satisfied without the forfeit of this lad's life, a boy, moreover, brought up in semi-savagery, and without the advantages which civilisation brings. It would only be in line with the humanitarian spirit of the age if the life of Tahi Kaka was spared, so that he might, in after years, atone for the crime he has committed. As Victor Hugo powerfully puts it in the final iines of that heartmoving volume, "The Last Days of a Condemned" :—"Civilisation is nothing but a series of transformations. For what then do I ask your aid ? the civilisation of penal law®. The gentle laws of Christ will penetrate at last into the code, and

shine through its enactments. We shall look on crime as a disease, and its physicians shall displace the judges, its hospitals displace the galleys, liberty and health shall be alike. We shall pour balm and oil where we formerly applied iron and fire; evil will be treated in charity instead of in anger. This change will be simple and sublime, the Cross shall displace the gibbet.'' To those who yet clamour for the law to take its course, we commend a careful perusal of Oscar Wilde's heartrending "Ballad of Reading Gaol." Who, after reading these moving lines, could desire that a fellow creature —no matter how heinous his offence—be sent to the scaffold ? We append one or two of the most poignant stanzas of this forceful poem :

We waited for the stroke of eight, Each -tongue was thick with thirst, For the strobe of eight is the strobe of Fata

That makes a roan .acou/nsed, And Fate will use a running noose For the best man and the worst.

Wo had no other thing to do, Save to wait for the sign to come, So like things o.f stoncv in a valley lone, Quiet we isait land dumb; But each man's heart beat thick and quick, Like a nuadman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison clock •Smote on the shivering air, And from all the gaol rose up a wail Of impotent despair, Like the sound that frightened marshes hear From some leper in his lair.

And as one sees mo3t dreadful things In the crystal of ia dream, We saw the greasy hempen rope Hoob&d to the blackened beam, And heard the prayer, the hangman's snare Strangled into a scream.

The annual meeting of the Bank of New Zealand, bringing as it dees The Bank of a n important and authoriIVew Zealand, tative speech from the

, chairman of director®, Mr Harold Beauchamp, has for long been recognised as a finger pest in the financial and commercial currents of the Dominion. Indeed, it is not too much to say that Mr Beauchamp's thoughtful and wellconsidered utterances carry weight not oven given to the policy speeches of the Prime Minister. The remarks made last week by the chairman of the most important financial institution in the Dominion naturally divide themselves under two heads. The first section concerned itself with the amazing progress made by the Bank of New Zealand since its .reconstruction in 1895, and which, besides being a reflection of the prosperity of the Dominion, also furnished ungainsayable proof of the wisdom and ability with which the bank has been managed, and its affairs directed. The second section of Mr Beauchamp's speech, however, is that which has attracted most attention, and which, because to some extent it queries the optimism of Sir Joseph Ward, has been almost savagely challenged by the Government organs. For here we have no mere party politician eager far paltry gains, but an experienced banker, to whose advantage it is to place financial affairs in their most favourable light, denounced by the Government press as being Cassandra-like in his warnings. And after all, Mr Beauchamp dees but confirm the statements of Mr Massey, Mr Allen, and other Opposition critics, in regard to the recklessness and rashness of Sir Joseph Ward's financial policy. The chairman of directors of the Bank of New Zealand only uttered a truism when he declared that the cost of the imports of the Dominion, together with the interest on all loans, must Be met by the value of the exports, and it is only as long as there is a substantial balance in favour of the exports that the Dominion's financial stability can be maintained. This is the only true test which can be applied in order to ascertain the position of the National Accounts, and it was disregard of this simple rule which precipitated a state of affairs closely approximating to financial disaster three yeans ago. And although, thanks to good prices and a revival in trade, by 1910 the balance of our exports -.. over imports totalled close on seven millions sterling, yet Mr Beauchamp shows that since that date the tendency is to a shrinkage. And if, as he shrewdly predicts, we are again approaching a period o<f lower prices, the need of exercising caution and shortening sail is self-evident. Moreover, Mr Beauchamp discerns a disinclination on the part of capitalists to embark on new industrial enterprises, thereby seriously discounting the declaration made by the Prime Minister in London recently that "the investment of capital for any legitimate enterprise in New Zealand is perfectly safe, and that it will return fair interest to those who put it into sound ventures." The thanks of the commercial community will be tendered to Mr Beauchamp feir his outspokenness, and doubtless the advice will bear good fruit.