PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3429, 2 December 1919, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday'3 Daily Times.) The "Thyestean banquet of claptrap"— an appropriate name —is now in full swing. There is abundance of humour in it, but mostly of the unconscious type, allied, as all such humour is, to the pathetic. Time was when-a survey of election addresses would have furnished a column of "chips from the speeches,"-—witty, epigrammatic, vote-compelling. Now it would be a column of mere wishwash, containing nothing but the labouring of the obvious, the repeating of nursery refrains, the replying to arguments by a schoolboy's negative. The art of retort is dying or is dead. Some candidates, from whom better might have been expected, can rise to no higher heights than Mr Pirani, who used to be well able to hold his own. Heckled by supporters of the Interruption Party, he ventured the opinion that some of his interrupters would require asbestos when they left the world. He might well have expresed his meaning in the three monosyllables that once formed a rejected Dunedin member's swansong. At another of Mr Pirani's meetings the heckling had him fairly gravelled : A Voice: God help.the people of the country if you are to represent them. Mr Pirani: God help you. Another Voice: There are better men on the wharves than ever you were. Mr Pirani: Wow, wow, wow. "Politicians are slippery eels," says Mr A. L. Monteith, Labour candidate for Wellington South. Not in their speeches. A politician who has come to his wits' end generally shows that the journey has been short. As might be expected, the hecklers themselves apply the "go-slow" policy to their brains : Mr Cotton (Moderate Labour, Petone): What would happen if we all stopped work ? A Voice: We'd all have a good time. Old-time election meetings had much more sap. "If I had a son who was an idiot like you I'd drown him,"_ said an interrupter to a young and boyish-looking candidate. "Evidently your father was of a different opinion," was the reply. Or take the reply of Sir George Keid when he received a packet of flour full on his expansive chest : "I always said I was a white man " Or one of Lloyd George's retorts. When a man in the audience called out, "I knew your father when he drove a donkey-cart," Lloyd George replied :

"I have seen the caxfc myself, but I thought until now that th© donkey "was dead."

Political epigrams "were a much-nsed weapon of party warfare in the days when onr grandfathers were young. They were of all classes—like our grandfathers,— some quaint and delicate, others profane, obscure, or outrageously vulgar. The; epigram in its essence has to be brief and pithy; it need not be of a high order of poetry or point, for, like a razor, it hurts most when blunt. . It has a sting in its tail, or, as Blake says, "a hang-noose at the end." Thus, when Mr Gladstone was rejected'from Lancashire in 1868, and Lord Dufferin was appointed Lord Chancellor of the Duchy, it was said:

Th© Tory squires of Lancashire « Are justly punished for their sin; The county put a Gladstone out, The Duchy's got a Dufferin, When Mr Gully, the pugilist, was returned M.P. for Pontefract: You ask m& -why Pontefract's borough should sully Its fame by returning to Parliament Gully; Th© etymological cause I suppose is His breaking the bridges of so. many noses. Warren Hastings, who had good reason for hating Burke, wrote: Oft have I -wondered that on Irish ground A poisonous reptile never yet was found; Nature though slow will yet complete her work; She saved her venom to create a Burke. These are mere tours de force. So is the following, of local concern : „ For years a staunch supporter of his Side, he Felt at -length the game begin to Paul ;~ But -when his comrades! sorrow he espied, he Said that wasn't what he meant at all. Had daylight-saving kept him wide awake, he Surely would have tried another tack. You ask me why he now should) feel quite shaky: He sees his Paul borne by a man in Black. And to what goal all this endeavour? Drummond writes : -When lately Pym descended into Hell, Ere he the cups of Lethe did carouse, "What place that was, he called aloud to tell; To whom a devil —" 'Tis the Lower House."

The Labour Party, better known as the Extreme Labour Party, and to be still belter known as the Interruption Party, seems bent on undressing in public. New Zealand does not know the real meaning of mob-rule: the Interruption Party kindly comes to its assistance. " Blimey, I want liberty—freedom of speech for me, and be hanged to the other fellow." Meanwhile the Extreme Labour candidates, in their own quiet and poorly attended meetings, are promising the millennium, — which by its etymology mean 3 a thousand a year all round. On these terms I am with them heart and soul: I am a millenniarian; I am even prepared to be charged before the Presbyterian Assembly with being a "premillenniumarian," as the report in Thursday's Daily Times has it. On these terms you mighty with impunity call me a prae-propter-pone-post-millenniumarian or any other blessed thing you like. Again, M r J- Read (Labour candidate for Wellington North) makes the most sapient reflection ever uttered on a platform. " The Labour Party holds that there should be permanent peace among the nations of the world." Here also am 1 with the Labour Party, and so are Lloyd George, Grey, Asquith, Olemenceau, Joffre, Foch, Britain, France, America, Serbia, and Belgium. In yet another point I am an extreme Labourite. Mr Fraser says, " The Labour Party represents the busy people as opposed to the idle people. Shake hands, Mr Fraser. I too am on the side of the busy people. Working most days from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., I have always envied the " dolce far niente" of the 8 to 5 man. He alone has leisure to

organise schemes for his own advantage. We for whom a knock-off whistle never sounds, who can hold no stop-work meetings, who take work home and stew over it all-evening, who go our rounds all day and are called up at night, who have :n short to work with democratic brains instead of aristocratic hands, —we, I say, are Mr Fraser's busy people, we are Mr Semple's industrial -slaves. lam against the 8 to 5 man because he believes in plutocracy. Does he not say that hi 3 labour constitutes the true wealth of the world?-and is not plutocracy governed by wealth? Therefore —■.

Says the weekly "by arrangement " Prohibition writer in the Daily Times: Exit the personal liberty stunt. It did £ood work in the last campaign—for the dquor Party—did that fine old slogan of Personal Liberty. But it has done its work pow. By no means. This fine old slogan of Personal Liberty will always do, has always done, is always doing its work. Evidently with some well : meaning people ideas of liberty are becoming muddled through want of thought —which has wrought many times more evil than want of heart. Not for the first and not for the last time, is reason leaving by the back door as emotion cornea in at the front. This is a psychological fact, as true as two and two make four. It is worth thinking over. The confusion prevalent in the AngloSaxon ideas of liberty is an old story, and has puzzled wiser heads even than mine. There are two liberties—one political and national, the other personal and social. They are not necessarily conjoined. Of the two the second is the more important, being nearer to us. The first stops outside the door. " The Englishman," say the French, and even the Germans, " values no liberty but the political. He is free to make laws for himself—and for others; —but in personal and social matters he is the greatest slave in the world, and doesn't'know it." The Englishman's social canons are crowded with things he must not do, with " things that are not done." The true tyrant that holds John. Bull in fetters is Mrs Grundy—a tyrant whose tyranny is ' 'worse than blood or chains." With grim eye and .forbidding countenance she accompanies him wherever he goes, sits by his side in the tramcar, in the train, at the dinner table, walks by his side in the street. The French fcquiyalent of Mrs Grundy is a kindly, tolerant old lady with a knowledge of the world and its ways, and of the things that matter. The Englishman, with all his political freedom, goes about in hourly dread of violating some arbitrary law of decorum that often has no connection with good manners. Hence his national diffidence, hence his national reserve, which has alienated as many people in Europe as his political liberty has attracted.

Personal Liberty is not a thing to t>e left to the capricious interpretation of people who base the righteousness of their cause solely on the ferocity of their own convictions. The destroyers of liberty in the past have always been sure they were in the right. Many of- them did their work of destruction with a biblical text on their lips. Sincerity plays no part in the right of a cause. The sincere Socialist, the sincere Militarist, the sincere Prohibitionist, in fact any sincere one-idea-ist, is certain that the welfare of the world lies his way. Some of these we know by their woi*k, the Prohibitionist we know bv his intentions —the ultimate end of which will be to turn the community into a Donnybrook Fair, or a Mad Hatter's Tea-party. "The world—the collective instinct of mankind —is wiser than the philosopher."

"When liberty is gone Life grows insipid and has lost its relish. says Addison in his Cato. What else did Charles Lamb mean when he sought through all the realms of literature and history, for a simile wherewith ,to describe the decay of the South Sea House: "once a house of trade, a centre of busy interests," now " with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out," —a desolation something like Balclutha'sl""

'Profiteering, a term now " omnium in ore," is not a new thing, nor is fixing of prices. Witness such old statutes as the following, of date about 1535, " by which every craftsman victualler shall be ruled " : The assise of the baker is sixpence highing and sixpence lowing of a quar- ' ter of wheat; lor if he lack an ounce in the weight of a farthing loaf he to be amerced at 20 pence; and if he lack an ounce and a-half, he to be amerced at 2s 6d in all bread so baken; and if ho bake not after the assise of the Statute he to be adjudged to the pillory. Also, the assise of the brewer is 12 pence highing and 12 pence low-

ing in the price of a quarter of malt, and evermore shilling to farthing; for when he buyeth a quarter malt for two shillings, then he shall sell a gallon of the best ale for two farthings. When he buyeth a quarter malt for three shilling*, the gallon three farthingaj for four

shillings, th© gallon four farthings; and so forth to eight shillings, and rio further. And that he set none ale a sale till he have sent for the ale-taster, and as oft as he doth the contrary he to be amerced at sixpence; and that ho aell none but by measure assised and sealed, and that he sell a quart ale upon his table for a farthing. And as oft as ho doth ' th© contrary to sell not after th© price of malt, he to be amerced the first time 12 pence, the second time 20 pence, the* third time 3a 4d; and if he will not beware of these warnings, th© next time, to be judged to the cucking stole, and the next time to the pillory.

With this iron collar round the necks of every " craftsman victualler," the only person, in sight likely to derive any profil or advantage from the victualling business was the ale-taster. Civis.