South Canterbury Times. SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1884..

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3504, 28 June 1884, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1884..

The most satisfactory sign of the times is the eagerness with which people have, during the past month, sought to enrol their names on the electoral rolls of the colony. From every. district we learn that, up to the moment the writs were issued by telegraph, persons were presenting themselves for enrolment as electors. We believe the solicitude of the public on the present occasion is unprecedented in any colony. This is as it should be, and nothing could be more gratifying to record. It shows that the people have awakened to a sense of the situation of the colony, and determined to have at least a voice in the management of public affairs. There has been a great deal of platform oratory, the Government have been abused right and left, and blamed for the present depression, and they have been proved over and over again to be undesirable and unfit, but everybody seemed till lately to have been wrapt in a sort of slumber, and indisposed to use one means that were ready to hand for improving the condition of affairs. Any discontent at the Government in this colony is ridiculous, when it is remembered that the people have it in their own hands to mend matters. Nothing can be freer than the political atmosphere of the colony, it is as unclouded as the physical air. We have manhood suffrage virtually, representative government and local government to the fullest extent. If grievances exist, they are removable by constitutional means, and the voice of the people can make itself heard at the poll. The position of the man who grumbles, but does not use his voting power, is a disgraceful one, for he neglects the very means which are at his disposal for remedying the evils be complains of. Numbers tell at the poll, and we are glad to find that the people generally have awakened to a sense of their position, and an appreciation of their privileges.

The debate on the proposal to reduce the honorarium of members of the Legislature the other day, did not occupy much time. Members very soon made up their minds on this point, and the majority decreed that they were entitled to full payment for the session, though it only lasted from the sth to the 26th inst. Whether the public will readily endorse the prompt decision of the majority remains to be seen. Most people will agree that our legislators might well have accepted £IOO, and thus saved the country about £21,000 in its hour of need. There is such a thing as “ a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay,” but we cannot compliment all the members of the House upon overscrupulous attention to this wholesome rule. That the Legislative Councillors did not at least set a good example by not accepting payment of their honorarium is not at all to their credit. They bad a - good opportunity for posing as genuine self-denying patriots. But they never had any ambition to do so, and missed their opportunity through moral inability to grasp the situation.

Eminent legal authorites in England have decided that cremation is lawful, and the last barrier to the adoption of the practice having thus disappeared, and public feeling being strongly in favor of it, we may expect soon to hear of its being extensively carried out. Once it is adopted by a few influential persons, it will speedily become general. The objections are, as we have before said, merely sentimental ones, which in this utilitarian age will soon vanish. When cremation becomes general it will make a very curious alteration ; the undertaker and the monumental mason will find their occupation changed, if not “ gone.” Those wealthy persons who now possess private cemeteries and vaults will be equally fortunate in the ownership of private cremariums, for it is now established that any person may possess a cremarium, provided it gives forth no offensive sight, smell or sounds. It will be a legitimate development of civilization in a commercial community, when competition sets in among rival cremationists. “ Reduction to ashes, at cheapest current rates.” “ Cremation on the deferred payment system.” “ Cremations conducted on the shortest notice.” It will take only a short time to get used to announcements like these, for the practice of cremation is bound, sooner or later, to become general, and to entirely supersede interment.

Tub progress of colonisation has been of late, immensely stimulated, and even people who have hitherto been regarded as possessing least of the “ faculty of colonisation” (if we may use the term) now show signs of acquiring it. The Germans were always regarded as a very stay-at-home people, and the French openly boasted that they were not adapted for colonising work, the reason for such unfitness or disinclination to settle abroad, being that the native country in both cases was so fertile and capable of sustaining such immense populations, that there was no need to go into new and strange regions to obtain a living. Pressure of population, and excess of competi-

tion are, however, working liheir legitimate result with the people of the European countries. They are forced to go abroad, or stay at home and starve, and the stout-hearted and hopeful and determined among them, turn their faces away from the scenes of so much poverty, inequality and dreary toil, and venture forth upon the ocean in search of the wide untrodden and fertile fields which invite those who have the energy and determination, to come and eat ot the fruits- they will produce. It is this pressure of stern necessity in Europe, which leads to the peopling of the colonies with energetic and determined men, and the importation of all the varions arts of civilisation. So long as the hardy and determined spirit of their fathers survives in the youth of the colonies, in addition to such spirit and graces as may be indigenous or acquired—so long will the colonial dominions of the Crown prosper ; and when we look at the present condition of the colonies, the manner in which they are governed, and their various institutions—though there may be some things to criticise and to deplore, yet on the whole there is much to be proud and hopeful about. There is a vigour and elasticity which the older States have long since lost.