Current Topics.

Southern Cross, Volume 4, Issue 1, 4 April 1896, Page 6

Current Topics.

We were last week sadly and strikingly reminded of the risks connected ■with coal raining. Sixty breadwinners were suddenly struck down, and the sympathy of the whole colony has gone out to the bereaved. It is not •simply of the sentimental order. Deeds have followed words, and funds will not be lacking to aid the necessitous. *** Where all have been so deeply touched it is odd to read that in the Congregational Church, Dnnedin, a show of bandit was actually taken at the morning service last Sunday by way of showing sympathy with thy suffering. What a mechanical, coldblooded way of doing things ! We are told that ‘ a unanimous vote was the result.’ It might surely have been taken for granted that everybody sympathised in a case of that kind. * * * Death is no respecter of persons, and one of the local bodies in England has taken a leaf out of his book. At Warwickshire County Council a motion of sympathy with the Queen and Princess Beatrice, in connection •with the death of Prince Battenburg, was passed, whereupon Mr Johnson, the miners’ agent, proposed a similar resolution with regard to the miners killed in Wales. On Lord Norton ■objecting, Mr Johnson said colliers were quite as important as a German. The council adopted this also, and the members subscribed £l3 for the widows and orphans of the deceased miners. #■ * * While Lord Salisbury has gone off to the Continent for a holiday, Mr Chamberlain is arousing interest in the question of the future relations of Britain and her colonies. Speaking at the Canada Club he said it was essential to seek Imperial Federation on the lines of least resistance, to establish a common interest, recognise that the main application was the defence of trade and commerce and then create representative authority. He considered it imperative that the question should be approached from the commercial side. The colonies he remarked, had taken the initiative at the Ottawa Conference, but the systems ot commercial union hitherto suggested offered Britain inadequate advantages for the loss and risks in connection with the foreign trade that were involved. He stated that Lord Bipon’s despatch on the subject did not bar favourable consideration ■of any better proposal for freetrade throughout the Empire on the basis of revenue duties only, and would probably lead to the inception of a satisfactory scheme. The advantages to them would, he thought, be so enormous that the ‘colonies would be bound to carefully give it weight, and if the principle were accepted, it would be reasonable to convene a Council of the Empire to consider the subject. * * * Lady Somerset, the philanthropist, who is due in the colony in a few months, has sued William Wardrop Aston, of the Pall Mall Gazette, for £SOOO damages, caused to her reputation by a remark in the Gazette that Lady Henry Somerset would drive anybody mad. The remark was made in the course of comments upon Lady Henry’s efforts to reclaim Jane Cakebread, a notorous dipsomanaic, who had made more than 300 appearances before the London police magistrates, and who is now insane. Lady Somerset asked Mr Aston to apologise. He declined, and asserts justification as a defence, contending that the methods of the plaintiff and her associates are of such a character as to justify the words complained of. * =*=

Most people will agree with the Otago Daily Times in the opinion that the result of the Harper trials is very unsatisfactory. Our contemporary looks at the case from a broad stand point, remarking :— ‘ We go to England for funds, asking English investors to send their money here : it is

difficult in these circumstances: to find an answer to investors which will clear the reputation of the colony.’ * * * The other day a local paper published a report of a case in which a man, who admittedly had a hard job to make a living for himself and family, was fined for stealing some pieces of leather. In the same igsue appeared a paragraph containing the confession,- made in a jocular fashion, of a well-known novelist, to the effect that in his student days he was wont to help himself to the contents of passing coal drays. He even made money out of the practice at times by reselling some of the coals. Perhaps our local shoemaker will some day become famous, take the world into his confidence in a similar way, and gain credit for his ‘ thrift.’ * * * Mr H. S. Fish recently invoked the aid of the law to punish a man by whom he had been brutally assaulted. The man was fined £lO, with costs amounting to £5 9s. Mr Fish is not satisfied that the punishment ‘ fits the crime,’ and in a letter to the paper says : —‘ The effect the decision has upon me is this : I have now within five weeks, after dark, been twice violently and brutally assaulted, without any warning or chance given of defending myself, and under these circumstances I do not feel that either my person or even life is safe. I have appealed to the tribunal created by the law for justice, and it has been denied, and for the future when away from my home after dark I shall carry a loaded pistol, and will if I have the opportunity shoot any man who lays a finger upon me, as I would a savage dog.’ This is taking the law into his own hands with a vengeance. Is the era of bowie knives and revolvers about to dawn in fair Dunedin ?

Suicide, as a mode of exit from this world, is becoming fashionable, especially on the other side. Even a spell of bad weather materially augments the number of those who, by illegitimate means, “ rush glad to death’s mystery.” Even now and again the newspapers serve up a picturesque narrative of bow a poor fellow has been found with his brains blown out and a revolver by his side, together with the inevitable note to a friend that life is a farce, and so forth. A writer in a Home paper puts the matter in its true light in the following sentences : —‘ I say that it is a mean, contemptible, and unworthy proceeding even for a man who is convinced that this world is all, and that we die like dogs, to make his own quietus with a bare bodkin. That is throwing up the sponge. If you believe the whole universe is against you, and that there is notone sympathetic onlooker, stand up in the regal dignity of your manhood, in the glorious independence of a spirit that no power can chain, and bid f«,te do its worst. Fight the battle ont to the end ; get the victory if you can; if you cannot win, at least you need not be defeated. Play the man. Stick to you guns. Face the music. Grin and bear it. Never say die ! I could respect an atheist who acted in that spirit; I have no respect for the man who slinks out of existence by the back door. The Christian conception of life lifts us, of course, to a far higher altitude than this. It teaches us not to take our lives into our own hands, because we are not our own. We are set here for a purpose, we are given a little task to accomplish, and we have faith in the Providential plan. At most we are here but for a little time. This is sowing time, preparation time; harvest, fruition, home are beyond.’