Prospective

Southland Times, Issue 11842, 16 September 1891, Page 3

Prospective

*> TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — Human nature is forever the same. Governed by passion, prejudice, and supposed self-interest, men easily become the dupes of the charlatanry of dexterous and unscrupulous manipulators. The lapse of ages, the rise and fall of dynasties, do not affect or alter the principles of human action. New aspects may cover the face of soc : ety, new conditions arise, but the human heart still remains essentially the same. History — tracing it back to its earliest recordsafter all, is but a constant repetition of the same story, the same essential groundwork of fact. Its differences, its novelties, are but nominal, apparent ; its essential characteristics are unalterable. Human law is founded on necessity. This necessity is constant, imperious. No laws can meet every individual case. Instances of individual hardship will occur. Some classes may suffer. The condition of all cannot be equally prosperous, advantageous. Inequality is the order of the universe. Man ia but a reflex of Nature, and must submit to its laws. All the planets are*not equal in size : the sun is vastly superior in bulk to the orbs that revolve aroundVfctr*? yet on this inequality depends the harmony, the perfection of the solar system. Humon society is an aggregate of larger and smaller particles, of stronger and weaker forces ! The past will always be reproduced again. Man collectively learns little by experience. The lessons of the past are forgotten, and he rushes headloug into excesses that must in tlie end wreck his own interests and happiness. Tho nations will, as a consummation of the present wild socialistic ideas gaining asoeudency, pass through a terrible ordeal of suffering. Blood will tlow in torrents. The tyranny of tlie multitude— so uncertain, capricious aud violent in its character — will become unbearable. Leader after leader will be deposed for more ultra-ones. The crowd, delirious with their success in having confiscated all property for their own profit, will find themselves becoming poorer. They will then turn on their leaders and very likely immolate tliem. Confidence will have vanished. The truth will burst upon the masses that every one cannot be equally great or rich or powerful in this world, that to defy the eternal principles of political economy is to ruin a State, that in order thoroughly to re-

i form a State, individuals must reform themselves ; that individual patience, industry, rectitude, and intelligence, are the only true and lasting principles underlying solid success, and that to weaken authority, to believe in the absolute perfectibility of human institutions, to be lured astray by political chimeras, is the sure way to ruin themselves, and every class and interest in their country ! — I am, &c, Mannington. Sept. 7th. I