TOPICS OF THE TIMES.

Southland Times, Issue 22473, 8 November 1934, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE TIMES.

Pessimistic Bishop. In the course of a sermon at Leeds Dr. Henson, Bishop of Durham, said it was a fact that the great majority of English folk had no longer any effective contact with the Church of England and that the parish churches were no longer used by the masses of parishioners. In 1634 there were probably more communicants than there were in 1934, though the population of England in the interval had multiplied ninefold. Was the spectacle that confronted them reassurring? Atheism, cruel and militant, reigned in Russia; a cynical Erastianism raised its head in Germany; from America came daily proofs of an almost incredible moral disintegration. Was there any part of the wide expanse of what they still described as Christendom where the considering observer could find materials for courage and hope? It was the popular fashion to affect bold optimism; but their wishes were even less trustworthy than their fears. Shakespeare. At a luncheon held to celebrate the publication of the “New Temple Shakespeare,” Dr. Inge expressed the opinion that Shakespeare never unlocked his heart in any of his plays; that he had no period of “storm and stress” in his life; and that the sonnets contained no “deep confessions.” In other words, he believed that Shakespeare was just a typical, mid-dle-class Englishman—a jolly man of the world with a thoroughly sound and healthy nature, who happened to be an author and manager by profession. He had no inkling of the “glorious fate” in store for him; he never published anything after “The Rape of Lucrece,” in 1594—and there were no problems in the Sonnets. The author merely took “an ordinary theme of the sonneteer” and wrote very good poetry—because he happened to be Shakespeare. Dr Inge did not agree that people sat down and wrote poetry when they were unhappy. He quoted Coleridge, who said that when a man was unhappy he wrote “damned bad poetry.” “Shakespeare,” observed Dr. Inge, “returned to Stratford-on-Avon, where he bought the" best house in the town, as soon as he could afford to do so. As to what he did in the last five years of his life, I wonder our friends have not suggested the obvious answer—he wrote the works of Francis Bacon.” Dominions and Ox'ord. Sir Francis Wylie, who was Oxford Secretary to the Rhodes Trustees from 1903-1931, addressing the Empire Summer School at Rhodes House, Oxford, spoke of the widening influence of Dominions students on the life of the university. In the eighties there was in Oxford a sprinkling of Australasians, an occasional Canadian or South African, he said, but they were rare enough to attract attention and be interesting. To-day nobody noticed Dominions students as such. They were no more odd or interesting than a girl undergraduate or an aeroplane. “That increase of members would, I suppose, have taken place in any case in the normal course of events,” he said, “but so far as Oxford was concerned the course of events has not been normal. It was interrupted unexpectedly, almost violently, when Rhodes died. Publication of Rhodes’ will was one of the dramatic moments in the history of Oxford. It was received with mixed feelings of pride and anxiety—pride that Oxford should have been selected as the instrument of a great experiment, Imperial and more than Imperial, and anxiety as to the possible result. I think the American was regarded as a greater danger, but the Empire student was not above suspicion. Standards were safeguarded, and if compulsory Greek has gone that has been part of a general movement, certainly not confined to Oxford and of which Oxford was never the centre. I do not think our oversea students had much to do with its disappearance, although, they wore no mouring at its funeral.” If Oxford had one way or another given a great deal to the Empire it had also received. He thought the great majority of those who were old enough to make comparisons felt that Oxford life was richer and more interesting than it was before the oversea invasion. That invasion had widened the outlook and the range of interests of the undergraduate and of the don to. Menace of Bureaucracy. Speaking on the evils of legislation by regulation, at a meeting of the Newcastle Law Society, Mr William McKeag, Liberal member for Durham, said they were suffering from an acute form of legislative indigestion. “The most disturbing aspect to my mind is the extent to which we are delegating to Government departments those legislative powers which should be exercised by Parliament alone,” he said. “I have had exceptional opportunities in my dual role as a practising solicitor and as an M.P. of observing the growing tendency of the department to filch legislative power whenever opportunity presents itself. I do not think that there can be any doubt but that there is a conspiracy on the part of highly placed Government officials in Whitehall to usurp the legislative functions of Parliament and to oust the jurisdiction of the Courts. It is none the less grave a position because the conspiracy is in all probability tacit rather than plotted, and the danger is none the less real because the motives actuating those officials are of the most high-minded and public-spirited character. There is, indeed, I think, a deep-seated but perfectly honest official conviction that the best and most scientific method of ruling the country is by departmental edict, without interference or circumscription by Parliament and unassailable in the Courts.” Mr McKeag referred to Lord Hewart’s book “The New Despotism” and other statements on the subject, and added: “In face of all this and of all the overwhelming mass of evidence that could be quoted, can it any longer be doubted that we are faced with nothing more nor less than a constitutional crisis? The abrogation of the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament is being rapidly brought about by piecemeal and subterranean methods. The whole system of government is being undermined in a way which the public would not tolerate if it were cognizant of it. At the moment however, it is clearly escaping general notice, and unless checked will continue to escape notice until the mischief has been carried to completion. It is the first and most fundamental principle of natural justice that a man may not be a judge in his own cause, but the judical and quasi-judicial powers conferred upon departments now enables the bureaucrat to fill the threefold role of legislator, administrator and judge. The sovereignty of Parliament and the supremacy of the law should be maintained at all costs.”