Correspondence.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 107, 29 October 1858, Page 2

Correspondence.

To the Editor of the Colonist. Sir,—Your contemporary of the Examiner, like Paganini on his one string, keeps harping upon " his. ignis fatms, or WilLo'-the.-Wisp," alias, his much wanted " coming man," who, we are told, leaving us to mind each of us bur own business', shall take up, think out, and carry into execution all those measures in which we* -have a common interest.1 Well :now, suppose before the comet Shall take its leave us, this ignis fatitus (a most appropriate cognomen) of his, should slip off its tail and tumble through the skylight of the editorial office, and be found, after recovering, himself-- from .the stunning, effects -of hi? "aerial d^c^nt,-to come up to' the beau ideal of his " fan^y man!^ > What, I Would ask,-'"iii serious soberness, (which by the by it requires some exertion to maintain while reading * the effusions of his fanciful lucubrations) would his unfortunate denizen do ? If the editor's photograph of the social state of Nelson is a true one, —which I must here for one agree with him is not far short of the mark—rianielyV that our1 deficient organisation, want of leisure, of means, and lastly, though not the! least, our want of public spirit, are sufficient to paralyze and nullifythe energies of any man who should even more; than realise in himself all the qualifications so elaborately set forth by his transceudant powers of description and fanciful portraiture; why, Sir, has he not by that one damning vituperative aentenci*!, given the true and only reason. Why if even the angel Gabriel were to appear again amongst us, he would only, as representative of Him who sent him, help those who help themselves, which, by the editor's own shewing, we are too indolent to do, so that we could reap no advantage from such an occurrence should it even come to pass. And even if the. comet should set the whole town on fire by a sudden wisk of its tail, according to his estimate of his fellow-colonists, such is the apathy, poyerty, and want of organisation amongst us for any one common object, that it is very doubtful whether, we should display sufficient instinct of the first law of nature, " self-preservation," to save ourselves from being burnt to death. .It would lead me beside the object of this letter, to follow the facetious gentleman through his flights of fancy about cats and dogs, and cocks and hens. I shall therefore proceed to notice his quotation from the parliamentary debates of the collective wisdom of the British nation, wherein he tell? us,y" the speakers proposing sanitory measures for the consideration ofthe House," which, as he would have his readers believe, " so curiously apply to our own condition," that he copies tfiein without changing one word. They are as follows:—"Let the Government be courageous! There is a great opportunity for any Government to distinguish themselves.' Parliament; =was7at its feet, "and if the Government would save them (that is the parliament), they would be too happy to be saved." 0 temporal 0. mores! "Every step that had been taken, had been in the wrong direction (like the * Scorpion of the Zodiac.) In order to do any good;an arbitrary act would be required (at whose hands ?)- Nothing had been done for the improvement of our sanitory condition without-, arbitrary powers." (This is a lie.) The speaker, whoever he may. have been, was an ignorant coxcomb, and dia uot kn<»w what he was asserting. Therefisa, saying transmitted from the earliest sageß of heathenism, namely, "those whom'the gods denounce they first strike mad." Whether the same degree of credit' attaches to our version of it, with the substitution of the singular for the plural number, I cannot say. But this I will say, that if any unfortunate Radical was to give utterance to a tenth p.irt of such treasonable declamation at a public owf-of-doors meeting, as some sapient member is thus reported to have done iw-doors, he would most assuredly receive at the hands of the Attorney-General a free passage to the Australian Gold-Fields, or the Norfolk Isle of Pines. What ? to proclaim to tlie surrounding nations of Europe that the British Commons House of Representatives was prbstrate at the feet of " Lord Derby" and his '■' satellites !" That nothing but a second Cromwell can save that mighty empire, once the envy and admiration of surrounding nations, from its being smothered, in its own muddy River Thames, but" some godsend of any arbitrary dictator, who shall lash the miserable remnants of ancient Britons " into the onward path of orderly progress and improvement!'' And by way of a climax, this worthy scion of the best public instructor has the barefaced effrontery to belibel the settlers of Nelson by asserting that we, the people of Nelson, have, arrived at? that abject state of debasement as to be ready, upon the first ap« pearance of any great emergency, to discard all our fine spun theories of representative and collective infallibility, and declare ourselves utterly unable to extricate ourselves from any pressing difficulties, except by calling in a " Will-o'-the-wisp," or some mountebank, to take upon himself the character of Dictator. Long as this letter is, I must beg tbe patience of yourself and readers while I point out the contrast so strikingly set forth by/the Editor's facetious comparison of the Frog and the Ox. At home, says he, we have a Government, with the National Assembly crouching at its feet (with my. Lord Derby enacting Coriolanus among the Volscians). beseeching it "to take measures to save them from some impending imminent danger, like the waggoner stuck in the mud. Proh pudor ! ' Had I been there, I would have replied to their supplications as. follows:—If the British Parliament has reduced itself to such a grovelling condition', it deserves to be left to crawl along in the filthy slime of its owu engendering. And as regards the Editor's portrait of ourselves, I will only say, if instead* of prostrating themselve* at the feet of the Superintendent and his Executive, our Council would only exhibit the slightest disposition to cooperate cordially with the Executive, -we should have no need to abandon our representative system, or to call for any man to fall from the clouds, or from tlie Examiner office, to seize upon our Treasury to set up a gambling house at Massacre Bay. In short, Sir, the truth; of the matter is, so long as we shall continue to exhibit that lamentable want of public spirit, that deficiency of organisation which, of itself, is sufficient to paralyse all individual ex-

ertion foV the general interest; and wliat is 6( stillygufater. consequence, tile want of m^aus, it is useless to talk of the " onward path of orderly progress and" improvement." But neither with means nor without can any community ever hope to get along, when the prevailing1 creed of that community is lisauve que peut" that is, the chief take the hindmost. Such' are my ideas upon the matter, and as such I submit' them to the consideration of your readers and yourself, and remain yours, SENEX ALBUS.