'Tis Only Hawes

Observer, Volume XI, Issue 754, 10 June 1893, Page 3

'Tis Only Hawes

The irrepressible Robert G. Hawes, the Northcote storekeeper, has broken out in a fresh place. He has been at his old iricks again, and has once more cruelly slandered the colony in which he has for so long found a home, in the columns of an old country newspaper. Last time he abused the colony in print, the Glasgow Herald gave insertion to his precious effusion. This time his jeremiad appears in the columns of the Irish WeeMy Times, and once again are the statements made about us as veracious as a patent medicine advertisement testimonial, but not half so interesting.

If Hawes really thinkß that the colony is in as bad a way as he would fain make old country readers believe, why, in the name of common sense, does he not clear out ? Why does he remain in a land where he contends all is corruption and which according to him, is hastening as quickly as it can, to everlasting smash ? Here, his false, misleading, and malicious statements merely excite the laughter and contempt they deserve. But at Home, where the great bulk of the people are lamentably ignorant concerning matters colonial, such statements may do us an infinity of harm just at the very time when people are beginning to feel a sort of languid interest in us, excited by the reaßSuring cablegrams which have for some time past been sent to England respecting the present condition and future prospects of the colony.

What is usually thought of a man who will stoop to circulate false reports about another man behind that other man's back and which reports are calculated to do the party they refer to the moßt serious injury ? Is not such a man held in contempt by all honest and straightforward people ? Very well. I hold that a man who will deliberately and maliciously assail the reputation and good name of the land in which his lot is cast without any sort of justification, is as much to be condemned as the man who strives to so injure the character of his fellow-man. The same principle is involved in both cases. The colony would be infinitely better without such men as this Hawes. They are never satisfied. They never will be satisfied anywhere. In the majority of cases they are failures, and soured and disappointed, they vent their spleen on the colony whit^h is unfortunate enough to harbour them, and heap abuse on the people, their country, their manners and customs, their Government and everything that is theirs.

Hawes has evidently as profound a regard for the ' trewth ' as the Eev. Chadband himself. His latest effusion is, in the forgotten language of the asthethes, • distinctly precious ' — precious nonsense, and something a good deal worse. He has the consummate impudence to call his collection of crammers ' bare and true facts authenticated by slips from our local papers.' I wonder what the ' slips from our local papers' contained.?— bankruptcy notices, wails from the Herald about the ' influx of population,' editorial prophecies of coming financial ruin as the outcome of ' the inevitable deficit ?' Industriously hoarded up for a few weeks or months the clippings or • slips,' as Hawes

calls them, referring to '.the unemployed,' ' the depression,' etc., etc., from the Opposition organs would make a brave show ! - * # #

By adopting this plan and collecting reports of robberies, forgeries, and other horrors, it would be easy by an artful manipulation of such sensational matter, to impress the mind of the English reader with the idea that New Zealand was a .terrestrial hell. So much for the value of ' slips ' collected and arranged for a purpose. But enough of Mr Hawea' clippings. Let us examine Mr Hawes statements. 'At present,' he tells us ' there is no opening out here for strangers' unless they have capital, which if they have there are ten chances to one they will loose' — Hawes' spelling is a bit * loose ' by- the- way. ' Our laws, made in the interest of banks, syndicates and lawyers, are most harsh and strict. . .

Magistrates are selected for their trading principles and zeal for increasing the revenue by extortionate fines. Our police laws are the most harsh in the world, next to those of the Eussian Government.' Does Hawes speak from personal experience ?

Extravagance is, we are told, rampant in our governing classeß, who have dooked the Governor's salary * • * raised the honorarium of the House of Representatives to £240 • • * for less than three months' work, or play, for either term will do. Our Ministers get £1200 a year and free house and furniture. Next session it will probably be raised to £1500. Our newspapers are by no means independent—almost the whole of them are owned by syndicates or banks, through overdrafts. Their sycophancy is contemptibly prominent, as shown in their frantic pleading for Government advertisements. Carefully is anything eliminated from their monthly summary to Britain, that has not the couleur de rose in the interests of those concerned.' * • •

Such is the Gospel according to Hawea. The statements quoted are so glaringly false, so utterly absurd, on the face of them, as to need no refutation — so far as colonists are concerned. The effect of such statements on the minds of Home readers, is, as I have before remarked, another matter. To those who have seen Haweß, or who chance to know him, they are wholly without weight. Would that they could be discounted in England by a picture of the writer or at least some description of the individual upon whose authority these attacks on the colony are based.