The Star. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 1894. The Agent-General's Pedigree.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4905, 21 March 1894, Page 2

The Star. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 1894. The Agent-General's Pedigree.

Sir W. B. Pebceval is one of the best Agents« General that ever looked af ter the interests of a British Colony at the headquarters of the Empire. He is an honourable and able man, who, placed in a position by no means easy to fill with credit;, has earned respect and admiration both in the Home country asd the colony. Of course he has had his detractors. The enemies of the political party to which he belonga and of the Government which appointed him to the post which he fills so well, have not let him alone, but have let slip no opportunity of " having a shot " at him, either in his public or private capacity. Accordingly, when an English paper made a • blundering statement about the Agent-General being a descendant cf Spencer Perceval, the English Premier, who was shot by a lunatic when the present century was young, a New Zealand Tory journal proclaimed thai Sir Weatby had claimed wrongfully descent from the statesman in question, or, st all events, that he had not contradictel the erroneous statement that h9 wbb so descended. Now, even should the latter be the case, it would be very different from the Agent- General having himself made the misstatement. A man in hia position might well be exouaed for not troubling himself about the misrepresentations and slanders made about him. It happens, also, that Sir Weatby, as a correspondent of the Auckland Star has shown, has no need, if he have a fancy for pluming himself on his dessent, to claim relationship with Spencer Perceval, for hia own ancestors were " people of some consideration." The grandfather of the Agent-General was, it appears, a certain Captain Perceval, of the 42nd Highlanders, whose family had received the gift of the estate of Enights Brook, Meath, from William 111., and his grandmother was the daughter of a General Hawkshaw. The correspondent asks :— " Suppose our Agent - General, as the London society journal alleges, claims relationship with that illustrious statesman, Spencer Perceval, would it exalt tks Percevals of Enightß Brook one atom ? " It is a pertinent question, but there is one more pertinent still. What does it all matter ? Our Agent-General is justly respected for his own sake, and supposing that it were proved that one of his grandfathers had been transported for sheepstealing, and that one of his grandmothers had practised babyfarniing, would he be one whit the worse thought of by any rightminded man P Sensible people nowadays regard a man for himself, and not for what his grandfather or great grandfather were before him. The shrewd remark, that a man who prides himself on his ancestry is, very often, like a turnip, the best part of which is underground, is now generally accepted as very near the truth.