Tuapeka Times AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1895. "MEASURES, NOT MEN."

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 4208, 29 May 1895, Page 2

Tuapeka Times AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1895. " MEASURES, NOT MEN."

The political alliance formed between two such men as Sir Henry Parkes and Sir George R. Dibbs, for gross inconsistency, disregard of public opinion, and a withering contempt for all the higher essentials and conditions of dignified and honorable statesmanship has no parallel in the records of colonial politics. Not only have the two men been always separated by a wide and impassable gulf in politics, but tbeir personal relations and bearing towards each other have ever been of a malignantly offensive kind. Sir George Dibbs belongs to the strong-fibred, roughmannered and uncultured school of politicians, men whose large commonsense and strength of /purpose are invaluable in the rough labor of laying the political foundations of young states. Such men, as a rule, are not over-sensi-tive to opinion, and concern themselves more about the effect than the manner or quality of their political methods. We are not without men of the same type in this colony ; and we know that J/hey aeverjmpertt a chance of improving

their position by too fine a sense of honor or consistency. In this respect there is much in common between the two men whose alliance in New Sonth Wales politics is the subject of so much adverse comment among nien of all shades of political opinion. Sir Henry Parkes has been throughout his career a freetrader of a most extreme and uncompromising type, just as his new ally has been a protectionist of the same extreme pattern. For the nonce both men have agreed to sink their differences, personal and political, and unite their forces in destroying the present Administration. Personal hatred of Mr Reid and, of course, the desire of office, alone influence Sir Henry Parkes in following the course he has just entered ou. His exclusion from the Ministry by Mr Reid galled and humiliated him, and there is scarcely any limit to the length he would not go to be revenged on his successful rival. Of course a man so able as Sir Henry Parkes did not take such a step without endeavoring to show that he was influenced by some higher and more patriotic motive than that commonly attributed to him. He contends that his presence at the head of a Ministry is necessary for the early attainment of federation, and insists that, instead of engaging in legislation of a purely domestic character or raising the vexed question of tariffs, the whole strength of the Government should be employed in solving the greater question of Australian federation. But this, he contends, is beyond the capacity of the present Premier, whose qualifications for an undertaking of such magnitude he derides with all the characteristic offensiveness of his nature. On the other hand, the Eeid Ministry is irrevocably pledged as its first duty to the country and its supporters to sweep away the heavy fiscal duties brought in by the Dibbs Ministry. To prevent this, Sir George Dibbs would willingly descend to something even of a more questionable character than the extraordinary alliance between himself and the ex-leader of the freetrade party in the country. Meanwhile, the confederacy- so far does not protnisetho accomplishment of the objects which are the basis and purpose of its existence. The " unholy coalition " has suffered overwhelming defeat in its first trial of strength with the Government. In the first division on a hostile amendment which sought to take the fiscal question out of the hands of the Government, and refer it to a direct vote of the constituencies, the malcontents were defeated by a majority of about three to one. A subsequent division on Sir Henry Parkes's motion of censure gave the Government a majority of more than two to one, clearly indicating that the coalition party have forfeited the confi- | dence, if not the respect, of those whose support under different circumstances might have been freely given. It is encouraging to know that Parliament has a higher sense of its dignity and honor than that implied in the compact which sought by discreditable means to use the House for its own selfish purposes. The incident is one that must irretrievably destroy Sir Henry Parkes in the estimation of all thoughtful and discerning men of whatever party, and it is not at all improbable that it may be the closing incident in a career that has much brilliancy and much greatness i in it, but little of that sense of honor, without which either in political or private lite the highest gifts or the highest qualities of mind become a source of danger and an evil.

The orgie of horrors which the Wilde trial in London provided is happily over, the principal and one of his brutish associates receiving a sentence of two years' hard labor each — a sentence totally inadequate, as the judge declared, to the dastardly nature of the offence. One of the features of the trial was the attempt of Wilde to-justify some of his writings by ascribing to the necessities of " art " what was in reality filth — the ordure of an ineffably foul and loathsome imagination. It would be vain to hope that the removal of Wilde from the sphere of his crimes against Nature and morality will have the effect of extirpating the form of vice of which he has been found guilty. Similar trials at various periods in London during the last score of years tend to show that society in that great city is as hopelessly corrupt as it was during tbe worst period of the Roman Empire. In fact, the very forms of vice known to have been prevalent among the leisured classes of Rome in its most luxurious days appear to have reproduced themselves among the same class in the Modern Babylon to-day. Idleness and high living are the chief causes of this moral degeneracy, as well, perhaps, as certain mental and moral deformities which are transmitted through families, among whom for long periods there has been a low standard of morals, no sense of self-restraint and no right understanding of the duties of life and the - responsibilities of wealth, and position. We have such instances in the Queensberrys and the Ailesburys and other decadent families of rank among the I British nobility of our day. Such men I are a disgrace to their class, and a coni stant menace to morality. The Marquis of Queensberry, himself a man of questionable tastes and wild and eccentric •habits, is the father of the Lord Alfred Douglas, a creature of feeble character and debilitated mind,and seemingly with no particular ideas of either life or morality. But this is scarcely a matter for surprise when his family history and antecedents are considared. As for this creature Wilde, it is scarcely possible even to speak of him without a feeling of nausea/ He has posed for many years as the apostle of " culture." And all the time he was a beast at heart. Even in the witness-box his superb airs did not desert him. He was at the outset magnificently insolent in his replies to counsel. He tried to justify his views of morality, or rather he sought to justify his contention that there is no such thing as morality. He had previously sought to justify it in other fashions by plays that would never have been permitted upon decentstagesifwbat is known as "society" was not in a condition of absolute moral putrefaction. He seems to have made paradoxical epigram and insolent immorality his profession, and he seems also to have acquired distinction and money by such a prostitution of his gifts. There is some consolation in the fact that the wretched creators has been found out, and the grossness of the public that not only tolerated but feted him made apparent to the world. The exposure may lead to the repression of the decadent literature of the day of which " new women " as well as corrupt men are the creators, and so destroy an influence which must have a teni dency to sap public morality,