DUNEDIN NOTES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXV, Issue 4252, 26 June 1895, Page 3

DUNEDIN NOTES.

[Own Correspondent.] [Unavoidably held over from last issue.] The time has again come round for the assembly of the " dumb dogs " in Wellington. By-the-way, those who have not read or forgotten their reading of " Adam Bede " give Sir Bobert Stout the credit of coining this phrase, just as the patent rights for the phrase " leapß and bounds " and another epigramatic expression, which I have momentarily forgotten, to our late friend Vincent Pyke. It is, perhaps, a little singular that I should have come on the expression appropriated by Sir Julius and also the temporarily-forgotten one of poor V.P., each in the preface of two English translations of the two most famous epics the world lias yet seen. However it may have been with V.P. as a phrase-maker, neither Stout nor Yogel have a turn for such methods of expression. But to return to our " dumb dogs." They have been dropping in here from the southernmost parts of the province singly and in couples during the past week, and you can easily fix, if not their identity, then their temporary occupation, by their loudness of manner and the frequency with which they find it necessary to stand at some busy point of the street in order to work out an argument in tones that may be heard high above the street traffic It must be regarded as a positive joy by some of those country representatives, the getting away for a few months from the soul-crushing monotony of rural life. To our city members it must be like taking a bull out of the ring from the spears of the matadors. They have had a particularly hard time of it lately, and have borne meekly with everything only, perhaps, to be jerked out of the saddle when the next Parliamentary stakes are run for. The curse of a democracy is envy. Every ragged, ignorant, gabbling creature you see poisoning the air in the vicinity of the street corner pulls his pipe out of his mouth a dozen times a day and asks in oath-garnished language who or what Hutchison or Pinkerton or Earnshaw is, and what right or qualification he has to his position. And then they threaten and abuse them to their face. Earnshaw, of course, they let alone with an oath and a threat of terrible vengeance when the general election comes round. " I daren't go along through the main thoroughfare now," said one of the most retiring of the trio to me a week or two ago. When he said this he had just shaken himself loose from a body-guard of six who had talked into his face and badgered him for more than a mile of street. "I wouldn't mind so much," said he, "if they were working men, but they're only vagrants ; yet they have >otes like the rest of us. Tes, you're right ; it will be a relief tc get away to Wellington. I couldn't stand this much longer ; it's about the meanest, the most unthankful and humiliating business a man ever engaged in." And then he fled terrified, as he descried another bunch of " unemployed " bearing down on him. He would indeed be a dull and unobservant man who failed to see in Mr William Hutchison's meeting the other evening clear and decided signs that his political end is at hand. For this, I must say, lam for many reasons sorry. He is intellectually very far above the class among whom he ranks as a " labor member," and though a faddist and crotchety and weak enough to be at times obsequious and something of a trimmer, he is well-meaning and at heart sincere. The feeling of his audience was not one of hostility or menace. The faot is he gives no cause for hostility ; it is impossible to pick a quarrel or manufacture a fight with the People's William. He is everything and more than the most dreaming Socialist could desire. Not only would he compel the State to provide employment for every workless son of toil, but he would place all men on a level as regards wages. The chimney-sweep and the Premier, the scavenger and the merchant, the doctor or lawyer and his groom, the deckhand and the engineer or captain should, if Mr Hutobison'B doctrines oould only be hallmarked by some impossible law, all have the same value assigned to their services. Of course Democratic or Socialistic workingmen cannot logically quarrel openly with such a man, but they can ohuckle inwardly and treat his absurd proposals as material for amusement*. So'if was on Friday evening. Even his old age pension scheme, io which he has given the best of his thought and time, was laughed at and made merry over and made the subject of jocular and scarcely respectful remarks and interrogatories. " How are we to get the money for this scheme," sai# he, and before he could explain, th.c answer came in a deep, serious vpipjß *A borrow it ; " and then another gen.tlem.an added, with facetious gravity, ''and never pay the' interest." Jleiiber Mb presence nor his Bpeech excited the slightest interest. There was a good natured but an amußed tolerance shown him, which, when the time approaches for Mb next appearance before the electors as a suitor for their suffrages will show itself in a settled, deaiw to place our old and *4wrtiK<W3 kmi

very far down, indeed, on the poll. Than that there can be nothing plainer or more obvious. The Unemployed Relief Committee are still industriously engaged in the philanthropic work of making provision for the needs of the destitute out-of-work men in the city. And still, I am happy to be able to say, the response from the citizens continues in the same generous manner that it began. The suggestions, too, that accompany the subscriptions are numerous though seldom practical. Probably the most seemingly feasible communication of this kind came from Mr C. C. Rawlins, mine manager, in your district. He made some offers of assisting in providing goldmining work for a certain number of men, which would be more welcome and easier of acceptance were it not surrounded by so many conditions. The committee are naturally not desirous of_ undertaking any responsibilities beyond raising and administering the fund with the objeot ot carrying the unemployed and their families through the present hard winter. Mr Rawlins's offer is one for a private party of men rather than for the agency of a body temporarily organised to meet a passing period of distress. However,- it shows that the permanent remedy for such troubles is to ba found, as I have so often and strongly insisted, not in charitable doles or temporary employment in the city or suburbs but in the permanent location of the surplus working population in the mining districts of the province. And if the unemployed committee assist in doing this by equipping the men to set out into the mining districts, without contracting any responsibilities for the future, they will be doing all that can be expected of them. So liberally and general are the subscriptions flowing in that the amount originally expected will, it is thought, be largely exceeded, and, with the Government subsidy, no more will be heard daring the present winter of the unemployed trouble. The Rev. Rutherford Waddell, one of our most catholic-minded and ablest clergymen, has been delivering a series of sermons on social questions. Last Sunday evening he preached on the gambling habit, and was listened to by a crowded congregation. He dealt with the subject with great power and effect and yet rationally and in a practical manner. Gambling is undoubtedly one of the greatest, and promises in time to be the greatest, vice of the age. It has eaten the moral heart out of Dunedin, and makes a score of victims for every one that prohibitionist statistics claim for intemperance. One can easily understand that a subject of this kind is considered to be of more practical import than the usual hair-splitting about dogmas and tenets, treatises on ritual and moth-eaten definitions about things that demand no intellectual effort on the part of the preacher, and have not the remotest interest to nine-tenths of the audience, and no bearing whatever either on the affairs of this life or the one that succeeds it. Gambling being a popular vice, those who gambled as well as those who didn't went to hear what Mr Waddell had to Bay about it. He was eloquent, argumentative, impassioned, trenchant and denunciatory in turn, and I am certain the effect must be a salutary one. Betting, he declared, was not only dishonest, but it was stealing; for the basis of society was reciprocity of exchange. At the close of his sermon, and while the large congregation were still strongly stirred by his concluding appeal, the rev. gentleman walked to the front and called out in % loud voice that those who were willing to promise abstention from betting and the racecourse Bhould stand up. The appeal was promptly answered. All the congregation rose like soldiers springing to attention — all but three men who pretended to be powerfully absorbed in the contemplation of a new hymn or groped painfully under the seat for an imaginary glove or an erratic walking stick. Two out ot the three who refused to answer to the appeal are prominent members of the Dunedin Jockey Club send the third is a wellknown racing man. Of course they never looked for this " stand up " business and they were in consequence fearfully " had."