The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1890.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 35, 30 August 1890, Page 10

The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1890.

Nowadays we have legislation for all sorts and conditions of men and of animals. If man is taxed from the cradle to the grave he is also well looked after by the statute-book so as to guard against his becoming dangerous to himself or to his fellows. We have the Noxious Animals Act, the Adulteration Act,the Law Practitioners Disqualification Act, the Dog Registration Act, the Aet to compel journalists to sign their names, with a host of others encompassing life with pitfalls, and making the path of rectitude and lawful behaviour a very narrow one indeed.

It has long been a puzzle to us why in this part of the world, where hydrophobia is unknown, the faithful old Dog Tray should be subject to such persistent persecution and police supervision while the Grimalkins, which make night hideous and do no good to anybody but themselves during the day, should escape scot free. In these times, when finance ministers are at their wits’ endsfor something thatcan be decently rendered dutiable, it is incomprehensible that theadaptability of the caterwauling feline fortaxation should have been overlooked so long.

If it is due to the fact that the cat is regarded as a useful animal while the dog is considered as a purely ornamental one, the principle has been a good deal overstrained, for there are a legion of cats in every neighbourhood whose only mission here on earth is to lead a life of somnolence in the day and one of hilarious rambling and dissipation during the night. Possibly the ease with which a cat can be disowned is greater, while in the event of an attempted arrest Tabitha shows such pranks and paces as the average policeman can by no manner of means emulate unless he served a long apprentice in his youth to climbing up greasy poles for legs of muttcn. This difficulty of ‘ running them in ’ seems in many cases the only excuse for allowing these fiendish destroyers of our beauty sleep and the halcyon visions of our early morning dreams to remain at huge. As beneath the hollow foundations of the house somewhere in the vicinity of our drowsy ears they engage in the love-lorn duet or the maniacal yell of battle, we awake out of the slumber of innocence with observations only suited to solitude, and faintly rivalling in energy the efforts of the demons below.

The excessive preponderance of lawyers in all legislatures has long been noticed, and has been regarded by many as an abuse with which it was necessary to deal. There is not the slightest doubt that, if every profession, trade, or interest were as proportionally represented as that of the law, Wellington itself would not be able to hold the legislature of this country. Mr Verral’s Bill for the purpose of shutting out lawyers in active practice altogether from the deliberations of the Assembly is, however, one in which the principle of exclusion is carried to an invidious extreme.

That the lawyer is a dangerous animal and not to be encouraged is not by any means a modern discovery. < enterics ago, in the reign of Edward 111. or thereabouts, an obscure village in England petitioned Parliament on a local grievance. This was the undue increase of the ‘devil’s own ' in their previously peaceful community, the numbers having gone up from two to live. The popular opinion held that these five lawyers—whom we must charitably suppose to have been picked specimens—were stirrers up of strife, tormentors of quarrels, general nuisances, in faet, and so inimical to the commonweal, that the petitioners craved

that the body might be legislatively reduced to its former moderate dimensions. History does not state whether any trenchant or retrenchment process was enforced, and the surplusage of the tribe hunted out, and the crying nuisance abated. If they were, civilization has failed to profit by the great lesson. The voice of the lawyer, like that of the sparrow, is heard everywhere in the land, and while a misguided community here—unlike that far-seeing village of old England—views their increase with apathy, the legislature is taking alarm and wishing to exclude their influence. Nowadays the part of complainant is reversed. It is the Parliament which would throw off this old Man of the Sea ; it is the public which welcomes his embraces.

The inconsistency of this sort of legislation is, however, patent. In one and the same breath Mr Verral reveals his own stultification. He urges as a reason for disqualifying lawyers for election, their undue influence in matters connected with their own calling, notably, their opposition to Sir George Grey’s Law Practitioners Bill. In short, while the representation of other callings is considered desirable, the representation of the legal profession is in reality dangerous to the well-being of society, because they maintain the privileges of their order. What is the reason and meaning of legislation if it is not to have the expression of opinion of every interest in the community regarding itself ? The object should be not to wholly exclude the representation of any interest, but to limit it so that it may not overbear the others. It is a curious lopsided legislation which seeks to shut out lawyers from the House in order that Acts may be passed tending to augment the number of these bugbears without the purified pale of the council of the nation.

Eminence has its penalties. Censure, Dean Swift says, is one of them. When a new-fledged member has achieved the summit of his ambition and dates a bushel of letters to his friends from the House of Representatives, he feels, during a few short moments, a sensation of holy joy which compensates him for the deceit of past election speeches and the detraction of the Opposition newspapers. But, like everyone whose cup of happiness is o’erflowing, his troubles are but just beginning. By the time his first session is past he has realised that in the senatorial wreath of roses many a thorn is lurking, and that his ginger-bread throne is after all but very thinly gilt.

One form of molestation he has to endure from which one would suppose his frequent out-at-the-elbows condition ought to exempt him. The average M.H.R., who on the poor pittance of his honorarium is giving his country the advantage of what wisdom he possesses, is scarcely the mark which we would suspect the begging-letter writer of selecting. But, alas I the prospect of being ignominiously unseated hereafter is being constantly held in terrorem over the head of the conscript father, in default of his shelling out to kind correspondents ‘ who ’opes as ’ow he ain’t forgotten the assistance they rendered him at the last election.’ If there were a penetralia whither one would have imagined solicitations of such a nature would never have penetrated, it is the Legislature. Since, then, there is no escape, let the poor but ambitious M.H.R.’s come down again resigned to their com mission agency offices, and submit gracefully once more to be dunned by creditors, insurance men, book-agents, and lady-canvassers for the love of God and the parsons.

The great game on the tapis just now at Wellington is either retrenching your neighbour, or putting him under all sorts of provisions for good behaviour, or wiping him altogether out of influence or status in the political arena. Sir George Grey seems always to have an itching for giving the lawyers one in the bread basket when he is on the parliamentary war-path ; but hitherto he has left the press alone. If we pressmen were all so gifted that we could afford at all times to shed the slough of our anonymity and stand ladiantly sublime upon the pedestal of our own patronymics, we should accept Sir George Grey's action to compel us to put our sign-manual upon the offspring of our imagination as an act of gratitude and benevolence.

Being sensible, however, of either a general incapacity for good writing or of temporary aberrations from the path of

excellence, we brothers of the pen eannot but view with suspicion this impending attempt to unmask our imperfect lineaments by means of legislation. Some of us would gain nothing except contempt, while others of us who in exciting a laugh against some public man, steered discreetly around the shoals and eddies of the octopular law of libel, would nevertheless often forfeit the little-finger shake of our Bishop or provoke the horsewhip of an irate town-councillor. Besides, we might even sink down overweighted by the burden of our literary reputations. The comic men among us might in their sober moments be voted unutterably dull, the writer of pathetic articles might, in a passing fit of hilariousness, destroy the respect of years, while the exponent of the higher moralities would preach in vain from the editorial pulpit after he had been seen doing sip and sip about with a barmaid out of a glass of brandy and soda.

No, Sir George Grey, when we have our war-paint on let it be a thick and disguisable coating. There is no finer test of the value of writing than its anonymity. The slavish superstition for a name may make much signed balderdash pass current for excellence, but a true, a beautiful, or worthy effort loses nothing of its force through being unacknowledged by the writer, while he is protected by his namelessness from the disgrace of occasional relapses.

Another effort is being made to procure the introduction of Bible readings into the system of the public schools, but so far the indications point to the probability of its rejection. Were the Bible regarded merely as the storehouse of invaluable records expressing the phases of thought of past ages in sublime or simple diction, were it, in short, treated as a literary classic, and not as a fountain of revelation and inspiration, there would be small difficulty in securing the desii ed end. Little by little the theory of the all-sufficing completeness of the Bible in religion appears to be getting whittled away, and if the sacred Writ is to be placed before the minds of the young at all, it is to be in a pruned or expurgated fashion, and without anything savouring of elucidation or comment.

What possible effect this sort of reading could have in diminishing the tendency to larrikinism and othei' irregularities among the young, as its advocates assert it would have, it is not easy to perceive. The bald, hard, perfunctory manner into which the routine teacher must inevitably relapse, especially when the subject is one that has no bearing upon the examinations, and the contempt and dislike which many of the pupils would imbibe foi a subject to which these teachers showed such obvious indifference, would probably undo what reverence for it might have been instilled into them at their own homes. The spirit of religion does not reside, nor can it be communicated at school. Like good manners, it is insensibly communicated to the individual in private, and is the result of example, and not of precept. Where the influence at home is coarse, slatternly, or irreligious, no amount of instruction in the mass of chi’dren will rectify the balance. It is better far to let the sleeping dogs of religious differences lie altogether quiescent among the young, rather than have them importing into their school hours the invidious spirit of sectarianism or scepticism, which an unwelcome parade of the Bible would be certain to excite.

It seems to be one of the irreversible practices of Anglicanism that women should not be allowed to sing in surplices. The battle over the creation of a surpliced choir is proceeding in one of the Auckland surburban churches, and will probably terminate, as it has often terminated before, in the victory of the innovating party ami a gradual acquiesence in the habit of arraying the males in white. Previously to such alterations as this the presence of women in the choir-seats of the chancel has almost everywhere been the rule. When, however, it comes to be a question of donning a white robe, the ladies appear to become suddenly unworthy, and are relegated to a position where they are not only inconspicuous, but from their situation, not particularly effective for choral purposes. There is an inconsistency and want of logic in all this, but itis very difficult to get many to perceive it. In these days of advancing women’s rights such an invidious distinction ought to be one of the first to disappear. Though historical in its nature, it is founded upon the supposed inferiority of the sex, and is an extremely ungracious act on the part of the ecclesiastical bodies, to which women have ever been prone to cling and which they are most reluctant to forsake.