Topics of the Week

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue XV, 13 October 1894, Page 338

Topics of the Week

tPHE undesirable emigrant is a person of considerable _L importance nowadays, and has during the past week been the subject of a considerable amount of controversal conversation. Ever since Mr Reeves introduced his Exclusion Bill last week the public mind has been excised and the public tongue busy on the extremely vexed question of who is undesirable. The Minister of Libour answers the question voluminously, but hardly in the manner we should expect from the advanced minister of the most advanced government the world has yet seen save during the first French revolution. Take for example the clause which closes this colony to the single man who is not worth £2O in addition to his goods and chattels, and which on the same fashion demands that the married man shall possess £3O.

Surely this is a retrograde step in liberalism. If indeed it be wisdom : is it not the wisdom of the serpent ? This is not the policy which made England great or peopled, and made these colonies prosperous. Did Mr Richard Seddon, or Mr Mackenzie, or Mr Cadman possess twenty notes when they first set foot in the colony ? How many members of this or previous Ministries did indeed? and outside politics what is the proportion of those now in comfortable or affluent or even powerful positions in life in this colony who when they arrived had scarcely twenty shillings, let alone twenty pounds ? Is there not indeed a distinct and most unpleasant suggestion of kicking down the ladder by which we mounted in this Bill. That the Minister for Labour has arguments on his side we do not deny. They are plausible arguments too, but they are scarcely those we expected to hear from a British colonist, far less from a Liberal gentleman, and less again from the Minister of Labour in a Radical Government. That emigrants, especially working emigrants, are more desirable when they bring money with them than when they do not is, of course, undeniable, but any attempt to lay down a hard and fast law as to the amount of money an emigrant shall be possessed of is retrogressive in the extreme. The manifest desire is to make New Zealand a close preserve, a land of which it will be said that it is easier to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter it. Mr Reeves has no doubt the best possible intentions, but his measure is overdone. It wants to make this colony a private little Utopia, where the fates open but to golden keys. There are other clauses still more indefensible, but everybody should read the Bill carefully for themselves. Mr Reeves has done much good work, but he will certainly kill the working man and everyone else with kindness if be presses labour and social legislation much further.

JUST now when all our faces are set China-wards, a tew words on her system of Government may be interesting. China was the first country in which appointments in the Government service were thrown open to public competition. As a rule, the < tiicials come from families which have been students for generations. They are extremely well educated men. In fact they cannot attain any position unless they have passed some very severe examinations. There will be, perhaps, seven or eight thousand candidates for the high degree of Master of Arts every year, and seventy or eighty degrees to be conferred. Many men enter the lists as regularly as the third year comes round. If the candidate be unsuccessful up to the age of eighty, and can produce evidence that his papers were good, the Emperor, as an act of grace will grant him his degree, but, of course, he attains no public position. In some few cases men can enter public life by contributing largely whenever the Treasury is in want of money for a social occasion, for instance in time of war. But everyone in China declares these men are not to be compared to those who work their way up by hard study and steady in-

dustry. Those who wish to do this must provide themselves with a certificate of good character, be not convicted of any offence, and their forefathers, for three generations, must not have been barbers, play-actors, domesticservan ts, or employed in one or two other despised capacities. The Chinese system is, therefore, the very antithesis of that prevailing in this colony. In no country, however, is learning more esteemed than in China, though the child of the working man can only hope to acquire the merest smattering. During a rebellion which broke out some forty years ago, the value of the bookmen in their official capacity was most strongly marked, and those who then saved the Empire were all scholars of the highest literary powers. But life is too short in New Zealand to train our public men for their positions. AT present in our noble House of Representatives there is raging a Bill epidemic. The idea at first sound, to the uninitiated, bears a plausible ring, nay, is even quite natural when there is so much borrowing in prospect, for this seems meant to liquidate these little Bills. But alas ! it will not, for who in this colony is not sufficiently acquainted with the essercs of Parliament to know that it feeds on Bills? Not nice little tailor’s and dressmaker’s bills, which can be settled by a stroke of the pen, but Bills which take days and nights of anxious thought and ceaseless chatter—we mean serious discussion—to settle. Now to be the introducer of a Bill is a proud position for any member. If itjis a bii Bill, involving large interests, so much the more important is the father or foster father of the little William. But if a big Bill can’t be managed, then by all means be the parent of the little Bill. It doesn’t matter whether it is necessary or important, or whether it takes up the valuable time of the House ; it is fashionable to introduce a Bill, and for fear the constituents should think their member lacking in style or in a knowledge of what is comine il Jaut, he racks his brain—if he has one, if not, his neighbour’s—for an idea for a Bill. To such a one I commend the following : A Bill to regulate the number of bonnets each woman in this colony may buy in a year. A Bill to limit the number and quality of cigars a man may consume in this colony in the course of a month. A Bill to ascertain the exact number of oranges eaten by each person in this colony during the months of July, August, and September.

HOW Mr Wragge makes his wonderfully correct weather forecasts must have puzzled many good people, and the article in the current number of the Review of Reviews, in which he tells the story, will doubtless be read with great interest by all classes of readers. Mr Wragge explains in lucid style, and lets us quite as far into the secrets of a weather prophet as there is any necessity we should go. This number of the Review of Reviews also contains the usual number of reproductions of Australasian cartoons, and the usual admirably written synopsis of colonial affairs for the past month, under the heading * The Progress of the Colonies.’ An article dealing with the Graphic and other New Zealand papers is also a prominent feature. We quote some of the pleasant things said of us elsewhere.

THE übiquitous cable fiend would seem after all to be identical with that mysterious Jack-the Ripper-like personage who writes the penny dreadful, * The Brother’s Revenge or the Blood-stained Putty-knife,’ type—a being whom no man has as yet seen in the flesh. Listen to him ! ‘The Czar is almost a skeleton, and hardly able to use his arms. He spends bis nights in weeping for his consumptiv e son. George He suddenly walked to the telegraph office at one o’clock one morning, and wired an inquiry to the doctor attending the young prince. He waited shivering in a tireless office for an hour and a-half, and upon receiving bad news, cried, ** Ob, God 1 what have I done to be so severely punished ?” ’

I no not wish to impugn the cable fiend’s truthfulness, I will content myself with saying that this is palpably a lie. Had such an incident occurred as that above described, had the Czar in his misery actually so spoken, the cable fiend would certainly never have heard of it. The actions of kings are not so public as the above would make it appear, nor is it conceivable that the unfortunate monarch has about him a dastard so base as would make of his agony a paragraph for the world’s breakfast table. This raises again the question of the world's right to a knowledge of the private life of its conspicuous men—a right, it may be remarked, which the persons most nearly concerned have been universally and doggedly denied, even with their latest breath. It is probably criminal to be a Czar, as it is certainly criminal to achieve any kind of dis-

tinction by personal effort and superiority, but there is such a thing as justice even in the treatment of criminals. It is never the virtues and true greatness of a man that the public desires to know, but his vices and weaknesses. It seeks to glut its vulgar vanity on the thought that the great man is after all as poor a thing as itself, and it springs instantly to the opposite conclusion that it is consequently as great as he is. What more delightful spectacle for the populace than the sight of a great man in the dust ? Not only in China but throughout the alleged civilised world. Consider the case of Parnell — but the dead are no longer rivals and are forgiven—or of Stanley. The latter’s whole life is a romance more glorious than that of the fabled Ulysses. Ficton has never conceived anything more wondrous and heroic than his voyage for two thousand miles do wn the Congo through a land beset with foes, where the sound of the war drum never ceased. Yet within six months of bis return from his last African expedition this man was hounded and abused on the testimony of his suboidinates, till, if one believed all, it hardly seemed fit that he should be suffered to live. The cable man knows his trade.

WH AT is wrong with the Auckland Hospital ? Surely if there be any place on this planet where peace and good order should prevail, where the kind answer that turneth away wrath should be in daily requisition, where the voice of the disputant should be hushed and his yea and nay be of the gentlest order of human affirmation and denial —that place is a hospital. Yet for years past on one excuse or another the Auckland Hospital has been the scene and centre of a kind of unseemly petty wrangling which would disgrace even a House of Representatives. What is it, in the name of human patience, that is wrong? Are the doctors at fault, or the Charitable Aid Board, or the nurses, or the patients, or who is it ? Who ever it be let us pay them a year’s salary and have done with them. Peace at any price.

Doctors, as a rule, are not cantankerous folk. There is no more spite and petty jealousy existent among them than among members of the other professions, if as much. Auckland may be unfortunate in her medical practitioners—the Charitable Aid Board would almost seem to affirm that it is so—but the conclusion is neither pleasant nor probable. As for the nurses, it would be absurd to attribute even a fraction of the fault to the paid subordinates of the institution, the remedy against whom is at once both obvious and easy. There remains but the Charitable Aid Board. Individually every member may be and doubtless is, actuated by the purest motives, far be it from us to question the fact, but Charitable Aid Boards, no less than all other kinds of human assemblages, aie occasionally in the habit of ‘ pooling their consciences,’ after which their activities would frequently seem to be inspired less oy the * purest motives ’ than by the Arch Fiend. Charitable Aid Boards may thus come like charity to ‘ jover a multitude of sins.’ Our advice to everyone concerned is —Stop arguing. There has been on more than one occasion

in the world’s history such a question as Who is right ? but it has never been of any importance and never will be. Compared with that other question What is right? it is as a puddle to the Pacific. Yet men have blinded themselves in the slime of the minute swamp since time first was, and they will probably continue to do so until time ceases to be, and nothing will convince them that they are not in the ocean, and the mud they raise is of their own brains, and not an integral part of the waters of Truth.

IF you possess £15.000 be content, don’t try and become richer and speculate to that end ! If youdo you may probably end in the Bankruptcy Court. This platitudinising results from reading a recent Wellington bankruptcy case. Mr Andrew Young, of that city, was a wealthy man 16yearsago ; he had quite £15,000, so he has sworn, and to-day he is over £1,500 in debt, and has been adjudged a bankrupt. It is a common case enough, and would scarcely have been worthy of notice except for the fact that the list of the bankrupt’s unfortunate speculations offers a certain amount of food for reflection. Mr Young’s chief business hobby was * coaching,’ and from his statement this appears to be as brisk and easy a way of losing as could well be desired. A passenger who was injured in an accident to one of his coaches cost him £1,200 ; a coaching contract between Tauranga and the Thames cost £800; a system of passenger carrying traffic in Wellington was squashed by Parliament and cost £3,500 ; a coaching contract between Christchurch and Hokitika was another unlucky venture. Such a series of misfortunes * on the road ’ might have been deemed sufficient hard luck for any poor mortal, but fortune most obstinately refused to shine on this unlucky gentleman. The Wellington Opera Company which was going to make so many fortunes for its shareholders, cost him £250. The Collingwood Goldmining Company, over which a very distinguished mining expert pronounced a glowing panegyric reduced his resources by £7OO. With Wellington going ahead as it is one would have thought it impossible to lose money in purchase of real estate; yet Mr Young lost £I,OOO in land at Thorndon. He dropped money in coalmines, and was £7OO out over race horse owning. In fact there is no limit to the bad luck that dogged the

footsteps of the speculations of this gentleman. We sometimes hear of men of whom it is said that all they touch tarns to gold. It is wholesome occasionally to be told of men of whom it may be said that all they touch turns to the ashes of ruin and disappointment.

DODO * and * Marcella ’ are the two most popular books of the day, and a prominent and grave reviewer in the Edinburgh has expressed unbounded astonishment at the fact, in that it shows a decided contrardictoriness in public taste. But as has been very well pointed out by an eminent novelist, the explanation is easy. A writer in the Edinburgh Review expresses his surprise that ‘ Dodo ’ and * Marcella ’ should be both so popular ; it seems to him the world of novel-readers is a very large one, and is split up into as many divisions, and those as antagonistic to one another, as the religious world. With a large portion, the personal novel, provided it has a certain fashionable flavour, is always popular : its readers—who are not themselves all in the fashion—imagine that it introduces them behind the scenes, and exhibits the mysteries of high life ; they are made to feel that they too are of the ‘Upper Ten,’and when they are told whom the characters are meant for, they perceive at once their life-like resemblance to the originals; the conversation need not be very sparkling provided they are assured that it is carried on by persons of quality, and if it is rather * risky ’ they see no such offence in it as they would be quick enough to perceive were it placed in the mouths of their equals. A large and increasing minority of this class are, however, being taught to welcome indecency for its own sake, and under the guise of philosophic wit it is permeating quite a little library of modern fiction. The clients of works of the * Marcella ’ class are also numerous, but are recruited from quite other quarters. Some of them, but not many, are novel-readers, but the vast majority are earnest and serious persons who do not generally approve of the novel, but are nevertheless glad to get hold of one which they can read without a loss of self-respect, or the necessity of hiding it in a drawer (like Archdeacon Grantly) when their privacy is intruded on.

UGLY men are not entirely obselete in this country. Would it therefore be worth while to send Home representatives to the Ugly Men Competition which comes off at Brussels almost immediately. We learn from the admirable weekly causerie of Mr James Payn that the lists of * ugly men ’ are being rapidly filled up. This will doubtless be adduced by some people to prove that vanity is not an attribute of the male. The experience of almost every portrait painter, however, is to the contrary. Man is more particular about his representative on canvas looking his best than looking like himself, and is, on the whole, harder to please than woman; but then it is only a few men, as compared with women, who have their portraits taken at all. Unless they are exceptionally good-looking or very silly, they prefer to pique themselves upon some other quality than good looks. The intellectual ones are fond of quoting squinting Wilkes’s boast that he was only a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in England ; and delicately intimate that as regards the fair sex they have found the observation correct. I knew a distinguished officer who was what is called in Wiltshire * sinful ordinary ’ as to looks, and who was perfectly conscious of it. *1 am quite aware,’ he used to say, * that lam the ugliest man in the British Army, but then ’ (and here he used to throw his shoulders back) *1 have probably the finest figure.’ The Due de Roclore, the favourite of Louis XIV., was forbidding both in face and person ; but there was another nobleman at Court who was still less agreeable looking ; this person had killed a man in a duel, and besought De Roclore’s interest with the King for pardon. • Why do you want to save this fellow’s life ?’ asked the monarch. ‘ Sire,’ replied the Duke, ‘if he were to suffer, I should be left the ugliest man in France.’

I once knew an old gentleman so terribly disfigured by the smallpox (continues Mr Payn) that children used to gaze at his face with amazement. * Yes, my dears,’ he used to say, with a really sweet smile, ‘ it is very beautifully carved, is it not!’ As when people grow very old they become proud of it, so it is with some persons who are very plain; they exaggerate what is amiss with them. As regards the candidates at Brussels, their chief motive is probably to gain a prize, but notoriety is also, we may be sure, a great attraction. This passion has of late become very widespread, and is responsible—as in the case of the Anarchists—even for the gravest crimes. The young negro minister who, when leading a prayer meeting, commenced it with the aspiration * Lord, make Thy servant conspicuous,’ has bad many imitators both in and out of the pulpit, but until of late years it was confined to a few individuals ; nor, indeed, were there the same opportunities for its display. A very mild example of it, the habit of carving one’s name in prominent places, is somewhere defended by gentlehearted Leigh Hunt. It is a vulgar and egotistic custom, he admits, but everyone wishes to be known to bis fellows, and it is the only means that falls to the lot of the million of becoming so. But nowadays people are not satisfied with carving their names.

ARE we colonials harder headed than Society in general at Home! If not what is the reason that the advertising tipster has never gained a foothold in a country where there is so pronounced a taste for racing and speculation. In New Zealand the philanthropic individual who will put you on all the winners for a trifling fee is almost utterly unknown. In England thousands of pounds are spent in these tips, and the name of the so called prophets is legion. In Australia the custom also flourishes and keeps in affluent idleness a very respectable section of very unrespectable society. From his absence in this colony it is natural to suppose that we are less gullible than either our Australian or English cousins, for of course the sporting tipster is a fraud, and all his infallible systems are swindles. In order to test the quality of the prophetic spirit, a well-known British sport selected thirteen of these * tipsters,’ and applied ‘o each for the names of the winners of forthcoming races, enclosing, of course, the stipulated fee in every case. Out of one hundred and fourteen names of * certain winners ’ furnished to him, only nineteen turned out correct, four of the ‘ prophets ’ only managing to name one actual winner out of thirty-six * selections !’ In view of the result of the test, this particular form of imposture ought not to flourish quite so mightily in the future as it has done in the past. WHETHER we agree with her theosophical views or no, one thing cannot be denied, that Annie Besant is a grand speaker and a great thinker. The Graphic made no pretence over its disappointment with Talmage, so its bona fide cannot be doubted when it declares that no such orator as Mrs Besant has visited this colony. Her first lecture, ‘ The Dangers that Threaten Society,’ is inspiring and forceful to a degree seldom attained even by more famous orators, and we cannot but hope thonsandsof young colonists will hear it. It cannot fail to encourage noble endeavour and to inspire noble thought, to cheer fainting courage and to create desire for better and higher things and ideals in all who hear it.

Mrs Besant speaks in an earnest, thoughtful, often intense manner that immensely impresses her audience and carries it with her. Her word painting is exceedingly graphic, and in many instances powerful in the extreme. At the same time it is never lurid, and she never appears to exaggerate or overdraw. In describing the miseries of East and South London she certainly does not even go as far as she might if she would, as the writer well knows from experience on an East End journal—the Star. In scientific explanation Mrs Besant is also extremely happy. But we confess her statement of the materialistic case seemed to us more convincing than the arguments she brought to demolish it. From a religious point of view Mrs Besant should, we imagine, do an immense amount of good. We have heard nothing yet that is not deeply spiritual and religious. According to recent advices, Dr. Gore Gillon has successfully endured his painful operation, and is now preparing to enjoy his visit to England. Hitherto that was not possible. The seventieth programme in connection with Mr W. H. Wobbo's musical evenings took place at Berlin House. Kyber Pass Road, last Friday, the occasion being the second pianoforte recital by Miss K. Maclaurin. one of Mr Webbe'sadvanced pupils. Vocal and instrumental items were contributed by the following ladies and gentlemen : —Mrs Cooper (soprano). Miss Spooner (piano and organ). Misses Barker, Thomson and O'Neil (piano', Mr Davidson (baritone). Mr John Fuller (tenor), Herr Zimmermann (violin), Mr Beale (’cello), and Mr W. H. Wobbe (piano).