TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XII, 20 March 1897, Page 345

TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

CALLED BACK. SCARCELY three months ago I ventured to prophecy. It is a thing that I seldom care to do. but in this particular instance I felt I was prophesying on a certainty, viz., the ineradicable gullibility of the race. I said that I would not be greatly surprised if there remained in Christchurch a remnant faithful to A. B. Worthington, and ready to receive him with open arms should he care to return to the City of the Plains. And sure enough, if rumour speaks truly, that remnant does exist, and is sighing to be reunited again to its faithful shepherd. It has, I hear, invited A. B. to come back again, and has promised him not only a congregation, but—what is of far more account—a salary of £5 a week The question is, will he come ? Two hundred and fifty pounds per annum is not a princely salary for a man of Worthington's taste, especially if he develops that weakness for keeping up more than one domestic establishment ; but against the comparative smallness of the promised stipend one must set the perfectly astounding fund of credulity manifested by those giving the recall. That represents a capita: that should yield three or four times /.'250 if properly worked. If I were Worthington, had I taken up my abode in the uttermost parts of the earth. I should hasten to a spot where such implicit faith in me abounded. I would feel convinced that where such a faith existed after the way it has been tried, there was my proper sphere, and there I should never know what want was. Worthington by no means belongs to the first of the two great classes into which the cynic divided society : He is no fool, but on the contrary is gifted with a very fair amount of cold, clear, worldly wisdom. So I take it, if he has really been called back he will not hesitate to return unless he has in bis travels found greater faith than that of the Christchurch people. Once again then will the voice of Truth be heard in that quarter of the colony lifted up in some new temple—for the first no longer is hers—and a fresh interest will be given to those curious in the religious development of the age. THE CURSE OF CELEBRITY. IT was cabled a little time ago that Lord Rosebery had taken his passage for an incognito visit to the Colonies, and now I hear it said that he has given up the idea for the present. Perhaps it was that he found it would be no easy matter to keep up his disguise when all the world knew that he was travelling, so probably he has determined to give no hint of his intention, but some fine afternoon to put on an old coat and hat. strap up his kit and booking his passage second class as plain Mr Smith, nave a good look at Australasia. It's too bad that a plain statesman like Rosebery can't get about the world without being mobbed : that when he goes incog, ten chances to one his identity is discoverable in any village ten thousand miles from his home. This all comes of the diffusion of knowledge, the omniscience of the dailies, and the increased circulation of the illustrated papers. Everybody knows about Lord Rosebery, and everybody is familiar with his clean shaven countenance as it appears in countless prints. Any attempt, therefore, on his part to play Harun Al-Raschid is very liable to come to grief. He is condemned to perpetual publicity, and if he came out here, were he ever so well disguised, and the papers got an inkling of it, the great probability is that he would be ruthlessly set upon and condemned to deliver speeches and consume dinners till his brains were addled, his tongue paralysed, and his digestion ruined. These are some ol the drawbacks to celebrity, my dear reader. If you or I wish to visit England in a quiet way. for instance, there is no need for us to buy false beards and false noses, to deny our parentage, and to conceal ourselves under some wretchedly plebeian surname. \Ve can go openly and freely as men. Not so poor Lord Rosebery. WANTED. A MILLIONAIRE PREMIER’ THE man who sends us the cablegrams from Washington, in his account of McKinley s assumption of the Presidency, mentioned with very evident emphasis that six of the members of the new Cabinet were millionaires ; and I noticed that many of our newspapers were apparently much impressed with the fact, for while they condensed the whole policy of the new President into one paragraph, they devoted one also to this short statement of the plutocratic character of Mr McKinley’s Cabinet. It is a statement that is calculated to stagger the average mortal, and to make us in New Zealand particularly feel how very small and insignificant we are. Six millionaires in the Cabinet ! Just think of it. All the members of our Cabinet rolled into one and then passed through the melting pot would probably not yield a twentieth part of a million. Of course we can always

console ourselves—if the Opposition will permit us—with the reflection that, though our Cabinet is poor, it is honest. Yet it would be a fine thing if we had one or two millionaires in the Ministry. Actuated as they noware by such philanthropic motives, what an enormous amount of good they might then accomplish ! Fancy Mr Seddon a millionaire ' How these ‘ toilers' for whom he always manifests such a deep concern would rejoice ! There would be free dinners for all and sundry at the residence every day, and promenade concertsand fireworks twice a week. Then, if any one wanted a billet he would never have to petition the Government twice. If there was no place in the department for him Mr Seddon would find him some sinecure in his own establishment. And then the balls and the parties—really, the more one thinks of the matter the more one sees what a delightful thing it would be to have a Premier rolling in wealth. One very naturally asks why should we not import one ? They seem to be plentiful enough in the United States when they have six in the Cabinet. Could we not get one introduced from the Republic ? You know we are all pretty well convinced nowadays that money is the nrmneim ioawin, the only rational object of desire and adoration, and why. after all. if we are to be consistent, should it not hold the same status in politics as it does in social life ? Hitherto our politicians, including our Cabinet Ministers, have been poor men. If we supported them they were really not in a position to reward us, so that it is no wonder the public interest in political questions has decayed. But put a millionaire in power, and you will see a change, I warrant you. There will then be some tangible reason for our ranging ourselves on this or that party and taking an intelligent and patriotic interest in the affairs of the country. By ail means let us advertise for a millionaire Premier. Some of the ultra-democrats in this country might object to millionaires on the ground that they would use their riches as a lever to elevate and further enrich themselves. But, judging from what we are told of the President's golden cabinet, there are no men so unselfish as the genuine millionaire. These gentlemen in the American Cabinet are pledged, it seems, to an anti-trust or anti-corner policy. It is remarkable that, although very probably some of them have accumulated their thousands through the same kind of trade and financial machinery as trusts and corners belong to. they do not now hesitate to kick away the ladder by which they rose. There is self-denial for you.

THE DANGERS OF FEMALE FRANCHISE. THE English House of Lords is rapidly filling up the cup of its iniquities and hastening its own final dissolution. Who can doubt this that read a brief cablegram in the daily papers last week ? It was a little message, but it struck a chord in the breasts of certain ladies in this colony that made them feel for the moment as ruthless as ‘ empty tigers, hunger, the sea.' It announced that the Peers had rejected the Women’s Franchise Bill without going to division. They had treated the measure in much the same contemptuously offhand manner as a J.P. treats a confirmed ‘ drunk ' when he dismisses the latter with a curt ‘ five shillings or twenty-four hours.' It is a lucky thing for the Lords that so many leagues of ocean sepiarate them from New Zealand, otherwise I would not have guaranteed their safety either as individuals or as a body. There have been insurrections of indignant women before this, and with that chivalric spirit which is characteristic of them, our ladies would not have been slow to avenge the insult offered to their sex. As the initiator of the Female Franchise movement and the first to throw the polling booth open to the ladies, this colony naturally feelsitself called on to interest itself in the movement everywhere else. That is why we have so many purely feminine political organisations. We aspire to l>e the headquarters of that great revolutionary scheme which we are told is intended eventually to depose man from his present position. 1 should certainly have preferred, that our ladies did not take quite so much on their own pretty shoulders, for I do not look forward to this peaceful colony being made the arena for intersexual wars and strife, which I am afraid some of our women would only be too glad to make it. I would ’.ike to see our emancipated females quietly enjoying their liberty and privilege and not making it their duty to lead antislavery crusades into the four quartersofthe world. There is no question that that is precisely what some of them sericuslycontemplate. and will endeavour to accomplish if they get into Parliament. Nobody knows what trouble will ensue to this poor country when the ladies have the upper hand. I can forsee that unless their supremacy is delayed until every female in and out of Christendom is as free as those of New Zealand we shall be involved in endless quarrels. In the old wars women had always a good deal to answer for. In the new wars into which we may be drawn women will lie responsible for the whole trouble. There's a prospect for a young and promising colony ! Surely it is plain

wherein our duty lies. Far be it from me to suggest that we should deprive the women of New Zealand of the privileges we once accorded them. Most probably we could not do it now if we tried. But what we may do is to discourage them from taking up as their own quarrel that of the sex in less enlightened countries. AN ISITT COME TO JUDGMENT. TITHE Rev. F. W. Isitt, speaking the other day at the JL Wesleyan Conference, made some remarks which the Press Association considered of sufficient importance to be telegraphed throughout the colony. For my own part I have not been able to see that what Mr Isitt said was either so original or so pregnant with truth and wisdom as to merit the publicity it has obtained. I believe it to be the rash, ill-considered attack of a narrow man on the Press of the Colony, prompted quite as much by a hunger for notoriety as by any solicitude for the public morals ; and the fact that it does not seem to have received much countenance either from the members of the Conference or from ministers of the Gospel generally, would indicate that I am by no means alone in the view 1 have expressed. It was during a temporary adjournment of the Conference to await a report oftheStanding Committee that Mrlsittsaw fit ‘toimprove the occasion so, after throwing a sop to the assembled pastors in the shape of an assertion —a very questionable one—that * the morality of New Zealand was perhaps higher than that of any other country in the world,' he hastened to deplore the state of current editorial thought in the press of the colony. Our critic remarked upon ‘ the small amount of righteousness that breathed in the leading columns of the newspapers.’ I trust, for the credit of the Wesleyan body, he did not quite recognise the full import of his words. The chances are he did not. Men of his stamp are constantly falling into exaggerative modes of expression. It is the danger of their calling. They find by experience that a simple statement, and modest description, falls flat on the average audience who want to be tickled and shocked by over-emphasis in every form ; so hyperbole becomes the stock-in-trade of the lecturer. He degenerates into a religious sentimentalist; every word he utters is thrice scored under, every picture he paints is ablaze with lurid lights. The secular sensationalist is tolerated only by the ignorant and uncultured ; but the sensationalist who makes the Holy of Holies his stage, and conjures with the most sacred things, is countenanced on all sides. The reason is not difficult to find. Men reverence and respect the teachings he does so much indirectly to vulgarise, and forgive the sower of tares for the sake of the wheat of which he may occasionally be the bearer. I HARDLY think we should take Mr Isitt quite seriously; but probably he had something in his mind when he made that remark on the press. I wish he had been a little more explicit and given a few examples of the degeneracy of thought to which he referred, but as is so often the case with such critics, he makes a sweeping charge and then passes on. I fancy that if we could get Mr Isitt in a corner over this matter we would find that he had no real case to offer. lam perfectly persuaded that the worst thing he could say about the editorial columns of the New Zealand newspapers would be that they were not written in the Isitt form or spirit. Heaven forbid that oureditors should become religious sensationalists as Mr Isitt would probably have them to be ! Our critic speaks of ‘ the small amount of righteousness that breathes in the leading columns.’ Now what does Mr Isitt understand by righteousness ? I am afraid that if we could analyse his conception of the thing it would be found exceedingly narrow, sectarian, and ungenerous. The leading article after his heart would consist, most likely, of a somewhat irrelevant introduction of scriptural phraseology into a political or commercial dissertation. Now, while we all bow to the great lessons of Christianity, it has generally been considered that to ostentatiously parade them in all places and on all occasions would rather tend to lessen than to increase their power for good. So, out of reverence for them the constant forcing of them into the secular arena has been condemned by all wise men. But though not prominently apparent in the letter, it does not follow that the spirit is absent. Indeed, in all writings of all kinds, as in all speech ami action which is worth anything, the existence of that spirit of righteousness is taken for granted. Every endeavour to represent the truth and to champion the right—is not that righteousness ? Is it necessary that we should be always quoting scripture and protesting our belief in the great principles of our religion ? Most certainly not. It is only such men as we picture Mr Isitt to be—men whose spiritual taste is so spoilt by indulgence in highly spiced food who require their Christianity served up in that style; only men with the weakest of spiritual eyesight who require to have the divine truth labelled with a scriptural text before they can recognise it.