TOPICS WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue IX, 27 August 1898, Page 258

TOPICS WEEK.

THE COMING ACT. THE decline, alleged or actual, in the New Zealand birth rate, appears to be still attracting a great deal of attention at Home, and those who hold the theory that a high standard of education and comfort involves a falling-off in both the birth and death rates are quoting us as their stock example. The distinction is a very doubtful honour. It is gratifying to know that we are so well placed compared with most other countries in the world in the matter of comfort and education, but if it is to be purchased at the price of a stationary native population, or one that is actually declining as in France, it may be questioned whether we would not rather prefer to be a trifle less comfortable and cultured. At present, say the statisticians, two things save the colony from an arrest of the growth of population: first, the death rate, 9.3 in the thousand, which is the lowest recorded of any country in the world; and second, the small but appreciable immigration. Naturally, everyone may be reckoned on to keep the death rate down so far as he or

she is able; and the Government will do what it. can to raise the immigration rate by holding out inducements to the peoples of other countries to come and make their homes with ns. But after all that is done there still remains uninfluenced the

ehief factor in the increase of populalation—births, and the question is, what can be done, to raise the birth rate, which we are told has fallen more than twelve points in the last sixteen years. That question has not, I understand, eseaped the watchful eye of the Premier, and he has for some time past had under his most careful consideration various suggestions for augmenting the birth rate in the colony. Nothing will be said of the matter in the House this session,or perhaps not even next. The chances are that Mr Seddon will make the legislation on this important matter which he is now excogitating the main plank in the Government platform at the general election. What his precise intentions are I do not know, for I am not in his confidence, but it is whispered the new Bill will be the most up to date and progressive piece of statecraft that was ever promulgated, and that it must ensure the Government an enormous majority at the polls. I have endeavoured to get some inkling as to the lines on which it will proceed, but it is difficult even to obtain that, so absolute is the secrecy observed regarding it. One or two little points, however, I have heard mooted. One of these is the imposition of a very heavy bachelor tax; another is the voting annually out of the Consolidated Fund of a large sum to be distributed in bonuses to the fathers and mothers of large families and of twins, triplets, etc.; and yet a third point, most important of all, will be a provision making it compulsory for every married man to have a family of at least four children. The fines and penalties attaching to non-compliance with this provision will, I learn, be very severe. The measure may be expected to create a bigger sensation in the colony and to spread our fame further abroad than anything in the way of lawmaking the Government has yet turned out.

A PRESENT DAY ULYSSES. THE story coines from San Francisco of a man whose adventures might, if there was a Homer to sing them, form a companion volume to the Odyssey. He suddenly made his appearance on the deck of the ship Eulomene when she was three days out from Newcastle (N.S.W.) on her voyage to America. The mysterious nature of his coming would perhaps in the early days of the World have secured him that deferential reception which was accorded a demi-god, but skippers of the nineteenth century do not explain such mysterious visits in that way, and the stranger was put down as a stowaway, which he undoubtedly was. But this was no ordinary specimen of the stowaway. He told the captain, apparently with pride, that he was a professional deadbeat. ‘l’ve beaten my way,’ he added, ‘over every railroad line in America; I’ve beaten my way on every steamship line that runs to and from Europe; I’ve beaten my way to the Southern Seas, and from there to the Arctic; and I beat my way to Australia; but I’ll never do it again. No chance back there for a deadbeat to make an honest living.’ There is something singularly attractive at first sight in this record of many wanderings by land and sea. Cooped up up in this narrow little island, do we not often sigh to see the world, its cities and men, but are deterred from venturing abroad because of the want of cash? Yet here is a man who shows it can l>e done on absolutely nothing. Is there not something refreshingly novel in the. picture of this happy-go-lucky individual strolling round the world with his hands in his pockets and taking no thought for the morrow? Here we toil and sweat and groan to make no more than he has made, without any particular sweating or toiling, and with this difference, that, while he has gained some, acquaintance with this little planet we are hedged in a. miserable little corner of it. Oho! ye ho! the wide world oh! was it not made so wide to give room for wandering in it? as Goethe says. Why can’t we snap our fingers at convention, burst all links of habit, and wander far away like our friend the deadbeat? Why must we put money in our purses—always that eternal money—before we set out on the tour? Well, you must answer that question for yourself. The deadbeat has shown us that the

thing is feasible. And yet again, looked at from another point of view, it is obviously not without its disadvantages nowadays—this rollinground the world. Ordinary individuals like you and me cannot reckon on goddesses to shepherd and to shieid us as Ulysses had. Besides, the world does not treat wanderers as it used to do. There are Vagrancy Acts, and you are liable to be hauled before the magistrate for having no visible means of support. Civilization has multiplied the conveniences of life, but if you have no cash you cannot take advantage of them. But let it further be said, the inducements to travel are after all not what they were in Ulysses’ time. There are indeed modern marvels—the Paris Exhibition, for instance—but what is that to the. Cyclops, the House of Circe, the Sirens, and the wonders that the great king met in his wanderings? No; the world is a very commonplace sort of a world, and I am not sure that 1 would not as lief stay where I am as go ‘on the wallaby.’

WHAT IS A SURPLUS? A GREAT deal of difference of opinion prevails all over the colony as to the precise nature of a surplus in national finance, and on the point whether what Mr Seddon calls by that name is the right kind of one or not. The true surplus is the flower, the efflorescence of the fiscal tree produced by no unnatural stimulation or exhaustion of the soil in which it grows. You may of course by skilful forcing produce as great marvels in the treasury garden as you can in another garden. You have but to water the plant unsparingly with refreshing dues squeezed from the taxpayer, and you will get astonishing results. I make no doubt that the Pharaohs of old were able to show magnificent surpluses. But that sort of political horticulture is very justly condemned, and a surplus, however fine, produced in this way reflects no credit whatever on the gardener in the eyes of those who know how it is managed. It is maintained by some people that

Mr Seddon’s present surplus is of this nature—a purely artificial growth, a mere monstrosity; a denial of all natural economics; and we are sadly assured that no good can come of such freaks. Mr Seddon as head gardener in the meantime proudly flaunts his latest success before the eyes of his opponents. He tells them that when they had their lease of the garden they could grow nothing but common deficits in it; and he and his followers saunter about with sprigs of the wonderful blossom in their coats, so to speak. They say that for some time after the deliverance of the Financial Statement the other day the House was odorous with surplus. Yet the Government’s rivals pooh-pooh the whole tiling as an unmeaning craze. Some even hint that there are really no flowers there after all, but that they are mere paper roses that Mr Seddon tied on to the tree, useful to make a passing display and pretty and attractive when seen at a safe distance, but not to be examined too carefully, and on no account touched. Other critics of the Opposition, varying the metaphor, assert Lhafl, the

whole Financial Statement is nothing more or less than a huge picture puzzle—the picture puzzle of the year. To the problem it propounds, ‘Find the Surplus?’ members in vain have applied their brains with no success as yet, say these critics, and although any number have exclaimed, ‘Oh, of course, I see it now!’ that was only to cloak their apparent stupidity. See it they certainly never did, and one or two declare that if you twist the picture upside down you will find that what is supposed to be a surplus is really a deficit. What are common, matter-of-fact people like you and me to make of all this? In our little financial arrangements we know precisely when we have a surplus—though alas.it may be seldom enough—and we know a deficit when we have to deal with one too. Why should there not be the same unmistakable clearness in national finance? Why should not the surplus be such a thing that there can be no two opinions about?

THE MODERN LIE. rp HE bursting of the rocket millionaire Hooley at the zenith of his flight has afforded the world generally an interesting fireworks’ display. It is not so often that rockets of this kind when they explode scatter so many brilliant stars as Hooley has done, and teach us so many useful lessons on the nature of such explosives. The latest of these lessons reveals an almost undreamt of capacity for lying on the part, either of the British commercial or the

British aristocratic world—one can scarcely say which, but the probability is that honours, or dishonours, in that respect are even. Whether the falsehood was more on Hooley’s side or more on the side of the noblemen, etc., whom he declared had blackmailed him, is a secondary affair to the outside public. The main thing after all to them is that such a cool deliberate faculty for lying should be found among men presumably most respectable and trustworthy whose names were taken by the great public as guarantees of the honesty and gen. uineness of the enterprises to which they, so to speak, stood god-fathers. In these recent revelations we have only had a hint of the potentialities that existed in that way; but does it not make one stop and consider what mountains of falsehood, deceit, pre. varication, have in all likelihood gone to the building up of these same enterprises? What a poor deluded public it is! Because it saw the name of a man who was reputed to have won "wealth or notoriety, or was a baronet, or a lord, or something at the head of some prospectus, the poor public swallowed the same prospectus holes bolus, never dreaming that the millionaire or the nobleman could possibly seek to deceive it. You, dear reader, would probably have doubted the flattering tale of hope embodied in that prospectus had your neighbour told it you, nnd even had your father confided it to you with' his dying lips you might have hesitated to accept it. But who could question the word of a millionaire or a real live member of the British nobility? This Hooley affair, I am afraid, is calculated to shake that faith. Noblemen or millionaires, and probably both, have apparently a talent for lying for which they never got full credit. I wonder if the talent is confined to them. Scarcely; and yet one hesitates to believe that all British commercial life is tainted as this company promoting circle would appear to have been. Do men lie and coun-

ter-lie from the merchant prince down to the coffee-stall keeper? Not a bit it. They may and do permit themselves to' diverge a little from the straight and narrow way. There are business lies just as there are social lies. But colossal lying is not the fashion in the one sphere any more than in the other. No business and no society could exist in such an atmosphere. The realm of colossal lying belongs to the company promoter. In a larger proportion of cases than one cares to think a lie is the most valuable of all instruments in his hands, and the power of systematic falsehood the surest key to wealth. In his ease you have the apotheosis of the lie. He has found in it a sure resource in every time of need. Great is the lie proper in the hands of the man who is expert in its use. Your clumsy liar, of course, comes to grief sooner or later — though generally much later than one looks for; but the adept, at the business may go down to the grave wept, honoured, and sung.

THE FINANCIAL DEBATE

ANYONE who has any knowledge to speak of about the inside of Parliament knows that the Financial Debate is least of all a debate o;, finance. Why this is the case can be easily demonstrated. In the first plaee. although the Financial Statement is taken by the outside world to be a truthful exposition of the. Government’s financial policy, a large section in the House refuses to accept it as such, and the Government, knowing the utter hopelessness of trying to convince that section of unbelievers, do not greatly try, but content themselves with the faith of those who undoubtingly accept their word for it. Then again, you must consider how small comparatively is the number in the House of those who have really any head for figures and how difficult it is for those who have some faculty in that, direction to master in their entirety all the tables and statements in the Budget’ I question whether there is ten per cent, of our representatives capable of passing a very simple examination on the BudgetAfter all, they are men very much like ourselves; and like us, so far as ths Budget is concerned, they live mainly by faith or by scepticism. I am sure that not one man in the whole assembly, the Treasurer himself included, ever gets the hang of every one of the figures, and the rank and file stick to such leading features as the surplus, the debt, and the borrowing proposals without going too deeply into details. This being the position, you can understand how, when debate comes on, financial criti-

a plays but a small part in it. How can you talk about a thing of this kind if you know next to nothing concerning it. Other matters lend themselves readily to the discursive loquacity of ignorance, but you can’t do much with figures in that way. Long ago this was recognised, and thus arose that almost unlimited latitude which is allowed speakers in the Financial Debate. As the rules of the House now stand a member is at liberty to talk of anything he likes under cover of the Financial Statement, and if you could follow their remarks you would find that most of them take full advantage of the license. The debate offers the opportunity of the session to a very large number of members of all kinds. Those men whose ideas are limited and who in spite of their adopted vocation have but a very loose grasp of political questions, have now a ehanee of telling the House what they do know. As I said before, you are free to talk about anything while the Financial Debate is on. You may range far and wide in search of subject. air your fret theories on social or commercial, literary or sporting topics. If you have any special knowledge on any matter under the sun now’s your time to bring it to the light and make the most of it. For this reason stupid members often appear quite brilliant during the time this debate is in progress. I have known representatives who in their so-called Budget criticism rose like a rocket out of the dark of low level mediocrity. Certainly they descended again almost as quickly, but they corruscated for s« moment in the firmament of Parliament, which they would never have done had it not been for the license allowed in the debate.

THE LATEST ‘WANTED.’

I READ the other day in an Auckland paper the following advertisement: —‘Wanted, an elderly gentleman for housework; small wages, good home.’ My first thought was that the traditional newspaper scapegoat. the poor compositor, had been • at it again, and had unwittingly substituted gentleman for gentlewoman; but, prompted by curiosity to inquire into the matter, I found that there had been no mistake, and that what the advertiser really desired was a man, not a woman. And, after all, why not? Throw aside your prejudices in the matter, if you can, and you will find there is nothing extraordinary in such an arrangement, even i f it has a novel appearance on the outside. Nay, the very novelty should be an attraction rather than the reverse. To be waited on by an elderly gentleman, if he were up to the business, would be something so entirely new to most of us that at the outset I think we would enjoy the change till we became accustomed to it, and then in all likelihood we would find that it was preferable to the old plan. The great difficulty to the. scheme in general does not lie in any objection that might be entertained against elderly gentlemen as elderly gentlemen, but in the scarcity of elderly gentlemen able and willing to take the position. Gentlemen have not as a rule a pronounced faculty for housework, and they do not naturally acquire it with increasing years; and, even if possessed of it, it is questionable whether you would find many of them prepared to exercise it in the service of another on the conditions we are supposing. But perhaps we are putting too narrow a construction on the use of the term gentleman, as used by the advertiser. Does not the kindred term lady enjoy in this democratic land a range of application that practically knowsnolimits? Isit not becoming more and more difficult to find a woman among the adult females of

our population? Are they not all ladies nowadays? By the same process probably the men are becoming all gentlemen, and the advertiser may have worded his request, for the elderly gentleman out of deference to the change that is creeping over us. If that is so, we may expect similar requests for ‘gentlemen’ to mend our roads, ‘ladies’ to milk our cows, and so on. This politeness may seem distinctly commendable to some people. To me it seems only detestably snobbish. Of course, any working man or woman may be much more of a gentleman or lady than hundreds who with*out question are accorded that title. The words are shamefully misused as it is, but I don’t see how you will meind matters by an enlargement of the area of distribution.