Topics of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue III, 15 July 1899, Page 80

Topics of the Week.

THE PARLIAMENTARY BALL. Let us hope that the movement on foot in Wellington for holding a ball in connection with the opening of the new additions to Parliament Buildings is not significant of an unbecoming levity of spirit in our Parliamentary and political life. Yet the close association of the two things, Parliament and a dance, unquestionably suggests some curious reflections. There is an incongruity about it to the sober, staid mind, a feeling that the dignity of Parliament is compromised by its being connected with such frivolity. Of course no one denies the right of legislators to go to a dance. They have surely' the right desipere in loco as well as other men. No one could

reasonably object, on political grounds at least, to Mr Seddon's dancing a waltz or polka, or even engaging in the less decorous movements of the barn dance, but if he did so on the floor of the House, or even within its precincts, it would jar on one’s sense of propriety, only in a slightly less degree than would the spectacle of the Lord High Chancellor of England doing the Highland Fling on the Woolsack. If one eould get rid of the idea of impropriety, there is no doubt that otherwise the Parliamentary Buildings would make an ideal place for a legislators’ ball. The lobbies, the committee rooms, the galleries, and the innumerable reeesses and nooks — what opportunities they would afford for delightful flirting. Nay, consider it. how if the intimacy with your partner got beyond the mere flirting stage what a magnificent place the Chamber itself would be for making a proposal in the most original and Parliamentary fashion. You would have but to hint your passion and significantly ask the lady whether she would go into the ‘‘ayes” or the “noes” lobby, and her action would decide the matter. It has been suggested that there is a deep political motive in this proposed ball. I hear it whispered that it is a subtle device to prejudice the female vote in two ways in view of the approaching elections. Such a function, it is calculated, will increase the interest ladies take in politics, for an Administration that lends itself to such festivities is sure to win the female heart; and it will give an opportunity to members that is rare indeed to canvass a considerable section of the fair community. Thus, if the ball eventuates, it must not surprise one to stumble across the Leader of the Opposition in a snug corner, ardently pressing the claims of his j>arty on some sweet leader of Wellington society; while in another equally secluded corner, far removed from the glare of the electric light and the sound of the music, the Hon. R. ,1. Seddon may be discovered on his knees before some influential member of female political circles urging his Government’s suit.

FIRST AND SECOND CLASS. Mr T. E. Taylor, of Prohibition notoriety, has turned his unquestionable energies in a direction where his effoits are much more likely to gain the general sympathy and support of his fellow colonists than they can hope to do in the anti-liquor crusade. He is going to move in the House a resolution to the effect that as fivesixths of the passengers on the New Zealand railways travel second-class, and pay the bulk of the revenue, they are entitled to greater comfort than is at present afforded them in secondclass carriages, and should therefore get it. Among the anomalies presented by democratic government in this country this of railway accommodation is one of the strangest. The class distinctions which it is the boast of this Administration it has levelled, are emphasized in the most obtrusive way when one sets foot on a Government train. In the street Jack is as good as his master, and is entitled to share the same pavement with him. but should the two enter a railway station almost there and then are they conscious of the barrier that separates them. On a railway owned and run by a democratic Government there should of course be only one kind of carriage, if the Government is to make its practice consistent with its preaching. But if there are difficulties in the way of such a course being adopted, there is no excuse for the gross way in which the distinction between the five-sixths second-class passengers and the remaining fraction of first-classers is drawn. The fraction has sumptuously furnished cars, with luxurious seats, in which it can take its ease, while the poor fivesixths are forced to rest their weary anatomy on hard unyielding wood, in carriages bare of any but the most necessarv upholsterings. And ’ yet thev call this a democratic country! Such a mean truckling spirit towards the upper sixth as compared with the careless ignoring of the honest hardworking five-sixths, is an object lesson which the Opposition would certainly do well to take note of. In the Old Country even the railway companies, which are the property of capitalists, are more considerate. There is not a line in the United Kingdom on which the third class carriages are not cushioned and provided with other aids to comfort. Hodge can take his ease just as well as my lord, and certainly enjoys it better, for the probability is he never gets such an easy seat at home. It is surely time then that we here, who do not admit of such distinctions as are recognised between the clodhopper and his lordship, should bring about a change in our railway arrangements. There is no denying it. the second-class railway carriage is a disgrace to the Government. and should go. Its abolition should be a plank in the platform of every enterprising candidate at the coming election, if before that the Government do not do away with it. For the first-class carriage is altogether out of place in a democratic land. It is a fomenter of discord and disunion.a nourisher of class contempt and envy, a refuge? of capitalists and probably a breeding place for antisocialistic doctrines. There should be no first class or rather there should be nothing but first class. ® ® ® A SHOCKING EXAMPLE. Wellington, according to the Police Report, is the most drunken of the four leading cities in the colony, and shows the least respect for liquor legislation. With a population of about forty-one thousand the Empire City had last year 953 convictions for drunkenness to its credit, or, rather, its discredit, while Auckland, with 16,090 more people than Wellington, had only 697. Christchurch, with a population of fifty-one thousand souls, had 583 eases to record, and Dunedin, with forty-eight thousand souls, 597 cases. It would also ap|>ear from the report that so far as breaches of the Sunday trading law are concerned Wellington is again the unenviable first.

To what causes, one naturally asks, does it owe this pre-eminence? What influences are at work there which are absent or less active in the other three cities that might account for these startling comparisons? At once one thinks of the political, administrative, and bureaucratic agencies which abound in the Empire City, and reflects: “May they not be the cause of her comparative degeneracy?” On the principle sought to be established by the old proverb, “the nearer the church the further from grace,” one can understand that lawlessness and immorality should flourish under the shelter of Parliament, which sits to make laws and safeguard public morals. To admit that principle, however, would lead me much further than I want to go. We are only asking whether there is any possible connection between intemperance and the politico-governmental atmosphere of Wellington, and I don’t pretend to be able to answer the question. I merely throw it out as a suggestion. To attempt to discover the actual facts would necessitate a Royal Commission, and it is questionable whether even then much light would be thrown on the matter. The report being of course a Wellington production makes a very palpable effort to heal the wound which its revelations must make in the pride of Wellingtonians by inferring that increase of drunkenness generally is due to increase of prosperity. From that Wellington is left to console itself with the reflection that its place in the slippery paths of

inebriation is an indication of its general progress. Of course it may with reason be argued that sober stagnation is better than advance which proclaims itself in that fashion; but if statistics treat one so badly as they do Wellington in this matter there is some excuse for putting the most favourable construction on them possible. I trust, however, that this attempt to measure national prosperity with a liquor gauge will not find favour, or it will completely defeat the objects of the temperance reformers. There is a never dying rivalry between Wellington and Auckland, for instance. As statistics show, the people of the latter city are comparatively sober, but let it once be understood that sobriety is an indication of dull times and I warrant, to prove themselves a more prosperous community than Wellington, they will devote themselves to the worship of Bacchus with a zeal worthy a better cause. ® ® ® THE PARLIAMENTARY UNIT. We are all inclined to think ourselves of much more importance in the world, and in our particular spheres, than the experience of others after we are gone invariably proves us to have been. The world scarcely misses its greatest men when they depart, or, at all events, manages to get along without them. In the same way I fancy that the times in our career, the occasions in our lives when we believed our services to be indispensable, or of chief value, are often the times when we are least useful and would be least missed. Nowhere, perhaps, is the irony of fate in this respect more often demonstrated than in the life of a member of our Parliament. The member himself undoubtedly believes that his importance as a member is at its height when he is delivering his speech on some great measure. But, as a fact, such is very far from the case. It has been truly said that the value and importance of a member is always at the

highest quotation when the division bell rings. That strident little instrument is at once the great appreeiator and equalising agent in the whole world of politics. At no other time in the Parliamentary day does the individual member rise to the full exercise of his powers, and at no other time do the meretricious distinctions of

mere brain power become of less account. Members themselves are not altogether unconscious of the wonderful power of the division bell, and I have seen the meekest and most diffident of our representatives, mortals who at other times were oppressed with a sense of their own inferiority even in that House, strangely stirred by that whirring tintinnabulation to a sense of dignity and importance that one would have said was quite foreign to their nature. For when the doors of the House are locked and the Speaker says “the ayes will go to the right and the noes to the left,” behold, all men are equal. Early last week this point of the value of a representative was admirably illustrated. Mr Hone Heke had not put in an appearance in the House, but no note was taken of his absence so long as arrangements could be made for getting his vote in case it was needed. This had been provided for by the simple method of pairing up till the Friday before last, when the Government objected to the arrangement being continued for the remainder of the noconfidence debate until some communication had been received from the absent one indicating how he meant to vote. Then all the telegraphs were set agoing to find Mr Heke, and as no trace of him could be got he gradually rose in importance till eventually he became, for the nonce, the most important man in the Chamber. This incident will help the uninitiated in Parliamentary matters to understand how it is that the politician who commends himself very little to us when we meet him out of Parliament, or when we hear of him in it, acquires a value there that is quite remarkable. ® ® THE PEACE CONFERENCE.

That was a most humane suggestion of the French delegate at the Peace Conference that it should be the duty of neutral nations to remind disputants of the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the eve of conflict, but it is extremely questionable whether at such a moment the disputants would listen very patiently to any sueh reminder. It is verv well to talk

of the thing in cold blood. We are all ready to say in our conciliatory moods: “Now, just remind me when I lose my temper," but how few there

are who when they do lose their tempers would not be doubly irritated by having their attention directed to the fact by some would-be peacemaker. Nations are very much like individuals, and I fancy if Germany and France, for instance, were at loggerheads, the suggestion coming from their neighbours that there was a means of evading an actual conflict would scarcely be received with great favour. If it should ever get as far as the eve of a big war, I am afraid that the chorus of neutral nations shouting, “this way to the Arbitration Court!” will be drowned amid the clang and clash of warlike preparations. The French suggestion, though, as I said, a humane one, is really a striking illustration of the real impotency of the Conference to do very much towards the abolition of war. In all such important points as the general reduction of armaments how powerless has it proved itself to effect any substantial work, and it is forced to confine itself to the invention of such mild preventives of conflict as this—that it shall be the duty of neutral nations to remind disputants of the existence of a Court of Arbitration.