Current topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 27, 6 July 1899, Page 1

Current topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

We arc promised a penny inland post in THE penny roST New Zealand in the near iuture. This conand A summation so devoutly to be wished for has Jesuit plot, been already piovided for by Act of Parliament. It only rcqviircs an order by the Governor in Council, and the thing is done — none too soon in these days ot Henniker Heatons and imperial penny postage. The announcement of the lowered rate has set one of our New Zealand secular contemporaries dancing and singing around that king of postal reformers, Sir Rowland Hili, who, after three jears of quiet plodding, his scheme of uniform penny postage adopted by a majority of ioo in the Hou=e of Commons, and set into operation on January i<>, 1840. Hut our contemporary is quite mistaken 111 supposing that the idea ol the penny po-t originated (a 1 - it says) m the brain cells of Sir (then Mr.) Rowland Hill, and that it was ' a conception of this great century of light and progress.' Now, this is precisely what it was not. The penny post is merely a revival and extension of a principle that was inactive progress m London as far back as the da\s ot ( harlcs 11. We find b> reference to Connor S^dnej's Soiinl Life in Enghuid from the Restoration to the Involution (.pp. 22J-2J1.)) that within the last two years of the Merry Monarch's loose reign, an upholsterer .named Robert Murray initiated a penny post for the conveyance of both letters and parcels in the meti opohs. * ♦ * The new system came speedily under the control of one William Docwra, who had taken over Murray's business. The regulations were of a singularly liberal kind. ' All letters,' s,i\s Connor Sydney, 'which did not exceed a pound 111 weight, and any sum of money which did not exceed £10 in value, and any packet which did not exceed ,/.!() in value, should be eon\e)ed at a cost of one penny within t lie city and suburbs, and oi two pence to any distance within a cncuit ot ten nvles.' Six spacious post-oifices were opened at convenient centres in London, and receding houses were established in all the chief thoroughfares. Letter earners cleared the receiving houses every hour, and ' as many as six and eight times during the course of the day deliveries of letters weie eilecttd in the busy and crowded streets in the vicinity ot the Hvchange. In the outlying districts of the capital there were generally four deliveries dail\.' Not too bad tor the seventeenth century ! * * • The new s>tem worked admirably, but it was in advance of the feeling ot the times. In the first place, it interfered with the big monopoly which the Duke of \ ork had long enjoyed ol carrying the country's scanty and hitherto ill-served mails. In the second place, it interieied with the business of the city porters. They made things lively with the MuirayDocwra people for a time. But the penny post of the second Charles' days could have outlived the objections of the Royal Duke and the outcries of the grimy porters. It was sectarian passion that cut its throat. 'The sWem,' sajs Connor Sidney, 'was loudly denounced by the Piotestants as a contrivance on the part oi notorious Papists, to lacihtate the communication of their plots of rebellion one to another. The infamous Titus Oates assured the public that he was convinced of the complicity of the Jesuits 111 the scheme.' There was a mighty uproar in London. The Government was compelled to take action. Docwra was fined for his display of public spirit and enterprise. Three years after the accession of Wiliam 111. he was granted a pension of £500 a year for seven years by way ot compensation for his loss, and for his services (as the Privy Seal writ said) 'in inventing and •k.ig the business ot the Penny Post Office. 1 This placeat soothed Docwia's ruiiled feelings. But, in the 'meantime, the 'Penny Post Office' had been killed by the mad credulity of sectarian rancour. Sir Rowland Hill merely revived it and extended its benefits to the whole of the British

Isles. Mr. Hcnmker-Heaton — on whose shoulders the mantle ot Sir Rowland has tallen — has succeeded, after years of steady agitation, in creaiing the beginnings of an Imperial Penny Post. An International Penny Post will probably be one of the achievements of the coming century.

It is not every week that we find three such thrfe simple good stories as the following in one delivery I'LOPLE. of our New Zealand exchanges — especially when Parliament is sitting: — The Oamaru Mail vouches for the truth of the following:— ' A young lady employed in domestic service had a unique experience last week. She was allowed by her mistress an extra "evening out" for the purpose of attending Mr. A. H. Burton's lecture on " The Women of Dickens." By an unforeseen mistake she turned in, however, to the Theatre Royal, where Mr. Duncan was addressing the electors. She sat out the address quite complacently and returned home thoroughly satisfied with the lecture. An inquiry from her mistress elicited the response that the recital had been most interesting, the only portion which she did not understand being something said at the end by a local solicitor. The girl obviously could not understand what Mr. Harvey had to do with the women of Dickens.' * ♦ * '1 he next of the triplet of anecdotes comes from a North Island contemporary. We give it as we got it: — 'A burly citi/en of anti-prohibition proclivities tackled Mr. Carson at his Wanganui meeting with the question : " If you had the power, would )ou close the hotels? " Mr. Carson had previously, for perhaps the hundredth time, explained his attitude with regard to the liquor question. But this would not do for the burly citizen, who, standing at the foot of the stage, thundered out : '• I want yes or no as an answer. I demand yes or no as an answer." " You do," said Mr. Carson, " very well, I'll give it )ou, provided \ou will answer me a question with a straight }es or no." "I am not here to answer questions," was the retort, whercunto the Member replied : "And I am here to answer questions in my own way, and, having answered you once, 1 w ill now answer you with a question : Is it more than six months since you came out of gaol, Mr. ?" For a moment the audience did not grasp the situation, but when it did, even the burly citizen realised that there were some questions which could not well be answered with a plain yes or no.' • * • There is a gruesome air of plot and massacre about the next story, which is told by the Herald. 'Some theatrical people,' sa\s our contemporary, 'were staying at the Napier Hotel. One ot them left, rather injudiciously, no doubt, the following lines written on a scrap of paper and lying in his room "Am on the second floor ; can see into the prison yard. O'Connor is in there and exercises with the rest. The machine has been made. The clockwork acts splendidly. Sixty seconds atter the spring has been set the hammer will strike and the djnamite explode. The machine is well concealed. When I give the signal by throwing the ball over, be ready. Do not make any blunder. (Part, trust me, I will not fail.)" A fresh arrival picked up the scrap ot paper and reckoned he had discovered a stupendous villainy. Forthwith he informed the police of a huge conspiracy in view. It was not until investigations had been made that the whole affair was explained. The written words were portion of the prompter's book. The fresh arrival is now cogitating over his child-like innocence in not having seen through the mystery before.'

A genuinely good thing, whether in the Ireland and field of politics or of mechanical invention, is the nf.w sure to meet with the flattery of imitation in ze\lam) land the long run or the short run — generally in system. the short run nowadays. The land legislation of New Zealand has recently received a high, if indirect, compliment, and that, too, from a rather unexpected source. The Congested Districts Board (Ireland)

has purchased the large estates of Lord Dillon, consisting of close on 100,000 acres of land in the counties of Mayo and Roscommon, and offered it — with some uninhabited grazing lands adjoining — to some 4000 small tenant farmers. The cost of the transaction is nearly a quarter of a million sterling. The small farmers will have the benefit of wider areas for cultivation and security from eviction, on payment of rates ot interest which will be a mere fraction ot their former rents. The purchase and redistribution of estates in the West of Ireland was one of the plankb of the United In^h Lci^jc. This organisation was founded last year. It has thus tar abundantly justified its existence. We are probably not going wide of the mark in assuming that the incorporation of the purchase system by the United Irish League was an outcome of the study of the New Zealand land system by Mr. Michael Davitt —one of the founders of the League — during his visit to this Colony in 1895.

The Disarmament Conference is floundering THAT peace and boggling along at A msterdam still. The conference, net results of its sleepy deliberations will be to leave matters pretty much the same as it found them. At any rate there is to be no disarmament. Germany keeps on steadily arming its artillety with the new long-range, quick-firing guns. France is perspiring at the same task. Norway and Sweden are increasing the peace strength of their army. Uncle Sam has been told by General Lawton that it will require 100,000 men to convince the Filipinos of the advisability of accepting such 'civilisation' as he has provided for the Noble Red Man and the liberated Black Man. John Bull is adding warship to warship, and is just now getting into training to ' meet ' Oom Paul away down in the Transvaal. Moreover, it recent report be true, John's Admiralty has offered a particularly stiff price to the son of a Portland grocer for a decidedly new thing in death-dealing weapons — nothing less than a noiseless electric gun, a seven pound model of which made toothpicks and horse-shoe nails of a target at ranges of a mile to five miles. The young electrician declined the Admiralty's offer. He is now at work on a hundred-weight model of the new weapon, which, it reports be true, promises, when it is fiied in anger, to piay redder havoc than Uncle Sam's dynamite guns did at El Caney. Profesosr Mommsen is probably the most absent-minded man in the world at the present day. But he had his wits all about him when he described the Peace Conference as ' a printer's error in the history of Europe.' The only thing to do with a printer's error is to delete or rectify it.

Nearly every fighting country has its own hero-worship: way of honouring and rewarding its conSUNDRY kinds, quering heroes. In China they give him an extra button or two, or, at a pinch, the right to wear a peacock's feather in his cap, and he is ,ii happy as a sand-boy. In ancient Rome the Senate accorded the victorious general a triumph — which simply meant a big procession and a crown of Day. They gave minor conquerors an ovation, which was a cheap edition of a triumph, with the soldiers and the trumpets and the senators and most of the tun pumped out of it. Sometimes they erected a triumphal arch to perpetuate the memory of a signal military achievement. The first Napoleon — who revived the eagle as a military rallying centre — revived also the triumphal arch. George IV. also assimilated the idea of the triumphal arch. It was a sort of architectural French fashion in his day. So he erected the Marble Arch — an imitation of the Arch of Constantine — at a cost of ♦ » ♦ But the triumphal arch was an exotic in England. England's traditional method of rewarding her first-class fighting men was by conferring knighthoods or patents of nobility upon them. The knighthoods were cheap — a brief court ceremony. Patents of nobility cost little — merely a certain amount of engrossing on an uncertain amount of parchment. Drake, Hawkins, Nelson, Wellington, Wolseley, Kitchener, and Heaven knows how many others, were knighted or peered for their naval or military services. These honours were usually accompanied by more or less inadequate grants of golden shekels —fora man cannot, in the public eye, maintain the status of a hero, on a mere title or the bubble-empty fame of a great exploit. Did not even Tennyson, in the height of his reputation, declare that he would barter all his fame tor £5000 a year? The other contents of the British (or Irish) conquering hero's kit are freedoms of cities, swords of honour, honorary degrees in sundry universities, much feeding and junketing and humdrum eloquence of the after-dinner kind — the whole winding up with the chance of a graye — perhaps a monument — in Westminster Abbey. * * * But in all the forms of hero-worship popular in England, the big dinner takes inconspicuous rank. Beaconsfield wrote in one of his novels that the science of political gastronomy has never been sufficiently studied. Perhaps not. But the Americans have apparently been exercising their brain-boxes over the

matter of military gastronomy. They have no peerage to offer their champion sailorrnan, Admiral Dewey. They have ngA Westminster Abbey or Pantheon waiting to enshrine his boß^ of immortal bones. But a select coterie of those who are^ Corinthian pillars in the temple of American Wealth have organised in his honour the biggest gastronomical folly of modern times. A mighty gorge is to be provided at a cost of one hundred dollars per plate. Two or three score of the ' leading millionaires ' of the country have signified their intention of 'iking- part in the mighty 'spread,' and so many wealthy men who are not classed as ' leading millionaires ' are anxious to join the gilded throng thit the banquet is expected to cost £100,000. Will the fighting Admiral lend himself to this affair? We hope that he will not. The valiant sailor woul J, perhaps, feel more at home dining off ' hard tack ' and New Zealand frozen mutton at Manila, or oft bread and cheese at a country inn, than feasting on turtle and venison and piles of whitebait and prize pineapples and show grapes and dry champagne in the midst of a social managerie of gilded nonentities for whom he probably never had much respect. We know how could be spent to better advantage — for instance, in relieving some of the rankling misery ot the poor in the slums of New York, or in compensating the relatives of the unarmed civilians who were shot down by American troops in and around Manila.

Meantime things are by no means gay with in the the American troops in the Philippines. The Philippines, course of war, like the course of true love, seldom runs smoothly. The Filipinos are probably open to conviction as to the benefits of American rule and American civilisation ; but it is apparently after the manner of the combative dame who — in answer to the remark : ' Madame, you are not open to conviction ' — indignantly replied : ' What ? Me not open to conviction ! For shame, sir. I tell you, sir, lam open to conviction.' Then, after a pause -. ' But show me the man that can convince me ! ' Now that would seem to be just the frame of mind of Aquinaldo and his dusky brown Tagalos. They take an intolerable deal of convincing. The American troops — the Ohios and the Peni-.sylvanias and the What-nots — have been for half a year hypodermically injecting Krag-Jorgensen arguments beneath the yellow skins ot the Filipinos — unarmed civilians as well as armed ' rebels ' so-called. Every mail brings news of crushing defeats of great hosts of Filipinos by mere handfuls of American troops — of mighty slaugher of yellow men and brown men, with only a tew casualties on the side of Uncle Sam. There is nothing new in all this. This style of conquest is as old as the Pyramid of Cheops or the days of the first Tiglath-pileser. Why, only two thousand years ago did not Lucullus, with a paltry army of io,ooo men, slay, in stand-up fight, 100,000 foot and 55,000 horse of the Armenians? And did not this mighty carnage cost the conqueror just 5 men killed and 100 wounded? And did not the Chinese hero ot the Flowery Scroll, with a few companies of his valiants, put to the sword, without the loss of a single lite, just one million of the haughty Tartar foe? The victoues of Lucullus and of Tao-lu and of General Lawton are merely samples of ' history as she is wrote ' by various brands of war correspondents at various epochs of the earth's history. * » • Somehow, despite all their ' decisive victories,' the Americans seem to get 'no forrader' in the Philippines. Aquinaldo and his men are not yet convinced. An enormous percentage of the American troops are invalided and unfit for duty. The volunteer regiments are clamouring to be returned to their am firesides. A tresh reinforcement of 10,000 men— 'alias wisps of cannon-foddei and fever-food — are on their way to the Philippines. A New Zealand traveller has declared, after a long residence on the spot, that the Filipinos will fight like demons. And has not General Lawton written to his Government to say that it will take 100,000 men to conquer the islands, and that he is prepared to turn half of their population into dead meat in the process, if necessary? Altogether, Uncle Sam is beginning to feel the cares of empire weighing rather heavily on his mind. Despite much sky-rocketing in the Press, perhaps he finds it in his heart of hearts to admire the pluck and adaptive spirit of the Spaniard, who contrived to hold the Philippines tor some three hundred years, who civilised, christianised, and educated the natives, made them the inalienable owners and tillers of their own lands, and so guarded them from external foes and internal strife, that within the past few generations the population has increased by over 400 per cent. Expansionists may rave cheap platitudes about the white man's burden, and the benefits of civilisation, but if the late of the islanders under American rule wouldj be that which has fallen to the Red Man or the Black Mai« in the United States, it would be better that the last Filipino should die fighting in his last trench rather than see the American system of ' civilising ' people of colour at work in his native islands. Elisee Reclus has not, and never had, any fondness for the Catholic Church. But he wrote what he saw and knew when he said that, under Spanish rule, the Philippine islanders were ' the happiest people of the world and the

most civilised in the far East.' The Spanish system of colonial government was blemished by many a foible and many a tolly, in all probability. But it cannot be laid to its charge that it despised or set a mark of infamy or ostracism upon a man simply because his skin was black or brown or red or yellow. That criminal folly is one of the characteristics of English-speaking civilisation. Only a few week ago, men of colour in Cuba were made to feel that they were of inferior clay — unfit to dine side by side with the white lords — or rather bullies — of creation in a public restaurant. Like complaints recently found voice in a petition from the natives ot the Hawaiian Islands. 'I he turn of the Filipinos will probably come next— although it is doubtful if the Americans will conquer the entire archipelago in the present generation. In a recent issue we showed, on the authority ot many soldiers' letters from the islands, that the Filipinos have already had a foretaste of the attitude of the white American towards the coloured races. Some of the military have been acting as if the only good Filipino — whether unarmed civilian or 'rebel ' — is like the only 'good Injun,' a dead one.