A Volcanic Letter

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 51, 21 December 1905, Page 1

A Volcanic Letter

Some people— Mrs. Caudle, the curtain-lecturer, for instance— are apt to gauge a man's strength of mind by his wind-power alone. Such admirers of spavined logic will find a thing of beauty and a joy for ever in a tornado of a letter addressed to our local evening contemporary by a Prohibitionist clergyman who wields the shepherd's crook for a Hit tie flock of believers somewherq in or about Dunedin. The good man's heart is perhaps in the right place. But his tongue has yet to learn some of the graces of the Vere de Veres, an-d his pen the elemental amenities of the ' Polite Letter-writer.' In his ' Aphorisms,' Lavater has well said that vociferation and calmness of character seldom meet in the same person. And the violence, vociferation, and general intemperateness and rancor of tongue of many clerical advocates of Prohibition have greatly contributed to what the ' Outlook ' calls the recent ' decided set-back to the growth of the No-license sentiment ' No cause can be permanently benefited by the methods of the brawler.

On all the issues of the Local Option polls, the electors of New Zealand "were free to foim and hold their own opinions. And 'we, for our part, should be the last to suggest that any class of voters exercised their electoral rights in regard to ithcse issues otherwise than in accordance with their honest convictions. Rut such sane tolerance docs not appeal to, the shepherd of souls whose volcanic outbreak seais a column of the ' Evening Star.' Once, through sheer inadvertence, Henryi {Flood referred to his enemy Grattan as, his ' honorable friend.' The words brought Grattan in hot indignation to his feet. ' Whom does the honorable gentleman call his friend ? ' he angrily demanded. ' Not me, surely ? I'd spit on him in a desert.' This is about the sort of temper with which this pastor animarum regards the advocates of continuance — who, until adequate positive evidence to the contrary is forthcoming, must, as a class, be deemed to have voted as honestly and as much in accordance with their lights as their reverend critic did. And yet, in his mind, they seem to be regarded as outside the covenanted mercies of heaven. They are a ' motley crowd,' ' squalid ranks,' etc — down to the last man and woman. One half of them are (we are given to understand) ' outcasts, dwellers of drink-made slums, public-house bummers, the

tag-rag-and-bobtail of society, the drink-sodden, bleareyed, and red-nosed debauched— men and womeui constantly verging on .alcoholic-insanity,' and others of such damaged reputation that the remaining half of the ' continuators ' would be ' ashamed of their company ' I We are not called upon to express here and now; our views regarding the question of continuance. That" we reserve for another issue. But the quotations given above represent a really pretty derangement of epitapßs to apply to jniore than 90,000 of 'the electors of New Zealand. Does it not all sound perilously like a suggestion to disfranchise them, and limit the right of voting— ,as was once the case— to ' the elect ' ? A couplet in quaint old French sets forth the duties of the knight of chivalry in the following words':— 1 Ung chevalier, n'en doubtcz pas, Doight ferir hault, et parler bas.' His honorable profession of arms demanded that he should strike high (not beneath the belt), and not speak with noisy tongue. An analogous obligation falls upon the clergy. They ought to be the ' preux chevaliers 'o£ our day, the grand exemplars of true Christian chivalry. If they enter the lists against an abuse, let them by all means slash and pierce it with facts that smite like edge of blade or point of lance. Only, let them be sure of their facts, and not descend into the arena with no better weapons than addled eggs or the tongue of a Billingsgate fish-wife. The intemperate assertivcness of this enthusiastic Prohibitionist advocate is suggestive of Douglas Jerrold's definition of dogmatism—' puppyism come to its tull growth.'