EN PASSANT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 918, 16 April 1883, Page 2

EN PASSANT.

There is always some amusement to be obtained from the details of an election campaign, and the contest that is about to take place for the Inangahua seat promises to be no exception to this rule. « From all accounts, it would appear that Mr Edward Wakefield has been remarkably well received throughout the district, but there is yet time for the tide to turn against him, and, as we said the other day, he would be a rash man who would venture to predict the result. Up to the time of writing we have not heard that the other candidate has addressed the electors, but a perusal of the local journals shows us that he is not wanting in friends, who are ready to fight his battle during his unavoidable absence. One newspaper in particular has taken up the cudgels on behalf of Mr Shaw, and the manner in which the editor proceeds to crush Mr Wakefield is amusing. He says, in effect, “ You good people of the West Coast must not be led away by what you hear this gentleman say. He is pleasant and well-spoken enough, but the opinion of those who know him better than you do is not the same as yours ; ” and then he proceeds to ransack the back numbers of Hansard to prove his position, It will not be necessary to do more than refer to two of the extracts given, namely, those from speeches delivered in 1879 by Mr Turnbull and Mr Macandrew. To quote an opinion of a member’s ability uttered nearly four years ago, especially in the case of a young man like Mr Wakefield, is not exactly disingenuous, but let that pass. The present member for Timaru, on the occasion in question, compared Mr Wakefield to Canning, for the purpose of pointing at him a virulent and unjust attack made by the Rev. Sydney Smith upon that statesman. “ Every schoolboy knows ” that the witty Canon of St Paul’s was a strong party man, and he lived in a time when party warfare was carried bn with far more brutal weapons than are used in this our day. “ Providence has made him a light-jesting paragraph man, and that he will remain to his dying day. When he is jocular, he is strong; when he is serious he is like Samson in a wig;” so wrote Peter Plymley in his celebrated letters, and it was these words that Mr Turnbull considered applicable to Mr Wakefield. The latter gentleman is too accustomed to dealing hard knocks himself to be profoundly affected by this rather clumsy sarcasm, but the utterance is not without interest as showing the quality of the mind of the member for Timaru, who is a type of a very large class. That Sydney Smith’s estimate of Canning’s genius was a totally false one is recognised by all who have studied the subject, but at the same time, as was pointed out by a celebrated essayist in commenting upon this very passage in the “ Plymley Letters,” it gives “ point and currency to the very objections . . . which always were and will be urged against any wit or man of genius who has the misfortune to startle dulness from its self complacency.” How many people are there, for example, who deny that the late Lord Beaconsfield possessed any of the qualities of the statesmen, for no other reason than that his speeches were full of epigram and wit. It need scarcely be said that Mr Macandrew looks upon Mr Wakefield in very much the same light as does Mr Turnbull. This, however, may be excused on the score of nationality, as Scotchmen have from time immemorial been intolerant of jests except of the grimmest kind. There is an old journalistic story that, to our mind, will apply to the member for Port Chalmers. It happened that an editor of a Scotch newspaper of surpassing dulness suddenly awakened up to the fact that his circulation.was falling away, and that it was necessary to impart some “ life” to his columns. Accordingly he engaged a young man as an assistant, who would provide the lighter matter, the editor giving as his reason that “ for his pairt he jocked wi’ deeficulty.” Mr Macandrew not only “jocks wi’ deeficulty,” but he evidently looks upon anyone who possesses wit with suspicion. To him it is an unknown quantity, and accordingly to be distrusted. The opinions of the . members for Timaru and Port Chalmers notwithstanding, we hope to see Mr Wakefield returned, if for no other reason than that his speeches will serve to relieve the monotony of Parliamentary proceedings. But there are other and better reasons for us wishing to see him succeed in the contest that is about to be fought. He is not only a skilful orator but he has also shown that he possesses the, more solid qualities that go to make a statesman —strong common sense and keen business capacities.

It is, we believe, an axiom among historians that when the same incident is recorded as having happened to two different people at different times it is to be dismissed as incredible. Thus the little anecdotes that in times gone by constituted the chief charm of history to children have been declared to be apocryphal by ?uch unfeeling seekers after truth as Messrs Freeman, Froude, and Green, William Tell, i,t seems, never performed the feat of shooting an apple off the head of his youthful son, any more than did the Good King Alfred let the cakes burn in the neatherd’s cottage, and consequently was not soundly abused by the countryman’s wife. We never believed much in history, but we must own that we derive a certain amount of satisfaction from the fact that we were born at a period when “Mangnall’sQuestions” was received as gospel, and when as yet the modern school of historians had no existence. But if the axiom referred to holds goods in that lower branch of history which may be called social anecdotage, we are afraid that our present Governor must be convicted of sometimes drawing onhisjimagjnationfor his facts. That little story about the jug that Sir William Jervois told the other day at Auckland, and which that picker-up of unconsidered trifles, the local

Press agent, kindly telegraphed all over the colony, has belonged to the stock-in-trade of a celebrated comedian in London for a good many years. We do not know how often we have heard the inimitable Toole tell this anecdote, but he always spoke of it as a personal experience, the interlocutors being a master mechanic and his employee, while the Governor said the incident occurred in the army. As both versions cannot be correct we suppose we must dismiss the story as fallacious. So is another of our cherished illusions demolished. Bat if the anecdote is not true, it is, at any rate, as the Italians say, ben ttovato. To a man who possessess such conscientious ideas as to his duty as does Si William Jervois, the position of Governor of a colony like New Zealand is not in all respects an enviable one. During his tour he has had to visit a large number of places, at each of which he was expected to deliver appropriate addresses. How well he has acquitted himself the record of his journeyings, as published in the press, shows, but, though he has never found himself in the position of the people in his anecdote and at a loss what to say, his self-imposed task must have entailed a vast quantity of labor. To be obliged to listen to the interminable string of addresses, saying the same thing in almost the same words, must be a wearisome business. Still, Sir William has never faltered. He said kind things to the Christchurch people about their commercial prosperity, he gave Dunedin some good advice about that troublesome harbor, and compared Invercargill to Adelaide; while his reply to addresses presented in the minor towns showed that he had studied the subject well before he started, so that he might not tread on the toes of those little corporations whose sense of their own importance is out of all proportion to their size. In one of his “ Roundabout Papers” Thackeray draws a pathetic picture of a Lord Mayor who had to go through the hospitable duty of entertaining people while suffering from a raging toothache. Although, so far as we are aware, Sir William Jervois does not suffer from ill-health, no doubt he has to endure as much mentally as the civic dignitary did physically. To Be bored by those long wearisome addresses, and yet wear a smiling face, is not an enviable position ; and the Governor deserves our sympathy for what he has to go through as much as he does our admiration for the manner he acquits himself.