AN EARL'S OPINIONS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2910, 28 February 1893, Page 2

AN EARL'S OPINIONS.

' • » Whkn Mr Silas Hobba the proprietor of the celebrated " corner grocery" expressed to Little Lord Fauntleroy the emphatic opinion that "Earls is a bad lot," he uttered a sentiment which, however much it may. be sympathised in by " dimmycrats' of an ultra type must nevertheless be accepted, if ■ accepted at all, with reservations and qualifications. For there are Earls and Ear la and even the grocery man aforesaid after his famous visit to Dorincourt Castle was free to admit that as a species of the genus homo even the wearers of the strawberry leaves are not altogether without their recommendatory virtues, and certainly not the irredeemably bad lot that his untutored fancy had painted them. It is, moreover, the fact that, whatever he may say of them, even the most democratic of Britishers in his heart of hearts has a latent fealty to the possessors of rank and title—nay, is it not proverbial that he "loves a lord?" We go farther, and are prepared to contend that that fealty and affection are often well founded, and that among our ancient nobility are not a few who are noble in character as well as by descent, and whose personal traits dignify their positions even more than those positions dignify them. With others of course all this is reversed, the more's the pity, but it remains, as we have said, that there are Earls and Earls. Not only are there good Eatls such as Fauntleroy fondly believed the Earl of Dorincourt to be, and eventually succeeded in making him, and Earls who deserve the Hobbsian definition of " a bad lot," but there are also wise Earls and foolish Earls, Earls who are mentally abreast of the liberal age ia which they live, and Earls who in mind and opinions are but. survivals of a remote and dead past, buried like fossils under a mass of prejudices and ancient superstitions, In New Zealand, fortunately, our present experience of Earls is a very happy and highly satisfactory one, and if all the members of his order were like Lord Glasgow the people of this colony would be quite prepared to acknowledge the claims to their high regard and admiration of an aristocracy of mind and character coupled with an aristocracy of rank. But, alas for the destruction of the possibility of so pleasing an illusion, which must be (the inevitable consequence of the silly article which another Earl—the Earl of Meath—has contributed to the "Nineteenth Century " by which he nan succeeded, if not in proving Mr Hobba' them that " Earls is a bad lot," at least in demonstrating that some Earls are decidedly foolish. According to the cabled summary h>'s Lordship "has never heard of good work being done! in any colony possessing manhood, suffrage," the riecessary deductiqn from, which is that he does n.qt regard/the passing of liberal land laws, and measures,calculated to ameliorate the condition of the masses as "good Work" and that therefore he would if he could take from the people at large the right of governing themselves and retransfer it to certain privileged classes. The apocryphal story which he toils, oi «"* clergyman in New Zealand who had to submit to the most foul language from the members of his restry who held the purse strings/shows plainly enough that the Earl of Meath would prefer to see herd as in the 0!d CountryTa system of beneficed clergymen under lordly patronage supported by great tithe, and little tithe, and all the rest of it, and his inclusion of runholders with clergymen and clerks as "the only poor men " shows plainly enough that his sympathies are restricted mainly to the class to which he himself presumablyjoelongg—-viz., the big landowners. Up. to this point ih§ cable summary of!his magazine artwje is certainly not calculated vto deepen that feeling of affectionate loyalty 1 to the Mother Country on the part of Colonists tct winch he testifies, ans which will pertajnly never" M astonigh the world " in a greater degree than hp has himself succeeded ii) doj^g by the, extraordinary production qf his pen |q which we are n^r referring.