The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1910. OLD FASHIONS AND NEW.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 832, 30 July 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1910. OLD FASHIONS AND NEW.

The death of the Hon. Henry Scotland has set a good many pens writing of the opposition of the deceased gentleman to the drift of the politics of the day. In recent years Mr. Scotland was not often heard in the Council; the younger generation know lifctlo of him save that he opposed tho dispatch of contingents to South Africa at a time when to put a limit to one's enthusiasm for the war was to court unpopularity and abuse. Yet advancing age, although it kept his speech within a small compass, did not silenco him altogether; and it made no impression whatever upon his courage, his disliko of modern tendencies, or the vigour of his mordant criticism. It is only a few clays since ho admitted, without pride hut without apology, that he was "an old fogey." Perhaps he could not be more precisely descrihod than by a phrase which is generally used so pointlcssly and loosely that it has come to be anything but a phrase of precision— "an old-fashioned _ man." His opinions on every point are not recorded, but it would probably be

1 correct to say that it would be difficult to find many acts of policy in the past fifteen years to which he gave his approval. Having made up his mind before the bulk of the present population was born, and having seen no reason to change his views because other people did, he came in late years almost to embody the old coast from which our ship of State sailed away in the 'niuoties across a sea the further bound of which, if a stable shore does exist, i 3 outside the ken and the mariners who, when they thought of Mr. Scotland, dismissed his ideas as utterly old-fashioned and therefore not worth the notice of an up-to-date democracy. Of course, the rival merits of old fashion and "new fangle" cannot fairly bo adjudged by confining inquiry to a comparison between Mr. Scotland and a typical Radical in tho House of Representatives. That would be to deny the new fashion any chance at all in the hearing. For new fashion, up-to-dateness, hustling humanitarianisni, democracy, and all the rest of it are a good deal better than their manifestation in the dominant party in Parliament. At the same time Mr. Scotland did fairly represent the temper of the past, and the temper of to-day is reflected pretty well in the character of tho House, since politics is really the only region, in New Zealand, in which the spirit of the time has yet found clear and active expression. Emerson, writing with deeply-cultivated countries in his thoughts, said of laws that "human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads." Unfortunately, anyone seeking for the soul of New Zealand would have nowhere to seek but in our politics; and, if he had no other evidence about tho character of modern democracies, he would probably become as faithful to old fashion as Mr. Scotland was. We are not of the laudatores temporis acti as that label is commonly understood; probably uo man is in his heart, for the reflection that brings the temptation to despair brings also the wisdom to see that society is not helplessly at the mercy of the waves of chanco. Emerson may again be quoted. "Society," ho says, "always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through tho hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspapers, as their fathers did at their age. With such an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which the lolly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their laws as well as man; and things refuse to be trifled ; with." This, however, is small comfort to the lovers of the old standards when they see new standards being set up, especially when they are set up by tho hands of ignorance and inexperience. The marks of the new fashion are impatience of authority, scorn for the teachings of history, a contemptuous cock-surencss that things have so changed that what was "all very well" then and there "won't do" here and now. Liko Sganarelle in Moliere's comedy, the "democrats" bob up everywhere to say, out of the wisdom distilled from a tenth-hand acquaintance with selected scraps from some Radical writing, that "we have changed all that." It has even been seriously contended in our own House of Representatives by a leading Ministerialist, as we have given ourselves the pleasure of recording on former occasions, that even the law of gravitation is not immutable. And so to-day, in the Parliament that once housed what the British Parliament contains, men of culture, men trained to think, men who are educated in the sense' in which Lord Morley has used tho term—that is to _ say, able to gather and weigh evidence—we havo a preponderance of members who so faithfully reflect the new fashion in this country that Mr. Scotland was probably stating an actual fact in that passage of a speech of a few weeks ago in which he condensed into, a phrase what we have taken _ many lines to say. "Sir," he said, "I do not know that it is much use quoting Montesquieu, as I suppose there are not a dozenmen in this country who ever heard of such a writer, and if they ever heard of him they would think a speech of the late Mr. Seddon's a far greater production than L Esprit des Lois."

There' we have Old Fashion's crushing rebuke to New Fashion. It is of no use to say that nqw-fashioned-ness is not everywhere of 50 gross a character as it shows itself in many ways in this country; where it is less - gross, where, for example, even the Radical "out-and-outer shrinks from believing a Keir Hardie or Lloyd-Geokge speech a greater work than Bastiat's tiophism.es Economiquts, the comparative moderation and restraint of the "destructives" are due to tho vestiges of old fashion in the shape of the rule that thought and a consideration of evidence must precede advocacy. The weakness in New Zealand is that the nation rushed into growth, and took up the heavy responsibilities of a full democracy, before it learned to think. In pontics, and this applies to many other countries besides our own, tho essence of . tho dispute between tho old-fashioned peoplo and the other kind is a dispute as to the relative importance of society and the race. This fact has long been felt by fcho friends of cautious progress, but it has not, so far as we know, been put so well as by Mb. Stephen Eeytjolds in the Socialist weekly The New Age.

We seem, in short (he says), to have come to a point when the welfare of society and the welfare of the race are far from identical, and wo have now to choose between the two. . . . Society demands more prudence. The Rood of tho race demands less. Society demands a damping-down of individual life. Does the race? The race, demands more and more life; and it cares nothing whether that Hfcfulnoss (to coin a word) dovetails into any -industrial or political system whatever. It is no use offering mo art, comfort, scope for my inclinations if, as a condition, outlet for my passions is denied inc. _My passions will bust it all up. It is no use offering mo freedom from destitution if, as a condition, I must knuckle under to a schemo of industrial conscription like tho Webbs' Minority Report. That's tho sort of thing I moan; and Ido venture.to make ono prediction: any society whoso welfare involves racial harm will go to pieces; and any reform which involves the slowing down of lifo will be destroyed by lifo itself.

That is the real dispute between old fashion and "new fangle." The oldfashioned people, consciously or unconsciously as the case may be, think of the race; the others, when they think at all, think of the society of the moment. The latter take no cavo of the day after to-morrow; the former have a secular vision and are concerned with the centuries to come,