The Evening Star SATURDAY DECEMBER 3.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2394, 3 December 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY DECEMBER 3.

It would bo wrong not to recognise success wherever effort lias been made to attain to it. Few artists achieve it without long and persistent practice. No matter whether it bo the mountebank, the musician, the painter, or the poet, the first feeble efforts must be followed by careful and long-continued training, or excellence cannot bo acquired. Even malevolence does not manifest itself in its first exhibitions so clearly and unmistakably, as when by long indulgence it has pervaded all the thoughts and feelings. Perhaps one of Milton’s finest conceptions is that of Satan, in his “ Paradise Lost.” The noble daring, the high intellect, the commanding genius of the archfiend, create an interest in him and I

lis doings, in the mind of the reader, equal to that which is felt in the fate of the innocent beings on whose ruin he is bent. As a matter of course, one cannot but grieve over the perverted talent and lost position of the fallen angel. But chiefly it seems sad that all his talent should be employed in a desire to blast the prospects of a newlycreated race. He goes and looks upon the fair earth, acknowledges its beauty admires its hills and running streams its rallies and its forests, its capabili ties for sustaining the crowds of peoph hereafter to inhabit it: and then set himself deliberately to plant in thei constitutions that tendency to evi which shall be handed down to al generations —the seed of malevolence that will germinate and flourish whei ever it finds a congenial soil to norms it. That first Colony in Eden wa

ruined by that spirit. Chronologists tell us that was nearly six thousand years ago : geologists, the Chinese, and Egyptians, make it out to have been many thousands more than that; but, long or short, that spirit, serpeutbreathed into the mind of Eve, breaks out in old countries and in new, and, strangest of all, in places and in modes that tend to damage most those who indulge in it. It is quite comprehensible that Mr Reid and his “ tail ” oppose the Government scheme of public works, because they have ill-defined ideas of the immense advantage to be derived from them. Wherever agriculturists are in power, the same obstmetiveness to progress is manifested. There appears to be something in a clodocratic education that prevents grasp of intellect. When therefore they oppose that which is for the benefit of the Province, excuses may be found for them. The ground of opposition may be narrowed to a mere personal antipathy, as expressed by some of the up-country members, who are so afraid of the man that offers them a good, that they will neither have it themselves nor let their neighbors enjoy it. We have seen children put their thumbs into their mouths and refuse lollies in the same spirit. This cannot be called malevolence, notwithstanding its bad effects upon social well-being. But we need not go far for an illustration of that sad inheritance, intensified by cultivation, and persistently displayed. We suppose some few of our readers see the Daily Times. Wo do not know if they have the patience to read its articles on the postal services. If they have, they must be struck with the advance that it makes in the practice of detraction —an offshoot of the spirit that ruined Eden. There is not, according to our contemporary, a redeeming feature in the service. The first contract entered into by the Postmaster-General has not been efficiently carried out. There was a shadow of excuse for the abuse heaped upon it by our contemporary, although it may easily be shewn that had not Mr Vogel seized the opportunity then presented, the more advantageous arrangement now made would not have been possible. The present line docs not suit the Daily Times —Heaven knows why. The practised malevolence of that journal, strangely erratic, finds fault with every part of the plan. It has hypotheses to prove that because the trade between England and Bombay may go through the Suez Canal or round the Capo of Good Hope, the postal contract, which by subsidising vessels renders it profitable for them to come from America to New Zealand, may or may not have that effect. At any rate, it wishes to shew to the contractors that they have made a bad bargain in agreeing to make Port Chalmers the terminus—as if they were not better informed as to their own interest than our contemporary himself. His lingering recollections dwell still on Sydney —that city of convict memory ; and ho shews how much better and cheaper it would be for the postal steamers to end their voyages there. Following up these sago conclusions, ho points out this morning in his leader, and in a paragraph in his local column, that the expectations of Mr Vogel arc all “ baseless visions,” and that our splendid graving dock at Port Chalmers will be useless for the steamers on the line. We need not follow him further. The first Colony of the human race was mined by a spirit from a convict Colony.