REVIEW.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 319, 21 June 1875, Page 2

REVIEW.

[By the Loafer in the Street.]

When old Burton, the Melancholic Anatomist, sketched out a Utopia of his own, he was not very far out in many of his ideas. His “ water conduits aptly disposed in each town of his commonwealth” would have gladdened the heart of the Mayor of Christchurch ; and his provisions for colleges and public schools were liberal enough even for Canterbury. In old Bur’s New Atlantis there were to be public historiographers, informed and appointed by the State to register things in general. I’ve been a public historiographer. I acted as such when I went round once taking the census. I remember the fact well. I remember it because an eccentric female spinster colonist broke a long-handled shovel over my head for declining to enter her as twenty-eight years of age when she was visibly brokenmouthed and clearly far otherwise. It was on this same occasion that the head censor told me that obscurer and dirtier census papers than mine he had never seen. I’ve never acted as a sub-enumerator since; but I take an interest in censusment. I’ve been perusing a work on the subject lately. I’m about to review it. I’m not used to reviewing, and why you should select me for the business I can’t make out. I expect now I shall get through with it. I’m going to commence reviewing now. I mention this because there are people among your readers who would’nt drop down to the fact for another half column. Mr Didsbury’s work on the Further Abstracts of the New Zealand Census, 1874, vols V and VI, is, I should say, a work teeming with interest to the enquiring mind. It teems more than any of those preceding volumes which excited so much thrills among philanthropists and statesmen ; but, not having seen vols. 1,2, 3, and 4, it would scarcely become me to allude to them more fully than to say that in all respects Parts 5 and 6 fully sustain the excitement one would naturally anticipate from a careful perusal of the earlier volumes. The get up of Vols 5 and 6, whether we look upon the paper, the printing, the amount of thread used in the binding, or the information contained inside, is more than creditable. As an old censor I can appreciate the manner in which the information is compiled, and as an old devil (I mean a printer’s devil of course) I can candidly say that the “ Further Abstracts of the New Zealand Census,” Vols V. and VL, are turned out by Mr Didsbury in really first-class style. Were I in Wellington to : morrow I should expect Didsbury to ask me to drink, but, alas ! I’m not there. The work now under consideration is in two parts. The first treats of the conjugal condition of the people. On such a subject a deal might be said. Old Pwittleslum is a married friend of mine. He has been married twenty-five years. He seems to have had some experience of Conjugal Condition. He says he likes it pretty well as yet. Sometimes he takes his aged mother-in-law to a winter entertainment, and gets a job in the eye with a one pronged fork from his wife the next night as a set off for the foregoing agreeable evening. He has at present two sets of twins down with the measles. I should judge from his remarks that measley twins are not conducive to married bliss. The conjugal condition of New Zealand is our topic, however, at present, and we will pursue it, like any other Benedict, to the bitter end, so to speak. I learn from Mr Didsbury’s valuable volume that there are in New Zealand, or were—when the last cloud of sub • enuraeratists went about the length and breadth of the land—--45,334 husbands and 44,624 wives, being an excess of husbands over wives to the amount of 720. I can’t quite understand how this works out, but still does it not show us that we are not to any extent a Mormon community? Let us be thankful for this, and refrain, if possible, so far as in us lies, from envying the position of the 720 married men who seem somehow to have lost their wives. In connection with the above I learn a fact that is more serious—more awe-impelling both to the political economist and to the maidens Standing with reluctant feet Where the brook and river meet Womanhood and childhood fleet.” I see that there are 238 bachelors to every hundred spinsters. I regret this. From enquiry from a betting friend of mine I understand that the odds are nearly 2£ to I against any bachelor in New Zealand getting married, and while conversing further on the subject, the bettist assured me that he could, in the way of business, lay from thirty to forty to one against lots of our bachelors being accepted by any woman at all. Let us here arrive at the conclusion that the sooner we all get married the better. It

may of course be for better or worse—very possibly the latter,—but the statistics now before us clearly point to matrimony as a national institution which should be encouraged at all risks. The second part of the volume I am endeavoring to review dwells at considerable length on the subject of the Occupations of the People. This is a subject to which evidently much pains and attention has been bestowed by Mr Didsbury, and I cannot refrain from congratulating him on the result of his .labors. I may here remark that I offered the editor of this paper to write a series of leading articles upon this subject alone. He has declined my offer in terms too cutting to repeat at present. I only mention this in case really good judges of reviewing should think that I had not expanded the subject sufficiently. I shall, however, expand so far as I can. It would appear that we have a number of people making a living in the usual style ; by commerce, agriculture, professions, or what not ; but I’m surprised to learn that there are 12,206 people working away at what are termed Indefinite and Non-productive occupations. I should like this to have been made a little clearer, but upon second thoughts I can perhaps understand it. It is impossible to be as lucid as one could wish in these cases. In the indefinite lot there are probably many people of my class, and I should should say the unproductive lot were composed mainly of statesmen, ministers, reporters, actors, Government clerks, and drapers’ assistants. These professions don’t get paid for overtime, and are subject to abuse in proportion to their underpaid responsibility. I may be wrong, but I should say they might be considered unproductive to themselves and families, I find there are 6088 persons who buy and sell, keep or lend, money, houses, or goods of various kinds. How sad a thought it is that I am personally acquainted with so few of them. It would be an interesting addendum to this statistic, if the compiler had been in a position to state the average interest charged by the money lenders, and the number of borrowers. As Stuart Mill or Garibaldi (I forget which) remarks, nothing imparts so much vitality to a young country as a majority of workers on borrowed capital, I am glad to observe that we possess 344 persons of property and rank not returned under any occupation. This portion of the return ought to be published in England, but the next item ought to be kept dark. This is the item I refer to ; “ Persons supported by the community, and of no special occupation, 2230.” Of this crowd four are entered as dependant on their relations— oh, quaterque heati ! How gladly would I make five. Those dependant on their friends we find no mention of, but had Mr Didsbury taken up this branch of the census what a crowd there would have been. In all New Zealand there is only one professional Pauper or Beggar , and Canterbury owns him. I wish here to make a personal statement. I wish to observe that I am not the person alluded to. I solemnly swear I’m not. A friend of mine makes a good thing in the following manner :—He meets you, say on the Rialto or at Tattersall’s. He calls you aside. He writes in his pocket-book COULD YOU LEND MB A SHILLING? I’M STARVING I ! ! He gets the bob. He drinks it at once. This man spoils legitimate loafing business to a considerable extent. He may be the wretched pauper alluded to, I’m not. I, like many more people we know, love to prey on my friends, but I’m not such a fool as to publish it. As a set-off to the solitary professional pauper there are, I’m glad to find, actually 127 capitalists entered in the census paper as such. How much I feel I could love any of them. It may be interesting to'some to know that irregularity creeps in even among the professions. I find there are seven irregular medical practioners. This don’t affect the public much, because you can always pick them out; but what stuns me is to learn that there are 21 irregular clergymen in the colony. Now here I fancy Mr Didsbury might have been more explicit. I for one should like to know what an irregular clergyman is. It is natural to suppose that the ministers of each and every denomination reckon all outside the pale of their own particular church as irregular ; but what are irregular clergymen in the eyes of the censors? I can admire the truthful spirit which prompted the solitary New Zealand pauper to enter himself as such in the chronicles of the colony, but a fortiori, as Mr Euclid so frequently observes, I can admire the franknessof the 21 gentlemen who announce themselves as ecclesiastical Bashi-Bazouks. The Chinese, I see, also boast of three irregular clergymen and two irregular medical men. They, the Chinese generally here I mean, don’t seem to go in for matrimony, because out of 4816 Mongols there are only two ladies. They have, however, their hairdressers, artists, tailors, commission agents, &c, just like we have. The occupations of the people, as detailed by Mr Didsbury, are very interesting to read. I observe under the beading of defence that we possess, apart of course from volunteers, 37 army officers and three soldiers. The navy is represented by 16 officers and 1 sailor. Our defence force is certainly well officered; but the one sailor with his 16 officers ought to have a good time in case of a war. Among the indefinite occupations alluded to above, I find 2 sub-enumerators, 4 tramps, 2 travellers (I wonder what they travel on), 1 temperance collector (and a good billet too—l wish I had it), 1 tourist, 1 cadet, 1 relieving officer, and 23 agents. In the class connected with exhibitions, the following appears :—2 cricketers, 1 one-legged dancer, 1 gambling-house keeper, 6 circus performers, 5 pedestrians, and 1 property man. The work before me closes with an account of the different occupations of members of universities. The ’varsity men seem to be in all lines. In fact, this portion of the staistics is not a very strong argument in favour of high class education. There are University men officiating as Station Servants, Bushmen, Butchers, Labourers, Sawyers, Coal Miners, and Furniture Makers. The criminal population is set down at 659, but I expect there are a few more about who are not entered in the census. I know a number of most respectable people even in this province who could go into this crowd without being out of place. There are a number of first-class criminals to be met with here any time, but their friends don’t know it. It’s a droll old shop ip this world. I hope I have written now enough to convince you that Mr Didsbury’s work is well worth perusal. I feel I have not done justice to the subject —not half so much justice as I could, were I paid by the line; but a study of the occupations

and conjugal condition of the people—Vols 5 and 6—will teach the reader many things he never knew before, and clearly proves that we are a great, if not a solvent, lot of colonists.

Give us some more reviewing soon. _ I like it. Send us some poems or something high class. I like writing about poets. If you can’t manage this let me write something on the present educational crisis. I’ve got some views on this worth money.