THE GROWTH OF VANITY.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1066, 27 November 1877, Page 3

THE GROWTH OF VANITY.

Sir Stafford Northcotc, in a speech at ! Exeter, referred to two great social evils ; which, in this colony, might well become ; subjects of study by Messrs Stout and Rees. ; Two great evils, he said, were the tendency to | excitement and the growth of vanity. I Examples of both ho might take from the | House of Commons. Unless there were some some measures of startling character passed in a session there was a general feeling that Parliament had fallen back, and was not answering the expectations of the people. As to the second point—vanity and conceit—no intellectual disease was so mischievous as this in the present day. It was at the bottom of a large proportion of the waste of time in Parliament. Upon this point Sir Stafford said: — .... Men are much more anxious to distinguish themselves and make themselves prominent than they are to get through the work that is to be done ; and really ir is very often almost avowedly the case that a man will get up and make a speech which there is not the smallest occasion to make, which not only is there no occasion to make, but which for the sake of the very cause he is advocating it would have been better not to make, for the mere purpose of getting his name before the public and showing that he has paid attention to the subject. 1 have known scores and scores of times —I have known men of considerable position who have really damaged their cause by their inability to do that which I hold it to be the first duty of a member of Parliament to learn to do—namely, to swallow the speech which you intended to make. I have known cases in which, victory having been gained or on the point of being gained by the Opposition over the Ministry, that victory has been thrown away because some leading member has made a' speech which was ob- j viously unnecessary, but which gave the j Minister an opportunity of replying, which | he would not otherwise have had, and which, , perhaps put him on his legs again when he | ought to have been knocked over, and so I j venture to say that that is an evil which is ; on the increase among us. I could mention men who are making themselves rather conspicuous in the present day, and who are, as I believe, making themselves conspicuous almost entirely through an inordinate and ill-regulated vanity. One man whose name is familiar to us, but I won’t mention it here, is a man who undoubtedly is of considerable ability. He is a man who takes very great pains with what he does, but he is a man of such childish vanity, such unreasonable conceit, that he will rather make himself conspicuous by doing the most absurd things than not be noticed at all. He reminds me sometimes of a man who once said of a groat painter that he could not paint as well as him, but at all events he could spoil the painter’s work by shaking his easel while he was painting; and undoubtedly if those are the sort of triumphs which we are to expect, they are triumphs easily obtained ; but the only question is whether they are worth obtaining.