MELBOURNE'S REVENGE ON PRINCE ALFRED.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 14, Issue 746, 23 December 1869, Page 4

MELBOURNE'S REVENGE ON PRINCE ALFRED.

.{From the Spectator, 2nd October.) ■JfSLBOjJBNE has taken a really happy re ,venge Off the Duke of Edinburgh for the flight put upon yictQ'ia by the request for a Pajrliumentary vote in committee of iuipplv fir his "Royal Higbness's presents [distributed in that colony, and (apparently) pne or two smaller slights as well. She *h.9 got one of her cleverest meu to quiz him gently for the benefit of the "Early .Closing Association Pf Melbourne! And well has -the Hon. A. Michie, Q.G., performed the task. In fact - , if soma English publisher would reprint here Mr Michie's lively lecture on "Loyalty, Royalty, and the Prince's Visits," we ,do not doubt that this lively and hu morpus piece of irony, this quiet and yet ■effectual clipping of the gilded wings of rank by a distinguished colonist, would have a good sale, and give a good lesson jn this country as well as in that. Mr Michje, referring to some remarks of ours ,on the startling reception given to Prince Alfred in the antipodes,—to the effect that ythe gpo.rj Australians seemed to have got ."Prince upon the brain," retorts that that fort of disease is not confined to colonists, quoting very authentic English raptures of & like na,ture in proof thereof. We have not the least doubt of it—though, if we remember rightly, our observation applied rather to the strange rapture of self mutilation evinced by New South Wales in its portentous Treason-Felony Act, than to any extrayagance pf festive hospitality in Victoria, and we really doubt whether £irreat Britain js in the habit of showing her loyalty by voluntarily curtailing any jßriton's rights in order to offer them up Jto the Royalty in which we delight. But be that as jt may, we are yery glad to admit that Mr Michie's lucid and humorous way of illustrating the truth that "the rank is but the guinea stamp, th" man's the jgowd for a' that," would do us as much good us it must lnve given pleasure to his Australian audierce, smarting somewhat, /as they evidently were, under the conduct pf their recent guest. Mr Michie's main thesis is that the sort pf loy>dry which is not directed to great personal qualities of character, or great personal achievements, butwhich effervesces noisily oyer mere rank, is not a very deep, jiot a very pure, not a yery disinterested, as well a-> not a very dignified emotion. Mr Michie illustrates this amusingly enough foy the phenomena of the Prince's colonial .Visits. He gives a very entertaining picture of the mortification of the Commissioners sent to meet the Prince, and to carry out a very grand scheme for an escorting flotilla of steamers from the Pleads to Melbourne, when the Prince and his ship, the G-alatea, refused to be escorted, and took to their heels, leaving the escorting steamers, with all their elaborate instructions as to the port and starboard lines of vessels, to feel like "the wooden)egged man, who the longer he ran, the further he fell behind." O e dejected .commissioner observed to Mr Michie that ."such behaviour was notice in the Prince at all," and Mr Michie uniformly observed that this highly effervescent sentiment did pot show much disinterestedness or forti tude under the snubs of him who was jthe object of it. On the Western tour p he same remarkable phenomenon recurred at Colac. The Prince ran a blockade of loyal Colacians who were anxious to address him. A dn\ or two after the Colac Observer observed that " the well-known loyalty pf this journal forbids it attemptingto give publicity to the bitterness of feeling openly expressed, and replied to only by an omi nous silence on the part of the more guarded, who felt that an opportunity had been lost of cementing more closely the union which exists between this loyal colony and the glorious empire from which the majority of its inhabitants are permitted £0 'hail" ! And Mr Michie justly infers that in like circumstances not only the Colac "cement," but the British "cement," would lose many pf its adhesive qualities. Loyalty is an emotion which does not stand rebuffs and contretemps. It effer yesces very actively while the appointed pageant goes on smoothly, and all the pows and expressions of devotedness are reciprocated in other bows and other ex pressions pf attachment; but when anything haopens to prevent this interchange, and all the feeling seemß to be on one side, it suddenly appears that in reality there was no feeling to speak of on either side. Mr Michie's conclusion is that loyalty not founded on the personal qualities of those jo whom it is rendered, —he does, by the way, ample justice to the Queen, as haying fully deserved that loyalty which is found ed on personal services of a very rare and tasking order, —is so " complicated with pur own self-love that it is very apt to turn sour unless the vessel that contains it has peen previously well cleaned out frpm gmall vanities and foolish desires for personal notice." A.nd this position he illustrates with a wealth of anecdote that really makes the lecture a very admirable popu Jar exposition pf the unlimited capacity of this suppositious virtue lor corruption. He maintains, moreover, that the display of joyalty does as much harm to the objects as it does to the subjects of it. And hence lie declares that it the Australians had peen at all well versed in human nature they woulbl not have been surprised or put out on finding that £3,500 had been put on the Imperial estimates to defray the expense ef the Duke ef Edinburgh's Australian gifts. It may Ipok, he says, a little jtpp much " as if Kpmeo had kept a pecket|e;''ger, and had therein duly entered to the debit pf Juliet any little presents he misfit have made her during hismponlight courtship/with the object afterwards of 1 gftjng the values" on did papulet's * esti-.

mates' if the business should ever corae to marriage settlements," but still, all experience shows that " the sentiment of the thing" never really survives use in royalty at all, any more than it does, in the subject, the first serious rebuff. The moral, then, of Mr Michie's lecture is that the fewer of these show persons in the world there are, the better. He even bestows a word of encouragement on Princj Alfred himself, for having, according to the latest information, gone so far into business as to invest something in a New Zealand gold-mine. "If he is destined to know the delights of dividends, it will add, I am sure, to his pleasant recollections of the Southern hemisphere; and if his fate should be 'calls' it will still be that valuable chastening of the spirit,—provided the 'calls' be not put on ihe estimates, —which has made so many uf us wiser and soberer men." Mr Michie derives much encouragement for the future of the world from the tendency of sham rank to subside into wholesome drudgery, and of able though of colonial (or, fay, Victorian) antecedents, like Mr Childers, —to rise to the highest rank in our administration. " Let Mr Sumner talk his tallest, —let Louis Napoleon plot his deepest," he concludes, " Childers commands the Channri Fleet/' —which he evidently considers as a lesson in the true specific gravity of miud, which will more than counterbalance any mischief due to the tricks and caprices of that nominal rank, in the glitter of which men sun themselves with so ostentatious and vehement but superficial a demonstration of delight. If the Duke of Edinburgh would but read this wise as well as witty lecture of Mr Michie's, and has as much sense as we are willing to give him credit for, in spite of occasional freaks of bad taste and self will, he would probably give expression to something analogous to the heroic old John Brown's sentiment in saying that lie was of infinitely more use to hang, than for any other earthly purpose. The Prince, at least as regards his ceremonial visits to the Colonies, seems to us to have been of infinitely more use to quiz, than for an> other earthly purpose. Mr Michie has at last retrieved the apparent waste of those unnatural and ill-requited ardours of false sentiment, and turned them by the alchemy of his sound sense, vivacity, sincerity, and liumor into a graphic, and useful lesson for all time. Let us be thankful that, the follies of that year were what they were. and that the greater folly of openly charg ing the Empire for them was committed, if only the world, both colonial and British, will, after laughing heartily with Mr Michie, lay to heart the thoroughly manh and wholesome inferences which lie draws as to the pernicious effects bath to the idol and the idolators of those li .How and unmeaning rites miscalled demonstrations of loyalty,—where no gratituJe has been earned and consequently no loyalty wasdup; md, on the other hand, as to the genuine profit of those real ties created by services on the one side and popular confidence on the other, whether the noblesse which en genders the obligations be inherited from ancestors, or indigenous in the individual soul. This is, in the abstract, a moral so common-place and so universally admitted, that the only circumstances under which it can be reiterated with advantage and force are such as those of which Mr Michie has availed himself, when to a large com munity there is broughtsuddenly home by some external incident, the emptiness, and even the mischief of those unreal and frothy sentiments with which, from time to time, every people is inebriated. But even then a great deal depends on the sk 11 and tact and sincerity of the man who points the moral, and Melbourne has been fortunate in its choice. Mr Michie has not only taken a very courteous, temperate, and even subtle revenge for the gaucherio of its inexperienced though rather prudent visitor, but he has made the colony—and the mother country, too, if she would but read him, —-feel that, after all, the fault lies far more with the half-breeding of the populace, who lay themselves out for this sort of folly, disappointment, and vexation, than it does with the half-breeding of the unfortunate victims of the appetite for un meaning obeisances and still more unmeaning condescensions.