RANDOM REMARKS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 420, 6 December 1911, Page 6

RANDOM REMARKS.

By "Onlooker."

Home Rule is in the air, along with many other impending innovations, and the task of reducing the abstract question to the practical devolves entirely upon the selfsacrificing enthusiast. The man with one idea may not be the most interesting companion for a holiday, but he is the person who accomplishes things. He places his single inspiration so persistently before the public that his fellow man is obliged to take notice f and either oppose or support him. Oposition is the breath of life to the real hall-marked enthusiast. It braces him for the conflict and impels him to heroic deeds. It the case of the Home Rule campaign for the Maori which is to be inaugurated by Henare Kaihau. we may confidently look for stirring action by the energetic advocate. His fitness for the role of enthusiast will appeal to all who know him, and his promise of a Maori parliament house at Ngaruawahia in the near future may be regarded as accomplished.

The reformer sometimes has a hard row to hoe, and the person who wishes to achieve anything in the reform line is always well-advised to choose something calculated not to too greatly shock the inherent reverence for custom with which the average man is afflicted. Life is too short, and custom is so interwoven with vested interests, that even an apparently trifling reform may precipitate consequences little dreamed of by the well-meaning enthusiast. The. pomp and circumstance of a Maori parliament ruled by the energetic Henare would no doubt appeal to Kaihau who would doubtleess distribute favours with native prodigality and munificence. But suppose his followers kicked, over the traces and a vote of no-confidence was carried in consequence of Henare's too close attention t" Parliamentary business. The possibility may appear remote, but strange things keep happening to the enthusiast. A further possibility is that a new evangel might be launched in the Government camp with the object of abolishing monarchy and sitting up a Native Republic. Henare would find no secure abiding place in a republic, and his dream of power would evaporate like mist before the morning sun. There are numerous other possibilities, but the foregoing are sufficient to indicate that even a man of Kaihau's energy and optimism has difficulties to meet in his yearning 3 for reform.

Time-honoured exhortations appeal strongly to the average person from the fact of early association, and often inspire a weli-meaning man to deeds from which reason, discretion, or any other form of common suiise would ordinarily restrain him. The departing prisoner from a southern gaol who furtively passed five shillings to a less fortunate prisoner, was evidently obsessed with the idea of "doing good by stealth " The exhortation unfortunately is held to be ultra vires when opposed to prison regulations and the unlucky donor had to answer to a magistrate for hi 3 breach of discipline, A£s fine or the alternative of a month's further stay within the prison walls will probably serve to cure the unfortunate man of his habit of giving way to the imnulse uf the moment, Even hoary exhortations lost their virtue when time and place are not specified.

I A faint glimmer is at length disI cernible through the dense mass of obscurity which surrounds the lighting of Te Kuiti, and quite a number of people are in a fair way to become experts on the subject of illumination. Of course, there are divers branches of illumination. The man who can illuminate an argument maybe totally unfit to light a town. Again, a person to whom rhetoric is unknown may be fully qualified to paint a town crimson without adding to its publicutilities. It is rather annoying to think that the whole controversy might have been averted had somebody possessed the foresight to plant the town somewhere handy to a river with a voluminous waterfall, so that the conveniences of water and lighting could have been installed with little expense and no waste of eloquence. Such a lapse on the part of the father of the town may be rightly termed a blot on the inspiration of genius which evolved a town from nothing, and induced a European population to improve it for the owners.