CRICKET. DRIFTING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 302, 22 December 1871, Page 2

CRICKET.

DRIFTING.

(From the Australasian.) When the late Earl of Aberdeen said that England had "drifted" into the Crimean war, he popularised au exceedingly expressive and much-needed word ; for the thing itself —drift —plays a most important part in human affairs. It is characteristic of au age of doubt and indecision; an age in which responsibility is so minutely subdivided that it eventually disappears ; an age in which men are so much accustomed to regulate their actions and lives by what a coterie, or a newspaper, or Mrs. Grundy says, that they are in danger of forgetting that they have a conscience —which is their law and their rule of right —within them. " Drift " is one of the characteristics of a period in which people's minds have become flabby, anu force of character is extremely rare. Our Iron Duke never drifted ; neither did -Nelson nor Collingwood. The only nation in Europe which appears to be in a really virile condition —Germany —is also exempt from drift. Drift played no part in the great campaign which terminated with the fall of Paris. On the other hand, it has been a couspicuous element in French history from the time that drift carried Charles the Tenth to Holy wood, down to that in which the ex-Emperor drifted into Sedan. We have just had a fine illustration of the evils of drift in the loss of the Rangoon, with the whole of the Australian mails on board, and much valuable cargo. The vessel was actually allowed to drift out of the buoyed channel on to a rock, while the captain and the pilot were on tbe bridge, and sufficient daylight remained to enable the passengers on board to see the buoys which formed the starboard fringe of tbat channel. In this emergency the captain's self-possession seemed to drift away from him, while tbe pilot's sense of his own individual responsibility was also in a state of drift. Two minutes of firmness, promptitude, and vigorous action would have saved the vessel, we believe. If the order bad been given to reverse the engines —they were stopped at the time, in order to enable some wretched little boat, which had become entangled with the discharge steam pipe to be picked up —it would have neutralised the " way" which was on the vessel, and she might have been thus backed into the proper channel. But no, she had been allowed to drift into danger, and her captaiD, in other respects a most estimable gentleman, we are informed, found his strength of mind, his insight into the cause of peril, and his prescience of the remedy drifting away from him, and leaving all his thoughts in dire chaos and confusion. The consequence was the destruction of a fine vessel, and it might have been the loss of manyprecious lives. " What's done we partly may compute," but we know nothing of* tbe anxiety and even anguish of feeling experienced by the friends and relatives in Australia of the passengers on board the Rangoon, when her non-arrival in these waters inspired the worst fears as to her fate. As little do we know of the misery and suffering, the disappointment and doubt, which may have been occasioned by the irretrievable loss of the mass of correspondence which was being brought by the October mail. If the conduct of human life generally — in so far as it is influenced and controlled by tha actions of people in authority, from Prime Ministers down to sea captains —is not to drift into a state of aDarchy, the methods in vogue of selecting persons to whom that authority is delegated must be radically altered. If society, taken as a whole, is becoming molluscous in character, it is all the more necessary that it should be governed by vertebrate animals —by men with some backbone of moral energy, and mental vigor. The contrary opinion is no doubt the prevalent one. It is believed —and it has become almost a heresy to impugn this superstitious creed —that you can eliminate from society aud set apart for governing uses, its highest wisdom and its best capacity —by mere count of noses; —that you can enlist it, as Carlyle says, " by some sort of recruitment aforethought, out of the general population; arranged in supreme regimental order." Hence the dearth of great men, or rather their relegation to political obscurity, in certain, countries in which the " yea or nay of general iguorance "is absolute. Hence the superiority of little men —self-asserting pretenders, shallow boasters, and greedy egotists—in posTttotis of authority and trust ; aud hence the gradual dying out of statesmanship in all such countries. If it were not that this state of things, as well as the institutions which take their rise out of it, may only be regarded as transitional,^ mankind might well despair of; the future of those races which claim to be at tbe bead of its civilisation.

Butter. — -Tweutw-six thousand two! huudredland eighty pounds of butter were \ shipped to London from Auckland the! Otfier d'ayl <* .'-.•>•: . :.-: \