SIR A. MICHIE'S LECTURE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 248, 10 December 1880, Page 4

SIR A. MICHIE'S LECTURE.

The following is the concluding portion of Sir A, Michie's lecture on " Keminisc3nces of an ex-Agent General ," from which we have already largely quoted :-—

Whatever I have as yet subinittf d to you which you are unable to accept, this, at any rate, will not admit of question — that the future weal or woe of this land must entirely depend on the Australian born when we have passed from the scene. How apposite, then, were the words of a right reverend gentleman a week or two back, when making an oblique reference to the manners of a certain assembly, he expressed a fear lest our native youth, having ever a low and coarse type of public life before them, might become " vulgarised " and " subdued even to the very quality " of some of their lawmakers. I have not Dr. Moorhouse's actual words in my memo./, but I am sure I reproduce the thought. Might he not have gone sfc?'l further, and said that, in additio i to becoming "vulgarised," they must aIBO become insensibly demoralised by a Btyle ever before them, from the moral contagion of which it is impossible for them wholly to escape. " Comparisons are odious," Bays the proverb ; but this is not incompat'ble with their often being salutary. As many times I have looked down from the gallery of the House of Commons, how, even on tho most exciting occasions, have I ever found the courtesies of debate respected as a matter of course, and without whicb public business could not, in a body consisting ot between 6CO and 700 men, be transacted at all. You saw at a glance that you were witnessing the intellectual conflicts of cultivated men. Not that all are cultivated alike, but the cultivated give the tone. The Speaker of the House is always a man who, by character and acquirements, commands respect, and thus the House itself becomes a sort of Areopagus whose unwritten laws cannot be violated but at the expense of the offender losing caste. It is curious to note how little observances— op rather what on the surface strike us at first as little observances — conduce to preserve order in large deliberative bodies. It is the practice in the House of Commons for a man slightly to raise his hat, or if his bat be not at the moment on his head, to bow some courteous acknowledgment when he is passingly referred to by a speaker, and this little civility in itself is calculated to preserve order. Of course among this, as among any other large assemblage of mere buman creature?, contempt, hatred, jealousy, and all the evil passions exist, but they are kept habitually and decorously under control — another proof of Burkes saying, "That even vice itself loses half its evil by losing all its grossness." Were one man to call another a liar in the House of Commons he would be thought either mad or drunk, and whatever else might happen to him, he would soon find in the cold and averted looks of his neighbours a punishment almost equal to the offence. His constituents also would, unlesss.thev were at one with him in

matters of taste and decency, probably let him know in an unmistakable manner at the next general election that scurrility and foul language are no kin to statesmanship. Here, then, is matter even in itself nell worthy the anxious regard of our native youth. If they love their country, ought they not to discountenance every word and act which tends to bring discredit upon that country P Let them distrust all loudly professing patriots. Let them strive to distinguish between honesty aud its counterfeit in the words and actions of public men. For my own part I never meet with such inflated stuff as "the great heart of the people" without some intrusive and perverse association of ideas at once bringing before my mind the great pocket of the people and the multiform hazards to ■which it is exposed. Have our rising Australian youths pondered these thingr, and striven to take their correct measure, and to deal with them in a right spirit ? If so, they may in the future be able to shame the political apathy and the apparently deadened consciences of many of their predecessors. In fine, it is for these coming:, generations to decide whether iheir fair country is for ever to be a prey to jobbers and self-seekers, or to realise for itself the glorious destiny prefigured by the great Scottish poet who, before the foot of the white man pressed Victorian soil, embodied in prophetic strains his vision of the Australia to be — noble lines which shall be my " good night," for I would not presume to add to them one word of mme — "Delighting land I In'wildness ev'n benign, The glorious prqt is ours, the future thine I As in a cradled Hercules we trace The lines of Empire in thine infant face, "What nations in thy wide horizon's span, Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by man ! "What spacious cities "with their spires shall gleam, Where now the wild dog laps alonely stream, And all but brute or reptile life is dumb ! Land of the free, thy kingdom is to come. Of states with laws from Gothic bondage burst, - And creeds by chartered priesthoods unaccurst: Of navies hoisting their emblazoned flags, Where shipless seas now wash unbeaconed crags; . • Of hosts reviewed in dazzling files and squares, Their pennon'd. trumpets breathing native airs ; For minstrels thou shalt "have of native fire, And maids to sing the songs themselves inspire. Our very speech, methinks, in after time. Shall catch the lonian blandness of thy clime j And whilst the light and luxury of thy skies, Give brighter smiles to beauteous woman's eyes, The arts whose soul is love shall all spontaneous rise.'*