INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4499, 21 August 1875, Page 2

INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

' (From the New Zealand Mail.) Quis scit an adjiciant hodiernce crastina summre Tempora Di Superi.—Horace.

Twenty-six is a large family to be credited with, and I cannot say that it is altogether uncomplimentary to credit a gentleman with having his quiver full to the extent I have mentioned, even though a mistake be made in giving that credit. Yet lam free to admit that everyone is not of my way of thinking. A gentleman who rejoices in the possession of a dramatic company, and is himself an old and eminent actor, went on board a steamer at Wellington wharf this week, in order to look after the accommodation to be provided for himself and his people during an approaching passage to Lyttelton, for which he had arranged with the agents. The urbanity of the captains of our steamers, conspicuous as it has always been, has become almost oppressive recently, since what your paragraph writers call " a healthy rivalry" in steam lines has been introduced. The gentleman, therefore, was received with the utmost politeness by a captain in temporary charge, to whom he was personally unknown, and was treated with attention and brown sherry of more than ordinary superiority. The question of accommodation then came up, and the captain told the gentleman that he could arrange for himself and his lady and his family to have a cabin to themselves. " Oh," but said the gentleman, " there are twenty-six of my people, and I shall want berths for them all." The captain being temporary, as I have said, did not like to show himself unequal to the occasion. He therefore smiled affably, as if families of twenty-six were of mere ordinary occurrence, and promised that all the people should be comfortably bestowed. So the gentleman left. But the captain said to some friends on board, " Well, he is a fine old man ; but twenty-six children ! By jingo he is a wonderful old man." And the friends who knew the mistake the captain was unintentionally making, were malicious enoxigh not to undeceive him, but let him sail away thinking out how he was going to accommodate a family of twenty-six children next trip. Yet the friends have been mean enough to tell the story, without receiving any thanks for having done so from one of the principal actors in the business.

The question of a new Constitution is the question of the day. A good many styles of Constitution have been proposed, and have received the benefit of publication in several newspapers. I regret to learn, however, that one proposal in this direction has not received the publicity it deserved. Mr. Murray, the member for Bruce, who is so well satisfied of his own importance as not to need the opinions of others on the subject, proposed quite a beautiful Constitution the other night, and yet few seem to be aware of it. The House went to sleep over it, and the reporters left the Press gallery during its enunciation. And so, except in Hansard, Mr. Murray's beautiful Constitution has been denied publicity. But there is a worse feature of this case—one repugnant to decent feeling. It proceeds, as do these things always, from the conduct of a member of the Press. A member of Parliament met him outside the Parliament Chamber (the exact locality does not matter, it was in the neighborhood of a slice of lemon and loaf sugar) and asked if he was not going to report Mr. Murray's new Constitution. He said in reply, " I should be glad to report a new constitution for the honorable member himself, for upon my soul he appears to stand badly in need of it."

I am getting tired of the uniform and eternal compliments which each successive speaker seems to consider it necessary to pay to Sir George Grey. If I might be pardoned colloquialisms unworthy of the loftiness of the subject, I should say that everyone expresses the highest delight that the ex-Governor should have " come out of his shell." lam confident that more than half the honorable members, and certainly every member of the Ministry, would far more truly express their thoughts if they said that they wished Sir George would get into his " shell" again, or " put his head in a bag" with the utmost possible rapidity. The following is the text of a petition that has been recently forwarded to the most high and mighty the Marquis of Normauby, Knight of the Holy Grail and of the sang bleu : —" The humble petition of The Intelligent Vagrant sheweth—That whereas a number of gentlemen, each with his individual purpose to serve, meet in Parliament every year, there to talk highly of their consciences and to vote without the slightest regard for the same : And whereas the talking does not in the smallest degree affect the voting, but gives infinite trouble to a lot of poor devils who have to write for the newspapers, and further causes great annoyance to gentlemen who have to sit on narrow and uneasy rails during its continuance : Now, therefore, your petitioner would humbly beg that the first day of each session be devoted to voting on all measures, and that the remainder of the session be given vip to talking on the same; and that it may be made a capital offence for any newspaper to publish the whole or any part of the talking.—And your petitioner, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c." It is astonishing how frequently men ask opinions of other people, and give but little thanks when they get them. That being so, I envy the price which a certain opinion in the Supreme Court cost the other day. An opinion was wanted upon the construction of a will, and one of tho solicitors charged, I believe, £378 for obtaining it. The sum of money affected by the will I am ignorant of ; but even say it was £SOO, that would have left a handsome balance of £122. When the Hon. Mr. Fitzherbert, therefore, recently described lawyers as gentlemen who derived their emoluments amidst the disasters of their fellowcreatures, he was rather too hard on an honorable profession. Metaphorically, Mr. Reeves, I pat you on tho back. That bumptious old humbug (I use the word in its strictest Parliamentary and most Pickwickian sense), Sir Cracroft Wilson, read a very personal attack on Messrs. Moorhouse, Macandrew, and others. When the time camo for a reply to his attack, Sir Cracroft was absent, but nevertheless received from you, Mr. Reeves, a castigation which, I think, lost none of its effect because, to all appearance, its object had avoided personal contact with its severity. When I heard you, Sir Cracroft, abusing bettor men than yourself, I remembered that " censure is a tax a man pays to the public for being eminent," and I was at least happy in the consolation that such a kind of tax you would never be called upon to pa(f. Mr.Moorhouso and Mr. Macandrew are eminent ■ in the good each has. done for his fellow-men —a good to which two provinces are witnesses. You are not eminent in this respect, at least I find no testimony that you are. A species of stamp placed upon you by a Government has given your name a certain prominence—such a prominence, for instance, as might mark a prize ox by gilding its horns. You are presumed to have won knighthood in fair physical fight. In a moral contest you would run the risk of having your spurs hacked off, for in such contest 3 men fail to appreciate the beauty of the lines which say

That samo man that runnitli awaie Maio again flght another daic.

Tho Australasian Sketches is a remarkable samplo of colonial enterprise, and as such is deservedly regarded with pride. But its enterprise is occasionally misdirected. In tho last number to hand I find a picture of the bridge over the Manawatu Gorge. Tho enterprise shown in the production of this picture is that it is adaptable as an illustration of any bridge you like anywhere. I am convinced of this by the fact that it is not in the least like the Manawatu bridge, and therefore if it serve the public as an illustration of that work I do not see why it should not serve the public in a similar capacity with regard to half a dozen different works. There is merit about this kind of thing as Bhowiug a comprehensive desire to be untrammelled by mere questions of detail, but nevertheless every one will not regard it favorably. As an actual proof of the truth of my remarks about this picture, let me point out as one amongst many, that in the drawing the piers of the bridge are rectangular shaped, whilst in actual fact thoy are oval. The Hon. Mr. Fitzherbert, whose tender conscience was so much excited last night by the

misstatements of members, is not above himself sacrificing truth to give point to his otherwise wearisome and dreary oratory. In speaking he used the reports of the New Zealand Times throughout to quote from, a compliment to its accuracy for which that journal should not be unthankful. But on being interrupted once by the Hm. Mr. Bowen, he stated that Mr. Bowen could not be incorrectly reported in the New Zealand Times as it was a Government paper. I have no desire to clear the Times as to the relation in which Mr. Fitzherbert most unwarrantably placed it with regard to the Government, but I am anxious at once to point out to this sensitive politician, that at least he himself, by his use of its columns last night, testified to the impartiality and accuracy of its reports, and that in impugning them as he did in the manner I have mentioned, he inevitably led listeners to suppose that he wa< measuring its corn by his own bushel. I do not impute motives to the hon. gentleman, but I would point out to him that there are other advocacies of a cause as much open to suspicion as that of a newspaper. There is the advocacy of provincial institutions by one who was at one time their enemy but who is now their salaried servant. The less Mr. Fitzherbert imputes unfairness to others, the less likely is he to awaken recollections calculated to produce suspicion of his own motives.