South Canterbury Times, SATURDAY, MARCH, 12, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2489, 12 March 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, SATURDAY, MARCH, 12, 1881.

The representative bodies of the South Island are now going through one of those amusingly gushing performances which the gubernatorial siir-about propensities of the Colonial Office in London assist in producing at regular intervals throughout the colonies. The appearance of Sir Arthur Gordon as His Excellency of New Zealand has very properly been signalised by the usual big ceremony first in the North Island, and now in process of being enacted in the South. Exuberant loyalty, of the quality which prevails in the colonies, is something like damp gunpowder, a dangerous ingredient. It must either find expression in public banquets, badly composed, ungram.matical addresses, and discordant music, or it will ignite spontaneously and blow up. Hence the advent of a new Governor operates like a safety valve on an oppressed boiler—it lets the loyal steam escape into the cool atmosphere, where it immediately exhausts itself and disappears. As for His Excellency unless he is made of very inflexible and indestructible material, or is so demoralised beforehand as to be impregnable to evil influences he is bound to suffer. If, daring his triumphal progress, he is not nauseated with nice things and rendered weary of his life, it is not the fault of sycophants and torturers. Wherever he halts he has to go through the same ordeal of button-holing, to listen to the same badly read and worse composed addresses, to witness the colored napkins floating from the chimney tops and mastheads, to hear the same doleful music discoursed by the village bands, to sit down to practically the same spreads, to encounter the same toasts, the same soporific speeches. If there is anything more than another that can render the life of a colonial Governor irksome and make him yearn for immortality it must, we should imagine, be this monotonous harping on one string that he everywhere finds. To ordinary mortals the monotony of being constantly bored at every turn would render existence insufferable, and on the sensitive mind of a Governor of high extraction the effect must be sickening. To illustrate our theme—to prove that a Governor’s tour in New Zealand is not made up of red letter days—let anyone with the slightest consideration for poor human nature reflect for a moment on what His Excellency has experienced during the past forty-eight hours. First he underwent the seasickening ordeal of a passage across Cook’s Straits. On his arrival at Lyttelton the steamer in which he travelled is boarded by those samples of refined humanity called “ leading citizens.” Artillery lays seige to his ears with rusty guns, the Mayor and another dignitary read tedious addresses full of tedious platitudes signifying nothing, school children scream out a National Anthem, and then he is trotted round the big buildings and deep excavations till his heart fails and to escape the fatigue of further torture he yawns prophetically and predicts a great future for the rising generation of docks and ditches. Arrived at Christchurch the self-same programme, only on a more extended and imposing form, has to be disposed of. The reading of addresses, the stuffing of blotted vellum into his Excellency’s fingers, the chanting of the twelve hundred children from the cabmen’s stand in Cathedral Square are but the preface to a variety of municipal high-jinks. That rareeshow—the inevitable levee—with its masquerading and buffoonery, will be followed by the usual feastings and carousals, -which, as His Excellency is reported to be a very abstemious, sober-living individual, will no doubt be all very agreeable to His Excellency. Let any colonist, imagine himself in His Excellency’s shoes, passing through this ordeal—a trial that he has passed through before he reached New Zealand ; let him only imagine the amount of boreing that Sir Arthur Gordon has lately undergone between Auckland and Wellington, and the still more elaborate display of fawning and saturnalia that will probably shock his seven senses before he reaches Invercargill and turns his back on Hokitika, and he will be apt to thank his lucky planets that he is not a Governor.

We are glad to find that our civic guardians—the Timaru Borough Council —have resolved to spare Sir Arthur the indignity of the municipal tom-foolery that awaits him in other quarters. Suggestions of various kinds have been thrown out, but His Worship and his colleagues have made no sign. They have been asked to fete His Excellency on the Breakwater, but they have wisely declined tempting providence and the weather. If Timaru and her representatives do not imitate the convivialities of some other centres -—if they do not proclaim their loyalty by throwing champagne in Sir Arthur’s face, the cost of which will be regretted the moment his back is turned—it will be out of no disrespect to Her Majesty’s representative. If we have no money to waste in mummery and banquetting, the Governor is not the man to be annoyed or disappointed. The atmosphere of Timaru, although not too wholesome at this particular season, will not be tainted with the smoke of older settlements. His Excellency may be asked to lay the foundation stone of the Mechanics’ Institute, but we will have no need to compromise his prospects in the hereafter by growing eloquent over docks or ditches. The Breakwater speaks ’for itself, and so the wall-eyed towers of the Municipal and Government Buildings. The smoke isaged collection of wooden barns that do duty for a railway

station speak emphatically, for broken promises and Government negligence are written on every decaying weatherboard. Of one thing the Governor of New Zealand may be assured, that if his visit of an hour or two to Timaru fails to produce a fete champetre , if he is not utilized for show purposes, or for the promotion of cheap guzzling —• if, in short, his welcome is not an ostentatious one, it will be due to no want of hospitality or sincerity, and we have no doubt a gentleman possessing the rare and valuable qualifications ascribed to Sir Arthur Gordon, will appreciate the retiring modesty of our leading citizens as about the highest compliment he could possibly receive.