A HARD CASE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2699, 12 November 1881, Page 2

A HARD CASE.

Under the above heading the “ Tablet ” this week comments as follows on some incidents connected with the departure of the Volunteers from Timaru and Ashburton, to the front: —“ The soul of patriotism has,indeed, in these latter days, reached a mighty pitch of elevation among us, and the thirst for glory has been intense ; the air we breathe is fraught with warlike odours, and a man feels it a reproach any longer to entertain a peaceable spirit. There is even a certain satisfaction to be derived from any stray knock that causes a momentary pain, whether it be a blow on the shin or a a bumped nose, or anything held at other times to be more or less a grievance, but which now seems to put you into harmony with the spirit of the times. Nevertheless it is not given to us all without exception to feel the martial inspiration of the hour ; here and there are to be found sordid minds that have no sympathy with glory,and in whose eyes to shoot even half-a-dozen Maoris would confer no grandeur —we do not say who would consider such a feat to incur disgrace, for that would be a depth of baseness to which let us hope, no true-born-Briton-like man could possibly descend, now when there is so much to send all his ideas soaring upwards. But here and there is actually to be found an employer sordid enough to collar his employees and bring them back all reluctant to their ordinary occupations. Tradesmen there are who have put the police on the track of warrior apprentices and dragged them all indignant from the march to the front to resume instead the plane of the carpenter, or—oh horror I—even the very goose of the tailor.—Well has it been said that the tailor is but the ninth part of a man, for surely any more considerable fraction of the lord of creation would have had more sympathy than this for “ honour and arms.” We learn, however, and we learn it with indignation, that the tradesman has more authority over his apprentice than a wife has over her husband ; a case, in short, is reported from Ashburton, where a gallant fellow, all athirst for the blood of Te Whiti, palmed himself off on the lieutenant of the Volunteer corps for an experienced veteran ; but on

reaching Wellington at the loss of his blood-thirst, telegraphed to his wife to have him speedily arrested for wifedesertion, which she essaying to do was refused a warrant by the Magistrate to whom she applied. This, wo say, is a plain infringement of the rights of women. A master may claim i i apprentice and drag him back all unsoldierly out of the very jaws of death on the field of glory ; but a wife must see her husband go forward to the front without finding a constable in all the colony to arrest him. If such things as this be countenanced among us, every man will at length become the ruler of his own household ; and the mother-in-law will be no more than a tradition of the past. It should come before a committee of the advocates of woman’s rights at once.