The Southland Times. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1870.

Southland Times, Issue 1338, 22 November 1870, Page 2

The Southland Times. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1870.

Owe would imagine that the late disas : troas intelligence from Lyttelton would have bad the effect of stirring up the dying embers of such enthusiasm as still existed in the matter of the local Volunteer Fire Brigade. If that was the motive which induced the practice muster called for the evening of the 14th inst., then ifc is to be regretted that it should have been a failure. Generallyspeaking, self-preservation is accredited as the first law of nature, but if it holds good as a governing principle in Invercargill, all we can say is that it demands a very powerful agency indeed to bring it into operation. The fate which befel Lyttelton is not such a remote contingency that we can afford to disregard it as a warning. The evil has overtaken us on more occasions than one, and the fact that the entire town was not bnrned down is due in a great measure to the circumstance that the business part was more scattered than it is no^v-a---days. Suppose a fire to break out in Dee-street, with a good stiff wind such as we can always count upon two or three days in the week, where would the disaster end ? At a modest calculation it would sweep away nearly an entire side of the street, and if the other did not follow in its wake the preventative would not, to all appearance, rest in the efficiency of our Volunteer Fire Brigade. It may be that we are hazarding an incorrect opinion, but we certainly are not hazarding an unwarrantable conjecture. Efficiency in some branches of pursuit is set down to an intuitive perception, but to rank Volunteer Fire Brigade pursuits amongst these would require an amount of devotion to the cause of predestination with which only the fewest number of mortals is gifted. The more reasonable view is that men are trained to such pursuits, and not born to them. Now, what are the facts of the case with respect to Invercargill ? During the six months preceding no effort was made to bring the members together until the evening of the day mentioned. The announcement of the projected meeting, we have reason to believe, was a timely one, and yet, strange to say, out of a membership roll amounting to forty-eight, only the odd eight presented themselves. The consequence was the projected practice had to be abandoned. This is a state of matters which warrants severe strictures being used. A very complete assortment of fire-extinguishing apparatus has been found, together with, nominally speaking, a strong force of volunteers and yet, after a six months' respite, suffi-i cient members cannot be got together to ensure the carrying out of drill practice. The defaulters cannot be ignorant of what an outbreak of fire is. They must be aware that it is one of the greatest posed ; a calamity enhanced by the very fact that, w essentialibus, the root of the evil forms a vital part of our domestic arrangements. In their recurrence other evils assail us from without, but here the source springs up within the innermost recesses of our social circles. In fact, it gains all the force and effect of those moral delinquencies, the Beeds of which are indigenous to human nature, and are only kept in check by a powerful intervention of self-control. One single spark carried beyond the limits of the domestic hearth is all that is necessary to produce a conflagration. The talk about foreign invasion may be very good as a temporary excitement, but here is an omnipresent danger, which, like the sword of Damocles, hangs ominously over the head of the entire community. We have no desire to create unnecessary alarm ; at the same time it is difficult to treat a subject like this dispassionately. To deal with it lightly would be to trifle with the best part of our material interest, so that any force of enunciation must be weighed by the emergencies of the case. The failure of the meeting referred to should be followed by some very decided step. One more attempt should be made to bring the members together, and in the event of a second failure such of the officers as recognise their duties should resort to a public conference with the inhabitants, in order that measures may be taken to dis-member those who continue contumacious, and to put the affairs of the Brigade into workable order.