STOLEN APPLES.
Au acquaintance of ours has had his oi’’ hard pretty extensively robbed this seas<'U, presumedly by youthful depredat uvi. and this is how he consoh-s him s -If, and excuses IPs m k ug no oli’ort to J.S’-over and punish <lie (hi ves : “ I do not think t at punslimem would have any good eife-t in a case of this land. I am sorry that I could not prev nit my loss, but 1 si; ill take no iroub e to discover ami puni-h the young rogues. I ready can not blame them very much. They were impelled to help them selves to my api les by an instinct wnich lias been developed and iixed in the vont'.fnl mile torn ugh so many generations tint it h is grown too strong to be restrained hy the ordinary s mse of justice. It is not diliicult to see how this love of or hard robbing h is been developed into an instinct, manifesting itself in boyiioo I. In .seeking a Midi Imt exp anatimi of its existence and oower it is not necessary to leave the beaten tra -k of hist; r\, <>r refev.*no • might made to a st.te of things not eiitindy sop, o■Pious, when, in liio inf"nov of our ra e. !> >:ii young and ol 1 subilsGd to a great ''X'jn: upon wi I [mi's in to ir s'M-ou Tii n, 1 s m the hue of the imbvidn 1 the if*' of ih • no-, si. far as ; envers and instincts .»!••• coiic-tuml, is more or less cio-el.v raproduc d , wo might see in that smte of tinu .s c .e re ison why cidldi’eu are so iim i of ran' it its and veget Piles and tr.uh of a 1 kind-;. We ue‘*d m t, liowover, go further back than the days of Hengi t and Ilorsa, or of Egbert the Abolitionist. At those limes, as previously, there were probably no fruits cultivated in England. The miserable crabs and the sloes and other indigenous were wild and free to all. No doubt most of these wild friths were left to the tender mercies of the young, and
of these the hoys would bo the most sue- | ■•osnful collectors, their parents being not , id picas-d t<> he relieved of a portion of <lioir natural duty of providing for them, i S" year alter year, and gem-r-ition after j generation, the boys and hobbledehoys ! sharpened their teeth and hardened their ] stomachs with whatever of sw el or sour I they ronld find in thn neiglibonrirni woods. At the same time the mental ] habit of looking upon every tree hearing | fruit alter his kind from a communistic i point of view grew stronger and stronger ! —became at last a habit so strong that it may safely be called an instim-t. When, later, fruits came to he cultivated and improved, the rising generations failed to s -e that the labor of ou'tLatiou gave rh right, or cx -lu dve ownership, timugb thev soon saw tiiat whatever of thus- they would have must he had by stealth— in plain words, by stealing. The difficulty of comprehending tnis exclusive light would be increased through the wdd fruiis still remaining common property. Hitherto all had been common. Ity what right, comprehensive by the boyish mind, ha fsavag -as it Aid was. did any one p ace a hedge and a watch about a portion of the whole—-and that portion rather better than the rest—and declare that the portion was not common property. They, the boys, had not been consulted, and they would not admit that anv right of particular ownership existed. Toe owner mud he a selfish - urmu-lgeon, and they would assert their common claim notwithstanding any and the strictest watch and ward. They did so, year after year, and generation after generation, until the original instinctive desire for fruit exhibited in boyhood became more and more associated with the habit of satisfying that desire by st"a ing, at first chiefly for the sake of 1 1 1 ■ • better fruit thus gotten, but also, and more and more as t cultivated fruits became more common, for the sake of the pleasure of outwitting the rightful owner. We often hear men who won d he ashamed to say they ever stole any other kind of prop.-Tty boast of having robbed orchards. Perhaps if they reflected that in doing that of which they boast th -y were obeying a complex instinct inherited faom their forefathers, and a quired by these when they were hat, shirt, and shoe ! ess semi-savages, tii-y would prefer to siy nothing about it. Men are not much given to orchardrobbing for the mere sake of the fruit, o> - the ‘ fiu of the thing.’ Our rude ancestors probably set little store by the miserah.e wdd fruits, as they could obtain more nourishing and pal ite ible food ; hut they would he well enough pleased to allow their children to subsist as mu h as possible upon t 'eiu. Tie nature of that food, and how it unis obtained through long ages, is pra tically hinted at. in the strong taste for hunting'and poaching e.xliihite 1 by many grown persons ; or, it may b ■, tint as some men carri -d on and increased the cultivation of fruits —others attached to these prod a ds -of labour the same idea of exclusive pro erty that (hey a ready as ociat d with oilier things produced by the sweat of the brow. Guildren must not be expected to entertam a simTir idea respecting ih-dr neighbour's g-r ten produce. Th ir in-tun ts have been too lo ig tr ined in the opposite dliection, and a sense or feeing deve op-d late in the life of the present does not, though fully inherited, tend to re-app"ar at an car i«T age in the offspring. And this is probably more certainly the case when toe feeding w -s not. developed in the parent uniil late in tire life of the race. Tim best, and perhaps only, way to cradicah; from future g‘iterations the tendency to freak the eighth comm in Iment. in this particular way, is to give each hoy an ore!lord of his own. The sacredness with which !m expects others to regard his own property he wid inevitably tr msfer to the property of a dku Kind possessed by otlmrs. Neither reproof nor punishment will suffice, and tiie less so whist men continue to hoist of th-ir boyish dep'-edatious. Tins may seem much like ‘breaking a fly upon a wited,’ hut the wh ‘d is not a common one, and I ha i it n mind to show its working as well as to explain why I am not pariicu'arly vexed at losing my fruit. ’
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Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 118, 1 February 1879, Page 2
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1,129STOLEN APPLES. Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 118, 1 February 1879, Page 2
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