WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH OURSELVES?

Temuka Leader, Issue 1870, 26 March 1889, Page 2

WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH OURSELVES?

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—You must be like the woman with the long nose—-you take everything to yourself. I was not thinking about you whea I wrote last; and I do read your articles, and have been thinking you were doing pretty fak, and had so intention of meddling with you. The stupid question What are we to do with our boys ? did not originate with you. It is quite common, and your answer is as good aa the general run. Tou say the gentlemen did not come to see the beauties of Nature, but to look for minerals, and that they saw them. Now that is synonymous to saying that . we have no minerals worth looking at. We are in a similar position to Mr Micawber before he left London, and have been waiting for these minerals to turn up; and when we hear the noise of another professor coming we are led to believe that they are to be turned up—and when we find ths>t it is only a sort of picnic you can hardly blame" ua for feeling a bit riled. It looks as if the minerals were to remain where they are till the boys kick us out, turning the tables on foxy principles. I certainly agree with what you say about our duty to make the world pleasanter for those that are to come after us, but the world's reformers have never distinguished themselves by providing for their families. Mr Worldly Wiseman has always treated them as fools who believed in the brotherhood of man. The enemies of progress treated them as rogues. "They are the noble of all ages whose names crowd History's pages and Time's great volume make." Many of them have been born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths, and have forsaken opulence and ease and gone forth to do battle for right against might, and have ended their nobis lives in the dungeon, on the scaffold, and at the stake, that we might ba free. The privileges we enjoy are the fruits of their self-sacrifice. Gridironing, land-grabbing, excessive'borrowing and squandering of money, heaping up public burdens, etc., are the works of men providing for their families. This virtue is the cause of nearly all the ills we deplore; if we are to maintain the cause, why should we complain of the effects? Can anyone fail to observe that the accumulation of wealth is the cause of poverty? Hard times are better known since machinery came in vogue, and millionaires are more numerous. Half a century ago there were very few of them in the world; they are becoming so common now that it will hardly be worth while being a millionaire by and by. We will have to find some nobler way of distinguishing ourselves than that of adding dollar to dollar, and, when we do, bard times will come again no more.—l am, etc., Wm. L. Duncan. Kakahu Bush, March 19th, 1889.

[A. reply to this letter appears in our leading columns.—Ed.]