OUR COLONIAL MONEYOCRACY

Observer, Volume 3, Issue 78, 11 March 1882, Page 409

OUR COLONIAL MONEYOCRACY

Money is a good thing— a very good tiling — but it is not everything ; for, although it can. buy most things in this world, it is not satisfactory, inasmuch that there is a limit to its power. There are certain lines that a mere money power cannot eross — First, there is the line of genius, and, secondly, there is the line of aristocracy ; that line so delicately defined that it is almost imperceptible, yet, when closely approached, turns out to be a chasm utterly impossible to be crossed by the unblessed outside creation. There is an entrance through a special gateway, but the open sesame is known only to a few. Ah ! if some of our very worihy colonists would only know that ; if only some of our rich and very properly influential men could only be brought to believe that there is a limit to money power, then they would stay in the colonies and help to make the country that made them, instead oil going to England and exhibiting themselves in the ■ way they do, no doubt to the overwhelming astonishment of those who behold them. To make money is one thing ; to spend it . is another. The exercise of intelligence, the perseverance, and the luck of a man may enable him to accumulate money ; but the qualities engaged in the aequirejtnsnt of wealth do not enable a man to spend it — that is to say, gracefully. To do that requires an apprenticeship commenced in childhood, like learning to speak a language ; after the teens are passed we can only understand and write it — never apeak it. To spend (say) ten thousand a year gracefully, as a man, the social skill required must have been acquired as a child. The boy of five years of age who will blush up into the roots of his hair when he discovers that he has accidently stumbled upon a lady's dress, and will stand before her, wanting to apologise, but unable to find words, will, in all probability, be able to spend a fortune, but never make one. Our colonial magnates make one grand mistake to begin with. With but few exceptions they actually humbug themselves that they have acquired their • wealth by their own cleverness ; they do not allow for the chance that placed them in a new country, such as Australia, and gave them that vast continent to experiment in. The advent of the gold placed hundreds of men in a position of power and influence, who, had they remained in their native country, would never have emerged from their natural obscurity. Itwould be well for these men to reflect upon this. They know it, they must know it. Some of them must wonder how it happened that they leached such a height, and must feel inclined to blush before their own servants ; but, no ; I forget. Colonial men never blush; if they did there would be some hope for the future. They would not bi'ing the colonies into such disrepute in the old world. If the rich old identities would visit the country of their birth quietly and decently, then we should not be laughed at. It is said that the worst use you can put a man to is to hang him. I differ. There is simply a jerk, and the agony is over. I fancy that the worse use you can put a man to. is to make a laughing stock of hhn, because that is a lingering agony long drawn out — once laugh at anything, and it is damned beyond all chance of redemption, — the equity itself is parted with. A man with his coat off at work (no matter what work) is an object of respect. We think so, no matter how we all struggle to dodge the curse, " Man shall earn his Tbyead by the sweat of his brow." We try to dodge it, and some of us succeed. It takes, I believe, «ix men with, their coats off to keep one man with Els coat on. That is all right : no one objects-. it one of the fellows with Ms coat off flukes — so

to speak— and comes out of the ruck, winning a money fortune in a flying canter, well and good — no one growls ; and as many loaf upon him as he can conveniently stand. But a self-made man in the colonies is not much loafed upon — oh dear no. He knows too much, he wears the green turban, he is a hadgii, has done the pilgrimage, and, as a rule, has no mercy upon those he has left behind in the race for fortune. But a time will come; ■and that reminds me that once upon a time a certain rich man, whose name was Pilkins, did think unto himself, thus — " lam rich ; I have three daughters, and never a son ; I am (to tell the solemn truth) a very vulgar fellow ; I kick up a row over my soup ; and I should dearly like to shovel the peas into my mouth with my knife, if my daughter Sarah's eye was not upon me. Never mind, I can give her fifty thousand pounds when she marries ; and any man who gets that much with her will, I hope, have faith in her hair; I have, and- I'm her father and ought to know ; I call it auburn ; other people can call it what they choose ; it won't alter the colour, anyhow. Now, some people will howl because I don't think proper to let my Sally marry young Carey — no fear ; his little run isn't worth more than twenty thousand pounds; and what do I care if he was a Rugby boy? (I wish I know someone I could ask, * What is a Rugby boy ?') Never mind, he ain't going to have her; I'm going to England, and my girls shall have three handles to their names." Now, what does this unhappy rich man do ? — He goes to England ; through his commercial agents he gets introduced into society. Poor Pilkins does not know that certain titles are shady (so to speak), though real enough in fact — and that their owners — more shame to them) are willing to supplement their thread-bare incomes with spoil derived from Pilkinses. He knew nothing of that, and allowed the Sir Charles and the Fortescue chichisters of the day to relieve him of thirty thousand pounds upon the Derby. He paid — sighed very likely — as he threw over the number of sheep which would have to bo shorn at the antipodes to replace the fleece of the one who was so well shorn off his own run a cull (a mere cull only) from a flock that he was bringing into ridicule.

Now Mr Pilkins must set up as a country gentleman. He leases the estate of Sir Toby Beech — call him so — at the modest price of four thousand a-year, and commences to give dinners. Sir Toby slips away to the Continent, and tells how some New Zealand savage is shooting his pheasants, and his red-haired daughters are giving balls at the old place, and dancing in the family picture gallery. Wonders why Lord Eeginald, the crusader, and Lady JSTavrni, beloved by Charles the Second, don't w alk clean out of their old picture frames and gobble up the entire crew. But no. Pilkings is safe so far as money can make him. It is true that before the year is out that the hundred thousand pounds bori'owed upon the security of the freehold run of Topsyturvy - turvy hills is growing smaller by degrees and disgustingly less ; it is likewise true that the fifty thousand pounds of a dowry will not tempt that confounded scamp E Esterhaza (the nephew of the man in the diamond boots at Queen Victorias' coronation) to propose. Poor E ! Damn it, he says to Phil Harcourt, the girl is well enough and flies those faces like a bird — she's jolly too — and where the devil they bred her hands I'll be hanged if I know. She can get on my gloves, but Santa Maria, her father — I can't stand him — I wish to Heaven G-aribaldi would ask for my sword, or that some fellow who can't kick if I don't pay him would lend me a thousand pounds — Poor Esterhaza, the glory of your race, has departed, and the light of your diamonds gone out — shed the last of your noble blue blood in a patriotic cause, but don't mix it with that of a South Australian butcher, who is too great a snob to be acknowledged by good legitimate colonists who make the colonisation of new territories an honour and glory to the mother country.

Well, poor Pilkins is a dead failure — the girls do not go off, though, the money does — Pilkins has flown too high, and, moreover, before he started he did not know the price of a younger son. These fellows looked and longed and muttered fifty thousand— Ah, just clear me !— but, oh ! that father. Then Charley's sister says : " Oh, Frank, don't. I don't mind her much — not much dear ; but that dreadful man. I heard him tell papa how much he paid for a diamond he had on his finger, and Charley, dear, such a fingen." Well, well, two years go by 5 a hundred thousand pounds are lost and spent, and the sowing of all this rich seed has produced only a crop of envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness, Come back to the sheep — come back to your own legitimate home, and aid with your knowledge and experience the advancement of the country you owe everything to ; don't try to cross draught stock with Flying Dutchmen too quick by crying a whig, as the Americans say and cave.

Mr Pilkins does, but even in his retreat he must fly one more kite. " His trial (as the old Celt would say) consisted partly of a French ladies maid and an English groom — just about as enjoyable to Mr Pilkins as pate de fois gras and Sauterue. However he brings them out to the colony and takes them up the country. The French ladies' maid shrugs her little foreign shoulders at the end of a week" (says A. K. Ciel) "My lady, I shall expire of maladie de langeur, asks for her release. Gl-ets it, and returns to Ohristchurch upon her experience. The English groom having been asked by Pilkins to assist the gardener, makes him a polite bow. Touches an imaginary hat, and says : — Sir, — "I am prepared, night or day, to have your horse 3 at your command, to drive you or the young ladies wherever you choose to order— to wear your livery, even this cockade which you have the bad taste to place upon my hat— to touch that hat and say, Sir— but, Ido not work. That groom leaves.

Poor Pilkins: There are still three Misses Pilkins because there are no fellows in New Zealand good enough for them, and the old station with its real wool had paid long ago for the shoddy trip to England. Pilkins is a great man, but only mention a title in his presence, and ask a f avour of him afterwards, and .you will be sure to get. it i Anti-Shoddy .