WRITING TO THE PAPERS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 100, 8 January 1870, Page 7

WRITING TO THE PAPERS.

BY COENELIUS O'DOWD (CHAELES LEVEe). Will any one tell me whether it be a sign of the tyranny that public opinion exercises amongst us, or an evidence of some abnormal irritability characteristic of our age, that we can scarcely open a newspaper without reading a complaint or a disclaimer of one sort or another? Now it is a member of Parliament, who begs to assure the world that when " he alluded to cruelties at Drumshambo, he did not refer to Central Africa, but to the county Leitrim, which is in Ireland." Now it is an archdeacon, who desires to record that " he did not, in his sermon before the judges, deny the existence of a Grod, though the uninterrupted course of late legislation in Parliament, and the downfall of a sister Church, had disposed many weak-minded Christians to question the dogma of providential supervision." Last week we had a letter from a money-lender, to deny that he had really charged sixty per cent. — solvent creditors being, I believe, constantly accommodated at thirty or thereabouts. Snookes begs to say that the Snooks charged at Marlborough Street for indecency was not Walter B. Snookes, who lives in Norfolk Street, Strand, and spells his name with an " c," nor ! is he any relative or connection of the above ; and Matilda V is anxious to inform a large circle of friends that she is not the Matilda V who vouches for having taken eight boxes of the Widow Welch's pills and found , herself much the better after. As for the people who were at her Majesty's reception at the Palace Gfardens, and whose names were not given in the list — or the parsons who attended the levee at Lambeth, and who were omitted to be mentioned by the reporter — they are legion ; but what is still more amusing is the pains taken by the stupidest men in creation to disclaim having written something that has attracted universal admiration. I am sure I knew a dozen men who were wretched at the imputation of having written JEotlten ; and there are some scores who are hoarse in assuring the world that they are not the authors of the Vestiges of Creation, or the Talmud article in the Quarterly. The self-flattery of these people is palpable enough. They will not see the absurdity of the implied pretension ; they are blind to the fact that they are in themselves, in their lives, their natures, their daily doings and sayings, a standing protest against everything that smacks of ability, and that 4o deny they have done something clever is like the declaration of a lame cripple that he is not an acrobat. Why, I ask, must we have the columns of our newspapers filled with these disclaimers ? Why must we be bored by the personal pretension of people who fancy that they hold in the world the same place that they occupy in their own esteem? The question at once arises, Have we, has the nation, become so small that it is matter of importance to know why Mr. Jones was kicked, and who kicked him? The inference is, that there are people who interest themselves about Mr- Jones, and would like to learn where he got kicked, and why. But surely this is not a fair picture of our social condition, or one on which we would like to risk the judgment of posterity : we are not really so small, so microscopic, as all this. There are men of mark amongst us, of whom we naturally are eager to hear, and of whose lives even gossip is not without value ; but of the masses of that ignoble herd whose lives prove nothing beyond the fact of existence, why do we need to hear that they have been here and not there ; that they did th s and not that ; and that it is only in deference to the urgent entreaties of friends they have reluctantly consented to assure the world they have not supplied Dickens with his choicest humour, and given Landseer the original conceptions of his best pictures ? That the bungling speaker who managed to confuse himself into half-a-dozen contradictions in the House, should like to lay the blame on the reporter, is perhaps natural enough. He might well feel shocked at his appearance in print, and shudder at the thought of what his constituency would think of him. Let him disclaim them by all means ; let him tell the world that when he said black he not; only meant white, but that he cannot understand the spirit which could have mistaken his intention as anything short of malevolence — and he is vain enough to believe that the whole course of his public life will corroborate his claim to be interpreted as he demands. There is something so attractive to certain men in a mere momentary publicity, that I believe they would rather figure in a police report than pass on with the obscurity of common folk; and I am fully convinced that many a man has been consoled for the consequences of a moderate railroad accident, a shock and a shaking, by the subsequent delight of a letter to the " Times." Of the enjoyment felt by those who record the time they were delayed at Chester, or how many minutes they were behind time at Croydon, let the " Daily Telegraph " speak. It is all very well' to talk of redressing grievances, and bringing public opinion to bear on this, that, and the other ; but Jones rushes into

print really to display Jones ; he writes to show Browfi and Eobertson that he has got access to the 'Tiser, and that his parts of speech are thought worthy of the world's attention. For my own part, I think all this is very dreary literature; and from the young men who are anxious to explain why they do not marry on fifty pounds a-year, to the young ladies who lament over the selfish habits of their brothers, I deem them very insufferable bores. The habit leads to a querulous tone of discontent amongst us that is painfully evident in all our social relations. This is sufficiently remarkable to be the comment that intelligent foreigners commonly pass upon our manners. They constantly remark that there are few people who have so little to complain of as Englishmen ; there are none so prone to grumble. This taste of public complaint is little other than a perpetual menace of Lynch law, which argues very little for our civilisation ; and one of the results is, that we educate our masses to believe that they are wiser than their rulers ; and thus we see that all the solemn investigation of a criminal trial disappears before the force of a popular current of opinion started by a writer in a newspaper, a journalist gravelled for lack of interesting news, and tired out with a long session and a hot season. If these people must write, let there be a paper devoted to popular grumblings, so that he who loves grievances shall know where to look for them, and he who eschews the literature of lamentation may be able to escape it. Surely the evcuts of our time are more interesting reading than petty rectifications or insignificant complaints, and leave more profitable matter for memory behind them.