The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 1887. THE SUNDOWNER DIFFICULTY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2582, 26 April 1887, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 1887. THE SUNDOWNER DIFFICULTY.

Up countky, among the silent highways which .thread tho estates of our Shopherd Kings there is now a special trouble experienced peculiar to Pastoral districts from|which more populous centres are exempt. It is no doubt a glorious thing to be a Shepherd King, when the wool is high and .the market good, but when prices are low and taxes are high, and the Merino or Lincoln potentate gots behind with his payments his lot is not an enviable one. He must lie low till times change or lio must perchance succumb to the merchant or other power behind the throne which makes and unmakes these Shepherd Kings, A complaint has reached us from one of our Pastoral Lo;ds which illustrates forcibly the special difficulty which now besets them. A Shepherd King, not a big monarch, but one possessing only a modest count of sheep writes to us as follows" What is to be clone with the swagger nuisance, for it is nothing else, than a nuisance. Every -week we are getting five or six e::tra men to tea, bread and breakfast, What makes it seem harder to me is that I am convinced that most of them have spent more money upon their own private gratification than I have. But the absolute cost of their, food is little compared with the trouble they give, coming just aftor all the tea things are cleared away, and wanting tea," Sundowners aro becoming unwelcome guests among Shepherd Kings, and there are good reasons why- they should be more objectionable than formerly, These knights of the road are now more numerous and the pastoral lords are poorer. The latter fire also by law now amenable to a charitablo aid rate and other taxes which were in old times unknown, Tho thing is an evil, .The pastoral lords are by custom a3 well as instinct a hospitable race, but .with straightened means they aie unable to meet the demand? now made upon them for bed and board. The old practice which enabled every swagger to claim food and shelter will in time have, to give way to 'the changed cirourastanoes ■of Colonial life. "We would suggest that the pastoral lords, and the knights of tho 'road should have a big camp meeting to decide upon the relations which should exist between tliem, Assuming the number of sundowners in our district is now out of proportion to the s,ettjed population they should bo called upon to move on to some other parts or take a local habitation and a name as village settlers of the Ballance pattern, It is not good for men witlr strong arms and wo trust willing hands to get accustomed to being fed and housed at the cost of Others, and it is certainly not good for many settlers who cannot make both ends meet to bo oontinually called upon to provide for sundowners who ought to he in a position to lielp themselves.