Our Wellington Watchman.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2866, 6 April 1888, Page 2

Our Wellington Watchman.

(Contmuecw Our . old friend, the lev Mr Isitt, lias itinerated hence to the city of the Plains midst a shower.'.of Kudos and' sovereigns, and followed by the plaudits of Premiers, Politicians, and cold water drinkers. Your Watchman grudges himneither the laurel-wreaths,, testimonials, nor " sugar," believing that he has probably earned thein by his exertions in the cause of temperance aud his,determination to be all '■ things to all men. The truth is Mr Isitt, as he gathered age and experience, improved upon his Masterton temperance tactics, and instead of contenting himself v/ith mere diatribe and annoyance aimed at publicans, signalised his term of clerical duty in this city by doing something practical and providing, once a week, a counter-. attraction to the public-houses in, the shape of the Saturday night" He managed to smooth over 1 his erstwhile asperities and so hurt the feelings of no one. Whether your truly earnest Reformer can work consistently on these pleasant and innocuous lines, I am not pflftU'gd to say, but even Reformers arowuman, and the filthy lucre, stated to be upwards of J32oo'given Mr Isitt by his admirers, will, as that gentleman admits, come in very usefully,, and enable him to add several comforts to his menage. Certain stern and uncompromising teetotallers would have been better. / pleased had Mr Isitt suffered virtue to be its own reward, pointing out,that one way and another his temperance advocacy in Wellington has increased his clerical income to a very -large extreme. But even an Isitt cannot please everybody.

While on the subject of temperance I may be permitted to say that I have, whenever opportunity offered,humbly endeavored to point to the Temperance people thatvtheir efforts would be generally more sue-. eessful did they direct their attention rather to the removal of the causes of intemperance than to the mere sup*, pressiou of alcoholic beverages, Li this connection, I wouldjfeproduce a passage in Foster's Meof Charles Dickens which I had forgotten but stumbled upon the other evening, . Mr Forster writes of Dickens

" No man advocated temperance,-even, as far as possible, its legislative enforcement, with greater earnestness; but he made important reservations. Not thinking drunkenness to be a vice inborn, or to be incident to the poor more than to other people, he would never agree that the existence of a gin shop was the Alpha and Omega of it. Believing it to be the " national horror," he also believed that many operative causes had to do with having made it so; and his objection to the temperance agitation was that these were left out of account altogether. He thought the gin-shop not fairhaio be rendered the exclusive object until, in connection with the classes'ivho mostly made it their resort, the temptations that led to it, physical and moral, should have been more bravely dealt with. Among the former he counted foul smells, disgusting bad workshops and city of light, air, and water, in short the absence of all easy means of decency and health ; and amonp the latter, the mental weariness and languor so induced, the desire of wholesome nhmtion, the craving for some stimulus and excitement, no less needful than the sun itself to lives so passed, and last, and inclusive of all the rest, ignorance and the want of rational mental training generally applied."

A pretty devout and exhaustive student of the same Charles Dickens, I am yet unable to remember that he ever condemned simple poverty as a vice. And yet no single man and perhaps no dozen men of his generation knew so much about the lives, habits, struggles, temptations, and victories of the poor, as Charles Dickens knew. His information wji not gathered from heresay, neitherfrom the reports of Charity organizations, nor mendicity Societies, but • from actual personal contact and communion with the poorest and most wretched of English cities. No that ever lived or perhaps ever will live protested more powerfully against the belief that even the very poor were necessarily virtueless, or did more to fill in that deep and icy chasm that divides class from class.

And in England hislabors bore fruit, are bearing fruit to this day, and the attention of all the really best and noblest English people is directed to the solution of the problem which essays if not to sweep away at least to mitigate the rigors of undeserved pov- ' erty. Out here in New Zealand, however, though few of us are. very rich and some of us have been and are confoundedly poor, we still seem to detect in poverty merely a crime. At least William Jordan, described as" a middle aged individual," and who is a cook by profession, has good reason to suppose that the fact of being possessed of 2d only is regarded by New • Zealanders as an of innate total depravity. Wmliam &i': ''' don, cook, unattaohed, and whose omy stake in the country is—or was, for he has probably " banged " that wealth . by now—two coppers, was hauled up the other day before that worship luf justice—"in fair round belly with good capon M-Joe Dransftld, charged with the heinous offence of having hung himself across the bow of a tree to sleep in the grounds attached to Parliamentary Buildings. It does not appear that the depraved Jordan was drunk; lie had. destroyed nothingill the grounds, because there is nothing to destroy, he was not scattering - broken bottles or saudwiteh papers in the shrubbery, because he had neither meat nor drink, and lie had all his olothos on because the weather was cold, and he was unknown to the police, having, indeed, only arrived from Greytown that day. tion .Joe" glowered at thafßardened criminal, but, so the local papers say, " took a lenient view of the offence, audi. intiwatpd that though a, conviction would be recorded, the acqused would be allowed his freedom. "A Daniel come to judgment!" In ftp name of common sense

offence had this man been guilty of that a Justice should attach to the poor fellow's name the stigma of a conviction, and thus render him the easy prey of the police' the next time ho may be so bad-mannered as to be hard up ?—and they call this a democratic country! Wonder whether Joe Dransiiold over bunked under a tree, or camped in No 1 boiler. Better men have, anyhow.