MR ALFRED AUSTIN ON THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2094, 8 December 1885, Page 4

MR ALFRED AUSTIN ON THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

T»K following stilling letter from Mr Alfred Austin, in reply to a requisition from burgesses of Leeds to allow himself to be placed in nomination for tin ir constituency, was handed to a Home papei for publication :—: — My Dear >>ir, — I thank you and those giMitkmen who aie acting with you for your letter, but I have no intention of seeking admission to the House of Commons. Haditbeui otheiwihe, I should have been proud to represent a division of the (loan- lung town in whose vicinity, as you kindly remind me, I was born. Did the motives that govern this determination repose upon considerations of private convenience, tlieie would be noth ing more to bo said. But it is upon public grounds and for pohticil teasona that I am unable to accept any of the invitations to stand for Parliament, of late repeatedly addressed to me ; and I feel I owe it to jou and otheis to explain, as buefly as I can, my repugnance to a career which most men covet, and apparently all men regard as a distinction. I suppose it is a proposition which none would dispute, though few, I fear, trouble themselves to analyse it, that no man has a sullicient excuse for cntei ing the House of Commons, unless he believes that by so doing he can serve his eountiy and strengthen the Empire. Now, whether lam right or whether I am wrong, I am profoundly of opinion that the country is being demoralised and the Umpire is being imperilled by that assembly which has gradually concentrated into itself all the representation of the State, only to find itself quite impotent against the maiKtuvres of the Cabinet, when led by a bold and dexterous tactician. Were I to dwell upon the most recent fruits of government by the House of Commons and the creatures of its choice, I should have to write you, not a letter, but a lament. It is enough to say that no man any longer is proud of being an Englishman. With a gigantio expenditure, but a skeleton army and an impoverished fleet, is it wonderful if we have forfeited our honour and had to ransom our existence ? It is our machinery, our constitutional machinery, in other wouls the House of Commons, that nab wrought all this mischief, and prepared all this shame. I often hear men say, "If we could only get lid of Mr Gladstone." The observation proves the shallovvnebs of the political understanding of those who make it. Mr Gladstone is only the figurehead of. an unseawoithy vessel. He is what fifty years of paity strife, parliamentary devices, and public speaking have made him. They would have made Ajax an electioneering agent, and Nestor a vainglorious sophist. They say that, when the battle of Thraaymene was being fought, the contending forces were so furiously engaged that an earthquake rolled unheededly away. The very foundations of the commonwealth are being undermined, and the pillars of the empire shaken. But the House of Commons has been too fiercely occupied with Franchise Bills and Redistribution Bills to heed the convulsion. The House of Commons is doubtless an excellent sound ing board for the voice of personal ambition, a h'r.st-rate arena for a gladiator whose tongue 'u his sword. But I look upon the gifts of popular oratoiy witn the gravest distrust. It is in silence that all great woiks aie written, and nil gn at deeds are done. Men of action found empiies ; rhetoiicians ddtioy them Alas ! alas ! had the present Prime Minister been a stammerer and a stutterer, or had he loved his country enough to impose a curb upon Ins congenital volubility, England would not be where she now is — " now, none so poor to do her reverence." It is only outside the House of Commons that these tiuths can be urged, and only, I believe, by people outside the House of Commons that they can be clearly apprehended. Believing, as I do that unless foreign and Imperial policy, the army, and the navy, are committed to faafu keeping than that of 650 representatives of the people putting cross questions, and 15 Cabinet Ministers returning crooked ansvveis, there is no help font but to go on j jlLint; from blunder to blunder, and descending from abasement to abasement. I do what little I can outside the House of Commons, to discredit its authority and curtail its functions. To ask a man to enter it, in order to scive his eountiy, is to ask him to waste his life to break his heait, overan impossible undertaking. — I am, dear sii, yours veiy faithfully, Alkkld Austin.

The Philadelphia Christian World thus refers to two classes of church members : — The Sensitive clr/'.i. They are often in grief. Their mole hills are always mountains. Somebody is always alighting them. Poor souls ! We have often sympathised with and pitied them. They were born too late, too early, or in the wrong world, or perhaps the mistake was in their having been born at all. The "on ami oj) p " <7<mj. A few of them in every Church. So zealous and full of exhortation, but nowhere to morrow. They do good work for a while, but the worry is to keep them at work. They take hold of "the heavy end," but they don't keep hold, letting go just at the wrong time. Lue SKNTK\ch<B.— A correspondent of a London paper writes:— "lt is strange how very few p<ople recognise the dis tiuction between a sentence of penal servitude for life and that of penal seivitudc for •natural' life. Yet there is almost as wide a difference as between a sentence of iinpnsoninent and ono of penal servitude. The introduction of the word • natural ' entirely alters the whole bearing and aim of the punishment, as penal servitude for life is merely equivalent to a sentence of 20 years, w hereas the term 'natural' entirely places the sentenced man beyond the palo or hope of a tieket-of-leave. It U a well known fact that there are several persons at libeity in the country now who have been sentenced in the less severe form, leaving out of the calculation one or two on whom the capital sentence has been pronounced. By many of the most daring criminals sentenced of death is pieferred to that of 'natuial life,' as was evidenced in the case of the notorious armed burglar, Chailes Peace, who, after being sentenced to penal servitude for the term of his natural life, adopted the course of confessing to the committal of a murder at Sheffield, for which he was subsequently tried and convicted, the capital punishment being canied out at Leed*. The dynamiters convicted at the Old Bailey were sentenced to penal servitude foi the term of their natural lives." The Bad and Worthless are ncvor nmtntnl or cnxiitrrfntnl. This is (•specialty ti lie of a family medicine, and it is positivp proof that the remedy undated ia ot the highest value. As aoon as it had been tested and proved by the whole world that Hop Bitters was the purest, best and the most valuable family medicine on earth, many imitations sprung up and began to steal the notices in which the press and the people of thu eountiy had expressed the mei its of H. B , and in every way trying to induce suffering invalids to use their stuff instead, expecting to make money on the credit and good name of H. B. Many others started nos trums put up in similar style to H. 8., with variously devised names in which the word " Hop" or " Hops" were used in a way to induce people to beliov c they were the same as Hop Bitters. Ail such pretended remedies or cures, no matter what their style or name is and enpecially those with the word " Hop" oi " Hops" in their name or in any way connected with them or their name, aie imitations or counterfeits. Beware of them. Touch none of them. Use nothing but genuine American Hop Bitters, with a cluster of green Hops on tbo win to label, and Dr Soule's name blown in the glass. Trust nothing else. Druggists and Chemists are warned against dealing in imitations or counterfeits. I