SIMPLE THOUGHTS ON PASSING THINGS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2572, 5 January 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

SIMPLE THOUGHTS ON PASSING THINGS.

Tllisic of 400,000 slaves in this nineteenth century being yearly dragged from their friends and homes to work and die for their wicked avaricious fellowmeii r Thank Heaven the humane tendencie.developed through tho great civilising light are able to tolerate this public .-cuidal of our humaniiy no longer ; and orders have gone forth through an appeal from Christianity, from Home Powers hitherto apathetic, that this evil must, if pjs-ible, be wiped out from the earth.

Think of the phonograph being able to store up the human voice, to be produced at will, even whim the lips and tongue which uttered that voice are crumbled into dust; and to register for simultaneous reproduction sounds, whether harmonious "»• discordant, simultaneously produced ! Tho possibility suggested thereby is that every sound uttered by our lips is rfiristered on tho etherial medium of Heaven, to be reproduced to tho car of spirits through means no more; mysterious to u* now than was tho phonograph it.self a few years a','o.

Think of tho no-.v Hweedish glass lately iiiwnteil, whinh makes the h'ne.-t particle o; niaitif hitburto detected by the mo>t powerful microscope capable of being divided into 830 parts, if human instruments can do it, every one of these parts then iinpi"iring as large as the least

(:arti<:le'iiow observable by the the highest powers man can summon to bis aid. Or to put. it iu (mother way, suppose h lineal inch be divided into as many parts as will takn a man counting SCOO per hour for ten full hours per day for 300 days per year for 1)2 years, by a microscope constructed of this new glass a man will be able to examine and describe one of these parts ? If this glass can be constructed into telescope lenses, new marvels will be revealed to us iu the heavens, as through its use in the microscope new marvels have be.-in revealed to us in tho constitution of all animal and vegetable organisation, and iu the subssnnn.es of inorganic earth.

Think of the latest invented rifle which through the mere act of firing , will constantly reload itself, as long as its store of cartriges lasts, to do tho work of death ; and add to this tho later invention of smokeless powder, through which the murderous fire can be maintained without discovering where the metallic messengers of death proceed from, Truly if science shields the precious boon of life, it trebly arms the horrid monster death ; and woe to the world when the great international conflagration comes ! Less fortunate then the wounded than the dead.

Think of the nuw artillery gun capable of throwing the destructive shot a distance of twelve miles. This, together with smokeless powder, is perhaps more terrible still; for it means that a man-o'-war can lie so far out to sea as to be invisible on shore, and yet destroy the seaports from that position hidden. Strange that such decimating discoveries and inventions should happen to bo made just about the time

. . . tbc nations see Th.it men should brothers be, And farm one family The wide world o'ei.

Think, too, of our big strikes and what they moan. Lately a strike was threatened in England promising to be the largest ever known, involving the turning out of 300,000 men. Now, allowing a. man to work 309 days a year, a strike like this would mean the loss of 1000 years' work for one man each day they would be idle. Or, if you will, each day all these would be idle would mean one year's work for 1000 men. Smaller strikes arc calculable in the same way ; and perhaps if men as a body looked at them in this light, they would be more cautious in going to extremes, when they are fairly met with the offer of settlius: differences in a more prudent and economic way.