OUR SYDNEY LETTER

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2630, 21 May 1889, Page 2

OUR SYDNEY LETTER

(FROM OUU OWN C'ORKKSrOXDKNT.) Thk treacherous culm of the Assembly was broken on Thursday by a revolt of a section of tho Opposition, which culminated in an all-night sitting. Tho Government had made a proposition to purchase Darling Island, in order to provide an outlet on the shores of Port Jackson for the ecal traffic of the southern district. Tho Railway Commissioners were iu favour of the proposal, and on paper, it seemed very feasable and reasonable. But so was Mr Garvan's proposition reasonable also. Ho moved that the matter be referred to the Public Works Committee, which has been called into existence expressly to decide upon such proposals. A few of the more violent members of the Opposition at once decided to obstruct, and their action was championed by one or two new chum legislators, who are very much afraid of being over-looked, ai.d a few more of like kidney. The malcontents tried manfully to talk the resolution out, and there was also strong opposition to the motion from the members for Balmam, who desired that the terminus should bo situated at Long Nose Point, within their own borough. The Government, however, had the powerful support of Mr Dibbs and Mr Abbott, two leaders of tho Opposition, who refused to treat the matter as a party question, and succeeded iu carrying their motion at about 5 o'clock on Friday evening, having sat for just L'l hours. . It appears certain that in any matters which involve the payment of large sums of money to private individuals, there will be similar exhibitions of envy, suspicion and bitterness. Darling island is to cost £35,000, and it is quite sufficient fur some linn, members to know that such a sum is going, to somebody, and is not going to them or to their friends to cause them immediately to pose as purists of the mo-a exaggerated typo. The " customary syndicate is behind the transaction, bellowed one member. And, of course, if there had been no syndicate and all the money had been "oiiigto one individual, he would have bellowed all tho louder. Yet it seems very difficult to find a piece of land that is not owned by somebody ; still more difficult to purchase it. Another ground of complaint was that tho vendors were influential individuals, familiar with Ministers, and the usual uncomplimentary inferences were drawn. But here again it would be extremely difficult to find possessors of property running into si.\ figures who are

not influential people, and more or less acquainted with the lending men nf the Hay. If tlieso objections rue \ali.i, t!m' Government would be preeluded fi'iim making any purchases at all. iiil it i< :il'S'!nt.e'y ii"c«s<ary d>r the, iVv. transaction (,[ the'i.uiilic husines. tint they 'lo.dncii" !\d iihs-.irdum of t.lie simplest char!x:'..'i-. L.i i-> I'liii'.i tint all such transactions -.ll'iuld In: judged strictly on tlifiir own merits, mid' Ihe utterance of si ut.l t ;i"us imputations .sliKiii.l lie discouraged. Dut, the fact is ihat s 'inn members know an much of human lisit-.irti (human nature, that is t<. say, of their own type) Hint they I'iiniiot 'trust; line, another, ••mil the constant tendency of Ihisslate of ;;!F,iiis is to bring the whole ni.-ichiiiery of the slate to a deadlock. Ti-> me it seems that it would have been bolter on nil ground" to wait till the Public Woi Us committee was constituted, and take iU report. Hut this was pmely a matter for the deliberate decision of the House. llio factious attempt of a minority to frustrate that decision, stands self-condemned.

A shocking story of wild unreasoning passion and equally unreasoning jealousy and hatred has started the public within the last few days. A book agpnt named Manahan, a native nf the West Indies, and who apparently inherited the fiery nature of the Creole, inuulered his wife and infant son, by shooting them with a revolver, and completed the crime by shotting himself. From letters written by the unhappy man, it appeared that he was jealous of his wife, both in her relations with other men, and because he believed her affections hud been alienated from him by her lnotlmr. In one of them he says:—" I love my wife more than life. I could never live without her, and yet she told me a couple of days ago that she would run away with any other man that had money, and think it no disgrace, and that if 1 had money the would get all she could and leave me.' A methodical murderer this, who is determined at all events that paonle shall know the state of his mind. To his wifes mother he writes : " Woman, do you know that you are the cause of all our quarrels ; you will not leave us alone by ourselves, yon are always about us and listening, and the first thing will start a quarrel and of onrse Amy takes your pa it. . . . J.{ you only knew how I love Amy. 1 would sooner die with her than live without tier. Yesterday, when I was speaking to Amy on tho stairs, you even called her nway-an excuse to give water to Isidoio (the son). You were afraid to trust her with mo for fear she should forgive, me. I hate you, as well ns you bate me." And then the miserable man, torn by love and hate, kills the woman he loves and the child he should have cherished. Flippant heartlessness often dances recklessly on the thin lava crust of a hidden crater, but not often is there so terrible an eruption. "Is marriage a failure," our potterin" skin-deep philosophers are beginning to ■isk Episodes like this show clearly enough that there are some people to whom life itself is a failure, and therefore, as the greater includes the less, everything contained in life, marriage, business, and pleasure is a failure also. Their higher nature is tr-impled down by tho lawless impulses (if the lower, until at last both perish to-gether-nut often, however, with sufficient publicity, as in this instance "to point a moral or adorn a tale," The Church Congress, as was to bo expected, has come in for some pretty free handling from the secular press. For the press is the great instructor of the masses who have lapsed from the Church, and (insensibly, no doubt) it sometimes seems to manifest a good deal of jealousy lest its charge should wander back into the old fold. At any rate its utterances respecting

ecclesiiisticiil matters are very rarely appreciative or even reverent. Tins attitude is partly excusable, partly reprehensible. Take the latter first. The tone of most prt-'s criticisms is distinctly agnostic. Jhe true koyn'ito of agnosticism is modesty, acknowledgment of ignorance. _ But the keyimte of journalism is omniscience ana infallibility. Yimr linislied leader-writer, after half-iin-liour's "cramming," will write with perfejt assurance ou any question, from a country dance to '.he dine.rcnt.ial calculus, or fn.m a point of pavt.y politus to the most intricate and difficult problems of ethics or theology. And this infallibility inevitably pushes nut the. agnosticism whenever religion is dealt with, and the journalistic writer is apt to become, not a reverent, and critical observer, but a hostile critic. Xnw, as sunn as hostility ornes in, true agnosticism has K ..ne nut. That which knows nothing cm feel noihn-.R—neither love nor hatred. As soon as hostility conies -in it is manifest that something must Iμ assumed as a certainty on which that hostility is li:is f -.d. An a-juoslicism that is not consistent is as reproimihlo as a profession of faith that mint consistent. Pint, now, a» to that whicli is excusable. ■Vml this, I think, 1 find in the common (iislike that is felt, by all men of Rencrmis instincU to occh>i:«stic:nl nssinnptK'ni. J. lie slightest elfort of independent reascning is Biiilicifiii(, to show that if all men possess a spiritual and mnr.d natme which is capable of neviihirm'iit, the laws which srovmi that higher nature must be such as all men can understand. They must b« as plum and simple in thnir naturo as the laws of the physical world, which, when once discovered by research, are the common property of all. It is true that spiii'u-il laws cannot lie discovered by research,but must be innde known by revelation, but when made known they are self-evidently tine to all whoso milids are niibi:issud l-y any in favour of their opp.isitps. hat I am

trying to make clear is that they cannot in any case bo th-5 monopoly of any p:ntu:ubir body, and it is the expressed or implied presumption that then! is mioli a monopoly, which aouse.-i an excusable indignation. Spiritual laws, likn natural laws, embrace the universe. Like the air we breathe, they are free to oil; and, like, the air we breathe, it i.s an inexcusable outrage to endeavour to levy toll, either in cash or in adulation, on account of them. They have, their intricacies like natural laws, but they don't depend on their intricacies, but mi the broad general distinction between Rood and evil and between truth and falsehood. Therefore any presentation which makes the future of 'Christendom depend on the universal acceptance of some abstruse thenlogichl do»mn, in which the mosses are profoundly uninteroste.il, stands self - condemned, and it is rightly ridiculed by those who voice public opinion. The Daily Telegraph, on Saturday, was specially severe on the Rev. Canon Kommis. The tone of its re-marks maybe gathered from the following brief quotation:—" The Kev. Canon, as wo dimly gather from tho reports thought that the only way in which his Church could unite with other kindred Protestant bodies was by their coining in and making submission. But lie was more hopeful about the chance of union with the Greek Church, now that the difficulty about tho 'Filioque clause, 1 and the ' douWe procession of the Holy Spirit' had been got over at a friendly discussion, held u few years ago in England." The Canon has replied, repudiating the construction put upon his utterances.