The Eternal Want of Pence.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 16, 17 April 1902, Page 18

The Eternal Want of Pence.

That devotion to the public interest carries poverty in its train is well illustrated in the case of the late Lord Dufferin, who in his latest years was rewarded with a pension of £1600 with which to maintain the position he was entitled to adorn. He devoted forty years of his life to the service of the State. He was Viceroy of Canada and India, and performed brilliant services in each capacity. He was one of the most remarkably gifted men that the Empire possessed during the last century, and he was also one of the most consummately useful. He prevented many costly wars. Yet in bis old age he was so poor that he was compelled to sell his name to the company monger, who completed his ruin, and threw his wife on the mercy of £1000 gifts from sympathising shareholders. It is almost a truism to point out that Lord Dufferin was not singular in experiencing public ingratitude. Indeed, it is sometimes surprising to find men, with the warnings of history before them. entering upon a public career that they must know can bring them no profit. The man who enters public life must cast aside all hope of personal gain. And he must also be prepared to find himself cast aside as a useless and worn out instrument as soon as his day of usefulness has ended. This proves that men adopt a public calling from some irresistible impulse, as other men take to literature or science. In letters a few prizes fall to the lot of the fortunate, and an Edison may reap a colossal fortune by his inventive genius, but to the vast majority the way is rugged and the end cheerless. One tithe of the talent and application necessary to ensure success in public life would be infinitely better rewarded in almost any other capacity. A successful general receives the thanks of the nation, and a rich monetary reward. Nelson, Wellington, Napier, Roberts were all munificently rewarded. On the other hand the Balary of Mr. Schwab, manager of Carnegie's colossal steel trust, would almost pay the salaries of the whole British Cabinet. There is eomething inequitable about this. It is not creditable that a man like Lord Dufferin, who did such good service to the public, and who beneficially influenced the history of the human race, should be left to die in what to him must have been the most bitter poverty.

The unthinking man in lowly circumstances painfully contrasts the apparently large rewards that accrue from public service with his own lot, and murmura against the apparent injustice. Let him console himself with the reflection that he is probably better off in every way than those he envies. The working man is taken from his side, and raised on the shoulders of a shouting mob to an elevation that seems to confer immunity from manual labor, and an income of six pounds a week. But the working man who becomes a member of Parliament merely exchanges one kind of toil

for another which is infinitely more arduous and incomparably more precarious. His eminent position makes him the mark fc*-^ envious intrigue and the victim of parasites. He is besieged with applications for patronage that lie cannot satisfy, and with demands for money that he cannot comply with. If he is an artisan he cannot follow his ordinary pursuits, and if, on the other hand, he is in trade, hia public duties are performed at the expense of his business. The public is an inexorable task-master, and woe betide the man who allows himself to become infatuated with his bonds. Some day another will wear them, and he will then be cast aside, unfitted then by inclination, and possibly by years, from achieving that success that was at one time assured. Men of this kind are not to be envied. Rather is their fate to be avoided. It would seem that when men betray a capacity, which in some cases amounts almost to genius, for public business, they should become wards of the State, for assuredly they neglect their own affairs, and in some cases consign their families to poverty and themselves to oblivion.