Answers to Correspondents.

Auckland Examiner, Volume III, Issue 141, 12 March 1859, Page 2

Answers to Correspondents.

A Citizen may take our word for it that the Wharf job will soon come to a stand still. Laborers must be paid and there is no money to pay them. Provincial Government sages find borrowing a difficult business. Bankrupt in reputation, they are unable to raise that £25,000 they were so anxious to secure. Their condition is that of Jeremy Diddler when he asked Mr. Plainway if he, Mr. Plainway, had such a thing as ten-pence about him. The past is their inexorable Nemesis. None respect them. None but people with more money than wit would lend them twenty-five thousand farthings, without other and better security than they are at present prepared to offer. When people engaged on that great job of jobs called Wharf job will cease their labor is uncertain, but that they, more than a week since, got their months notice, is known, notwithstanding the pains taken to conceal it. C.— lt is plain that the New Zealander people wish to provoke another war of words with the Southern Cross. Editor Red Cat logic Mrs. Slipslop could well bear, but his contemptuous silence drives her to distraction. When Byron began Don Juan he professed to want a hero— ‘‘ an uncommon want,” according to that poet. But however uncommon may be the want of a hero among poets, it is palpable “ to feeling as to sight” that Mrs. Slipslop deeply feels the want of a subject. She has written herself clean out of the way. Her poor old brains are cudgelled terribly, and to no purpose. She has no cry, no grievance, no food for invective, no material for scandal. All forlorn in her editorial chair, or rather on her editorial stool, she sits, racking her poor old brains for something to write about. Her master the Super-, intent is blas6, regularly used up, and there is no chance to glorify him. Had he done anything useful she would have something to work upon. But, afflicted with the curse of barrenness, what can be said for him. Having betrayed his friends, proved traitor to his tryst, and disgusted all who have the interest of Auckland at heart, poor Slipslop finds herself in exact centre of a hobble, eul of which she would fain provoke the detested “sojourner” to help her. But the sojourner” is deaf; heeds not the voice of that charmer who would fain provoke him to fresh wordy encounters, and stinkingly stale personal recriminations. It would not surprise us if, in extremity of desperation, the old crittur” turned upon ns. We remember how, when <( adventurer” Southwell stood for the Suburbs, she refused even to print his name in her list of candidates, and how, in less than “ a little month” afterwards, she got out of her tantrums and published it in full, with her deliberate conviction that he was thorough “blackguard” who “would sell his defaming tongue and pen to any one who would pay for them.” Recollecting this fact, and many another fact, equally significant of her pliant disposition, wc canpot help thinking that, driven to extremities for want of a subject, she will turn upon us, and enliven her readers by pouring out her hottest “hell broth.” We know that on our account she has farmed an alliance — offensive as well as defensive — with Preacher Cartwright, and that she has promised to reprint, for general distribution, some extracts from long-since-forgotten works of “ adventurer” Southwell, if that detested interloper should dare to take a candidate-for-suffragei part at any of the coming elections. II e know that Examiner go-a-headism and independence have made her resolve upon all sorts of desperate measures. Knowing these things, we eould not feel at all surprised if, unable longer to possess her old soul in patience, she were to come out in a scries of

anti-Examiner articles, in which she might flabbily dwell upon the decay of public virtue and Examiner connection with every form of public vice.

Vox.— Where no offence is meant no offence should be taken. The terms Roman Catholic and Romanist are not opprobrious, though often employed in an opprobrious sense. All Romanists may be catholic, if by catholic isunderstood universal-minded, but all Catholics are not Romanists. There are Catholics of the Greek Church as well as Catholics of the Church whose seat and centre is Rome. To distinguish between Eastern Church Catholicism and Western Chui ch Catholicism, surely cannot be forbidden by any canon of criticism or any law of politeness. One, and perhaps, sole reason why professors of Protestantism refuse to call Catholics simply those who accept Pio Nino for their spiritual head, is their knowledge that catholic means universal as well as general. They deny that the. religion whose chief Pontiff is at Rome can claim the attribute of universality. John Millon made merry with particular catholics and universal schismatics. It seemed to the illustrious author of Paradise Lost that while the particular clearly is implied by the universal, the universal clearly is nut implied by the particular.

Crito.— The basis of all legislation should be justice. The basis of New Zealand Legislation is not justice. Our law makers seem less anxious to make just laws than to multiply si\ug places. Their contests are parly contests —contests for' a pull at the public exchequer, and such dignity aS office may confer. While society endures these contests will endure. They are inevitable. Man is incurably selfish, and we know that everywhere “ laws are corrupted to their ends who make them;” that every where might triumphs over right ; that- every where humble merit succumbs to impudent ignorance-, and that every where the people are victimized by their rulers. But no where are the vices incident to a low, essentially immoral order of political ideas more glarihgly, or more objectionably, manifest than ig these islands. All would change as if bymagie if the men who make the laws were not Jack Cades and Caleb Chizzlers, or, in other words, if they resolved to make right their rule of action, and for ever have done with shams. The character of a people is seen in the character of those who make their laws. Lafayette said— For a people to be free it is sufficient that they will it. With equal truth it may be affirmed that for a people to be degraded it is sufficient that they will it. While they choose to be represented by Cadeites and Chizzlers there is no help for them A political writer of large experience well says: — Obviously ' character is the test of worth in any servant, whether for private or for public trust. The man who is known to have shown himself upright and just in all all the relations of private life, must be far better entitled to our confidence than one who has been found wanting in private trials. Declarations or insinuations of superior public virtue, and all the higher pretensions of which aspiring popular orators are so lavish, can never be tried by any better test than the demeanor in the connections and engagements of a private station. When that has been marked by debauchery, dishonorable actions, deceitful contrivances, or any other immorality, it is absolute madness and folly to understand any public professions but as the cloaks under which it is sought to accomlish some private designs of personal aggrandizement, or some mischievous ends. That such actually are very commonly the objects of popular pretenders, is notorious to every observant man; from the experience of the end to which all their pretensions come, when favorable opportunities offer, and of the calm termination of all their clamorous energy, whenever they can secure the possession of some of those honors or indulgencies which their former life has been spent in reviling. We say to representatives, and we say to constituencies—Think on these things.

A.F.— declares there is no truth in the report that certain “young bloods” called Mohacks, or Mohawks (we are not sure which') did, on return from our last races, amuse themselves at public expense. But A. F. concludes too fast. Not only is it true that they tore down fences, put up at public expence in Mechanics Bay Road, smashed the" Sebastopol public house lamp, and otherwise showed their capacity for mtschief, but it also known that in their attack on the Sebastopol public house lamp and the Mechanics Bay Road fence they displayed a heroism almost beyond ex* ample. But though perfect Hectors while at the work of lamp-smashing and fencedemolishing, they had no taste for threat* ened consequences of their valor. Bob Acres was not more frightened when he swore by his valor that he would “stand edgeways” to receive the shot of Ensign Beverly, than were our “young bloods” when threatened with prosecution. In sober moments they had no fancy, it seems, to visit Larrey's parlour, or to take up their quarters in any other part of that edifice where Gaoler McElwain holds undivided empire, and passes all the time he does not pass in viewing or improving his “ nate little estate.” But though these fl young bloods” were terribly alarmed al thought of going to prison, they richly deserve a month. And if indulged with hard labor during that period they might be none the worse and society be all thf> better. He know these “young bloods,” There are four of them. Three are Government employees. The other is a very fast youth who would fain act out here, in Auckland, all the “swell” fooleries and madcap idiotisms of r J\>m and Jerry. Imprisonment with hard labor would cool tKb courage of this very fast youth, nor would the Government employees, who helped him to smash bastopol public house lamp and tear down Mechanics Bay Road Fences, be unjustly served if sent to gaol for a season. But the Superintendent would not proceed against them. He could not find heirl to

prosecute the fast son of an aristoci*atic papa, and three gentlemen employed by Government. To expose such, genteel people would be very wrong. To make jhem break stones in Gaoler MeElwaine'sjown residence, by way of punishment for their wanton destruct ion of preperty. private and public, would be positively shocking. So the affair was htished up. Superintendent Williamson agreed to let the matter drop if these nice “ young bloods” paid down the cost price of what they had destroyed. Had the offenders been poor men, without Government patronage or aristocratic connection, their punishment wiuld have been severe, but “young bloods” are privileged. They can break law, and gel Superintendent Williamson to connive at their escape from legal punishment. P.P. Farrell had a mojroity of seven. Mrs. Slipslop is silent with regard to Farrell, and has not one word of consolation for her unfortunate candidate Styak.