OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 301, 21 May 1889, Page 2

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

[FROM OUB OWN COBBEgrONDINT.] Sydney, May 4. THE COURSE OF POLITICS. The treacherous calm of the Assembly wa* broken on Thursday by a revolt of a section of the Opposition, which culminated in an all-night sitting. The Government had made a proposition to purchase Darling Island, in order to provide an outlet on the shores of Port Jackson for the coal traffic of the eouthern district. The railway commissioner* were in favor of the proposal, and, on paper, it seemed very feasible and reasonable. But ■0 was Mr Garvan’s proposition reasonable alio. He moved that the matter be referred to the Public Works Committee, whioh ha* been called into existence expressively to decide upon auch 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 legislator* who are very much afraid of being overlooked, and 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 another member who desired that the terminus should be 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 the Opposition, who refused to treat the matter a* a party question, and succeeded in carrying their motion at about 5 o'clock on Friday evening, having sat just 24 hour*.

UNCOMPLIMENTARY INFERENCES. 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 for some hon. members to know that such a sum is going to somebody, and ia not going to them, or to their friends, to caute them immediately to pose as purists of the most exaggerated type. ” The customary syndicate is behind the transaction,’’ bellowed one member. And, ot course, if there had been no syndicate, and all the money going to one individual, be would have bellowed all the louder. Yet it seems very difficult to find a piece of land that is not owned by somebody; etill more difficult to purchase it. Another ground of complaint was that the vendors were influential individuals familiar with Ministers, and the usual uncomplimentary inferences were drawn. But here again it would be extremely difficult to find possessore of property running into six figures who are not influential people, and more or less acquainted with the leading men of the day. It these objections are valid, the Government would be precluded from making any purchases at all. But it is absolutely necessary for the due transaction ot the public business that they should make purchases. So we come to a reductio ad abeurdum of the simplest character. It is plain that all such transactions should be judged strictly on their own merits, and the utterance of slanderous imputations should bs discouraged, But the fact is that some members know so much of human nature (human nature, that is to say, of their own type) that they cannot trust one another, and the constant tendency of thia state of affairs ia to bring ths whole machinery ot State to a deadlock. To me it seems that it would have been better on all grounds to wait till the Public Works Committee was constituted and take its report. But this was purely a matter for the deliberate decision ot the House. The factious attempt of a minority to frustrate that decision stands self-condemned.

k SHOCKING TALE. A shocking story of wild unreasoning passion and equally unreasoning jealousy and hatred has startled the public within the last few days. A book agent named Manaha, a native of the West Indies, and who apparently inherited the fiery nature of the Creole, murdered his wife and infant ion by shooting them with a revolver, and completed the crime by shooting himself. From letters written by the unhappy man it appeared that he wa* jealous of his wife, both in her relations with other men, and because he believed her affections had been alienated from him by her mother. 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 I had money she would get all she could and leave me,” A methodical murderer this, who is determined at all events that people shall know the state of hi* mind. To his wife’s mother he writes: “ Woman, do you know that you are the cause of all our quarrels ; you will not leave us alone by ourselves, you are always about us and listening, and the first thing will start a quarrel, and of course Amy takes your part. . . . . If you only knew how I love Amy. I would sooner die with her than live without her. . . . Yesterday, when I was speaking to Amy on the stairs, you even called her away—an excuse to give water to Isidore, (the ion). . , . Yon were afraid to trust her with me for fear she should forgive me. I hate you as well as you hate me.” And then the miserable man, torn by love and hate, kills the woman he love*, and the child he should have cherished. Flippant heartleisness 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 pottering skin-deep philosopher* are beginning to ask. Episodes like this show clearly enough that there are *ome people to whom life itself is a failure, and therefore, as the greater includes the less, everything contained in life, mariage, business, pleasure, is a failure also. Their higher nature is trampled down by the lawless impulse* of the lower, until at last both perish together—not often, however, with sufficient publicity, as in thi* instance “ to point a moral or adorn a tale.” THE CHUBCH COSOBXBI. The Church Congress, a* wa* to be expected, ha* coma in for some pretty frea handling from th* aeoular Pres*. For the Press i* 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 rat* it* utterances respecting ecclesiastical matter* are very rarely appreciative, or even reverent, This attitude is partly excusable, partly reprehensible. Take the latter first. The tone of most Press criticisms ia distinctly agnostic. The true key note of agnosticism is modesty —acknowledgement of ignorance. But the keynote of journalism is omniscience and infallibility. Your finished leader writer, after half an hour’s ” cramming," will write with perfect asiurance on any question, from a country dance to the differential calculus, or from a point of party politics to the most intricate and difficult problems of ethics or theology. And this infallibility inevitably lushes out the agnosticism whenever religion ■ dealt with, and the journalistic writer is apt to become, not a reverent but critical obierver, but a hostile critic. Now, a* soon a* hostility comes in, true agnosticism baa gon* cut. That which knows nothing can feel nothing—neither love nor haired. As soon as hostility comes in it ia manifest that something must be assumed as a certainty on i which that hostility is based, An agnostic- | ism that is not consistent is a* reprehensible , *1 a profession of faith that is not oonils. , tent. ,

EXCUSABLE CniTICtSM,

Bnt now, as to that which i* exonsable. And thin I think I And in the common dislike that la felt by all mon of generous instincts to ecclesiastical assumption. The slightest effort of independent reasoning ia at once sufficient to show that if all men possess a spiritual and moral nature which is capable of development, the laws which govern that higher nature must be such as all men can understand. They must be a* plain and simple in their nature as the law* of the physical world, which when once discovered by research, are tho common property of all. It io true that spiritual laws cannot be discovered by research, but must be made known by revelation, but when made known they are self-evidently true to •11 whose minds are uablaaaed by any pre-

possession in favor of their opposites. What I am trying to make clear ia that they cannot in any case be the monopoly of any particular body, and it ia the expresoed or implied presumption that there ia snoh a monopoly which arouses an excusable Indignation. Spiritual laws, like natural lawa, embrace the universe. Like the air we breathe, they are free to all, and like the air we breathe, it is an inexcusable outrage to endeavor to levy toll, either in each or adulation, on account of them. They have their intricacies, like natural lawa, but they don’t depend on their intricaciee, but on the broad general distinction between good and evil and between truth and falsehood. Therefore any presentation which makes the future of Christendom depend on the universal acceptance of come abstruse theological dogma in which the masses are profoundly uninterested stands self-condemned, and is rightly ridiculed by those who voice public opinion.

SEVERE COMMENTS AND A DENIAL. The Daily Telegraph on Saturday wa* specially severe on the Rev. Canon Kemia. The tone of its remarks may be gathered from the following brief quotation The rev. canon, as we duly gather from tha reports, thought that the only way in which his church could unite with other kindred Protestant bodies was by their coming in and making submission. But he was more hopeful about the chanoe of union with the Greek Church, now that the difficulty about the * Filioque clause ’ and the double procession of the Holy Spirit had been got over at a friendly discussion held a few years ago in England." The canon has replied repudiating the construction put upon nil utterances.