RELIGIOUS FLUMMERY,

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 587, 26 March 1891, Page 2

RELIGIOUS FLUMMERY,

THOSE who hold the belief that the colonies are truly democratical in spirit or in practice must have that faith weakened. At Bendigo, in Australia, a few weeks ago there was one of the most laughable exhibitions of flunkyism that could be conceived. It was a sort of Lord Mayor’s Show, after a subdued Wild West fashion, in which fat beadledom showed itself off to immense advantage in its bran new uniform. The ancient English custom for the municipal authorities to make a procession in liveries to the local parish church on certain Snnri .vs in the year, can in no excuse be brought into fashion in the colonies, but the Bendigo Mayor had * codwt bat, and SHnday|w'as

a good day for a circus parade. He happened to be a member of the Anglican Church, and that unfortunate Church was made the victim of the occasion. A radical journal thus describes the procession, and one can hardly read the account without laughing outright, or feeling concerned that religio should be made fun of in that way :— First walked Cnurch ol England parsons, in their “gowns”; next, the Mayor, in cocked hat and official robes ; Aidermen, in plug-lug costumes ; Town Clerk, official ; City Solicitor, summer clothes, belltopper and smile ; Rate Collector, ditto ; Cattle-market Inspector, mufti : messenger, ayou’h in buttons. And why all this ? Because a more or less vulgar Mayor wanted to show himself publiciy in a cocked hat and certain absurd robes trimmed with catskin. We are (says the journal) glad to notice in Australia generally an increasing disposition to jeer at “ robes ” and “ orders ” and loud uniforms, and wigs and ermine, and artillery salutes, and all trash of the kind. The more “ gorgeous ” the robes and the grfeater the pomp—so it is written in the history of the world—the bigger the sham.