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THE VOX IIUMANA 291
ditrercnt men and ignorant women, nor has anyone shown
the capacity to grasp the mere legal requirements. He
knows he can do it, and uses his position on the parish
council to burrow into the rights and responsibilities of
landlords. Is this as it should be ? I say, No. He
ought to give advice from outside the committee if he is
sure he knows what he is talking about ; this should
mean a brief conversation once a fortnight with the best
man he knows on the Committee. Anyhow it is his main
duty to do nothing to take off from their shoulders oneSounce
of responsibility : it is their affair, Further, that
if from outside he learns that they are blundering, he
should beware of interfering. Why 7 Because in these
restless days someone will persuade him to move on to a
higher sphere of work, which the cynic said was the
parson's way of describing a rise in income ; and off he
will go, leaving them-unless he has held himself severely
aloof-as helpless as children in presence of an uncompleted
task for which they have had no training. Men
learn by committing blunders, not by being spared them.
But if he finds them acquiescing in coldness and lapsing
into inertia, then let him thunder out all the terrors of
judgment on a nation which seems to be losing its dread
of sin. Is not that common sense ? But it is very rarely
done ; and I fear the reason is that sometimes the priest
thinks he can do it all himself, and sometimes the laity
are too indolent to correct his error.
Ts:& Vox Hmu.xA
Another terrible impediment to progress is the national
neglect of training children and young people in speaking
our own noble language. This is a huge subject, but I
must give some painful experience of my own to show
that I write not quite as an ignoramus.
In 1874, when I .ought to have been- learning how to
sing and how to speak, there was no one in the country
who knew anything about either ; that is, about the