The
Turanian, or lowest class of language, as Professor Max Muller tells us,
preserves its root-words for ever, tacking one to another, but never
losing the full sound of each; while all sorts of word "jerry mandering"
liberties go on in the highest class. I ventured to propound my theory
to my linguistic friend, Mr. Hyde Clarke; but he found so many
divergencies in Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and what not, that I was
driven to a partial reconstruction. It was the busy as well as civilized
race that scamped the words. The Greeks and Romans--that portion of them
that made society or the public opinion, and that consequently governed
the language--abhorred the vulgar hurry of business life, and thus gave
their words a better chance of unmutilated life. I have not yet been
driven out of this final theory.
With hardly anything else to do, it was as hardly possible to resist a
visit, with nearly everybody else, to Ballarat. So I appeared there on
the 3rd October, and, as senior member for Melbourne in the colony's
first Parliament, and first President of the recently established
Chamber of Commerce, I was, of course, "a man in authority." So,
mounting a gum-tree stump, as the only available chair or pulpit, I
harangued the diggers, first upon the grand fortunes that had overtaken
the colony, and next upon their sadly wasteful ways with the little
stream that ran through the Ballarat valley.
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