EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
345 
for the evil of the profession. This is all very well, but it 
must be understood that good and evil are sometimes con¬ 
vertible terms. What the utterer meant for sweet raav be 
•/ 
bitter to the taste of liis hearers ; and if we are to judge from 
what has transpired at several council meetings, and notably 
at the last quarterly meeting of council the report of which 
is published in the present number, there is at least a pos¬ 
sibility of good intentions being misconstrued. There may 
be, perhaps there is, a little healthy excitement to be got 
out of a brief, if warm, discussion upon the exact amount of 
personality concealed in language which may be admittedly 
parliamentary; but, in plain terms, the tendency of all 
such friendly contests is to make men enemies, and to most 
persons that contingency is suggestive of discomfort. 
As we advance in life, remarks a thoughtful writer of 
the present day, one must be sparing of one’s emotions; and 
if it comes to be apprehended by members of council that 
their little oratorical efforts are to be criticallv analvsed for 
evidence against them, and their well intentioned zeal for 
the good of the whole to be interpreted to mean deliberate 
condemnation, we prophesy that sober-minded men having no 
political ambition to gratify, and unstimulated by prospects 
of official aggrandisement, will decline the contest, from w Inch 
they can only expect to gain those distinctions proverbially 
awarded to the members of the family quadrumana; dis¬ 
tinctions which are terselv, and not without some amount of 
contemptuous satire, conveyed in the terms more kicks 
than halfpence.” 
To speak without hidden meaning, if members of council 
find that their honestly outspoken opinions involve them in 
contests with their professional friends, they are likely to 
seek refuge in a practical exemplification of the adage 
silence is golden.’* 
It is of the last importance that every member of council 
should utter his views frankly and honestly; he can only 
do this when he feels assured that in relation to every 
member of his profession he may speak ‘^without fear and 
without reproach.” 
