The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1888.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 281, 28 November 1888, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1888.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The officers of the Salvation Army at Woollongong who went to prison rather than pay fines imposed upon them under a municipal by-law for persisting in their street services and parades, are turning the tables on the Corporation. The appeal which they carried to the Supreme Court resulted in the by-law under which they were convicted being ' declared ultra vires. They have now, therefore, entered a suit claiming damages for false imprisonment. Some of our New Zealand corporations, which have shown a disposition to deal in a high-handed way with the rights of citizens, will act wisely in making a note of this case. The powers of corporations to enact by-laws infringing personal liberty are very strictly limited, and the judges of the Supreme Cowt in New South Wales held that these powers did not enable a . corporation to deal with a question which involved important principles of freedom of worship and the right of public meeting. It will be generally admitted that the Salvation Army may conduct itself in such a way as to become a very great public nuisance. But depending, as the organisation does, very materially upon popular far our, there is no temptation to persist in practices. which are a cause of real grievance ; and it has usually been found that the leaders are ready to listen to any reasonable remonstrance from persons who believe they have just cause of complaint. In the case of the Woollongong detachment it was shown that one clergyman had complained that his services were disturbed, but he cheerfully bore testimony that after representing the matter to the officers of the Army he suffered no further annoyance, and he disclaimed sympathy with the action taken by the police. Public opinion often affords the best check in matters of this kind; the attempt to regulate them strictly by law must inevitably end in failure, because it is impossible to frame a statute that will exactly define the circumstances under which the parades and services of the Army may infringe the liberty of other citizens. Probably the officers at Woollongong, however, would have acted more judiciously in resting satisfied with their victory in the Supreme Court, without attempting to retaliate on their persecutors. Litigation is at all times a thing to be avoided, and having established their right to freedom of worship, the exercise of a spirit of magnanimity would have gracefully closed the mci

dent.