OUR RECENT LEADERS.

Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7922, 23 July 1891, Page 3

OUR RECENT LEADERS.

TO THK EDITOR OF THB PRESS. Sir, —Allow mc very sincerely to thank you for your' recent articles on those burning question, in our present day politics. If those that are to follow, and which are to deal with questions of labor and capital, should be of the same character, I would suggest the printing of the whole in book form, and the scattering of them broadcast over New Zealand. The articles have this in their favor, that they deal with stern facts, and are full of the philosophy of common sense. For this reason I humbly think they might be useful to a large class of the people who are as yet unprejudiced, but not very well informed. Another class of persons we have amongst us I knew, whom you are not likely to reach. They are beyond the reach of reason, I fear. They are like the Scotch boy, who, when asked how far he had learned his Catechism, replied, " I am past Redemption." Our socialistic fadists of the extreme type are, I suspect, " past redemption." Of this latter class you have a fair -pecimen in your correspondent of this morning, " Lover of Liberty." Any man who can believe tbat it is "a great fundamental law of science that everything is new " —that nothing has yet been learned in science, tliat she has no established facts in her possession—is the very man, of course, who could easily construct a theory of socialistic economy without regard to the induction cf facts, either from past history or present experience. Any man who can seriously believe that all men are equal, and thereforeequallyentitled to share in the outcome of the nation's industry, which is its wealth, is simply the victim of a hallucination. Ir other words, the man who can believe that, in this matter-of-fact world of our», the intemperate, the dishonest, the idle, and tbe incompetent could by any process of cardshuffling or socialistic legerdemain, be made to share in common with men of integrity, sobriety, industry, and intelligence is more likely to yield to the curative treatment of a Bedlam than to your logic or mine.

Speaking of the notion that all men are equal, I have just been wondering when we shall find in this colony a politician bold enough to expose the shallowness of this thing. ,The phrases " Universal suffrage," " Manhood suffrage," " One man, one vote," have come to be regarded as expressive of a received maxim. But this maxim, sir, however popular, covers a grave logical fallacy, and also involves a gross political injustice. During the last election I saw some of the veriest clods steeped in alcohol, picked up at hotel doors and driven in spring traps to the polling booths—each of them to exercise as much voting power as the most industrious, intelligent, and deeply interested colonist ! Comment is unnecessary ; for no one believes this to be either athingof justice or common sense. The broad fact is that all men are not equal, never have been, and I never will be in this world. And as long as this colony proceeds on the supposition that the most ignorant, worthless and vicious man, who does not care a sixpence for New Zealand as long as he can protect his own skin, has as much right to a voice in the government of the country as the most industrious and intelligent man—the man who has spent his life and energies in the country, and has his all at stake in its prosperity, I say that as long as this colony adheres to such a maxim of folly and injustice it must lay bare its back to the scourge of political adventurers, and these perhaps, as " Lover of Liberty " would put it, continuing to develop in new forms "ad infinitum."—Yours, &c, Studio.