The Dominion FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1907. THE DOCTRINAIRE IN POWER.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 20, 18 October 1907, Page 6

The Dominion FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1907. THE DOCTRINAIRE IN POWER.

The Attorney-General's winding-up speech in the second reading debate in the Legislative Council oil the Land and Income Assessment Bill deserves more notice than we were able to give it in our review of the debate last Wednesday. Taken in conjunction with certain proposals in the land programme now under discussion by Parliament, the speech is a singularly suggestive one, and throws a flood of light upon the attitude in which the land question was approached by the Government. We think we can show, from the Bills themselves that the Premier and his colleagues have ftirgotten that no legislative end shoulcl be sought if it can only be achieved by the abandonment of certain canons of 'sound government. The Bill of last year, the AttorneyGeneral explained, was such an inextricable tangle that he found it impossible to shear the injustices away, and yet arrive at the intended destination. Nobody has ever doubted that if the Government had , dropped the contentious tenure proposals of the Bill, it could have relied upon its majority to place the "limitation" proposals upon the Statute Book. The considerations which rescued the country from a bad and dangerous law, therefore, were not considerations of justice at all. Id. some important particulars, this year's Bills disclose this, same carelessness of sound principles in legislating to convert an academics-doctrine into statute law. The Land and Income Assessment Bill illustrates very, well the new teaching that St is unnecessary to pay attention to the funda T mentals of personal liberty in carrying out a desirable project. We have more than once shown that the retrospective clauses of that Bill fracture the rule that when a Legislature passes a law, creating a new offence it sliould not provide penalties for actions which were not offences before the law was passed. But the Government, in pursuit of its new order of things, has not failed to draft its proposals so as to avoid the evil of retrospective penal legislation, but has deliberately gone out of its way, expressly to introduce that bad principle. From that reckless action it is but a step to the denial of the root-principle that every man should have the opportunity of resorting to the existing system of laif to protect himself against injustice. This denial was made providing that a man penalised for evading the graduated tax cannot appeal to the courts of the laud. With a cynicism startling in its frankness, the Attorney-General argued that an appeal to a Supreme Court judge might upset the charge of evasion tliat would be sustained by a commissioner untrammelled by law! We have thus reached a point at which the permanent authority of the law must be expressly dethroned lest it should interfere with* the carrying out of a Government's momentary policy. The insincerity of the freehold " offer" and the Attorney-General's hint of a further and more drastic turn of the grad-uated-tax screw may bo passed here without further notice, but a word must be added upon the proposal that in granting the "freehold" the State shall so brarid the title of the land a." to prevent -its free subsequent disposal by its owner. Bad in-principle, this proposal will produce much, practical inconvenience to the converting lessee and to all subsequent owners of the land. The question presents itself: Are these serious infringements of natural rights and legal canons the product of short-sightedness or of deliberate intention ? The confidence with which last year's Bill was introduced, in spite of its hopelessly dangerous character, makes it easily credible that this year's Bills were drafted without a full realisation of all their consequences. I(j seems more likely, however, that the steam-roller tactics were selected with open eyes. There must be a just and equitable way of giving legislative effect to any good end, and certainly to such a good end as the promotion of a sound scheme of land settlement, and it is according as that- way is found or not that one knows the statesman from the doctrinaire. A year's serious thinking_ would surely find the way; but Ministers-have chosen the easier method, and their violations of the recognised canons of justice must weaken their credit with all thinking people.