The Dominion. TUESDAY, JUNE 2. 1908. THE CASE OF MR, DIXON.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 213, 2 June 1908, Page 6

The Dominion. TUESDAY, JUNE 2. 1908. THE CASE OF MR, DIXON.

Like many a thing that is worth a smile, ..tho demonstration in honour of Mil. Dixon, of Drury, possesses an aspect of such sober significance that it must not bo neglected. To speak of Mr. Dixon as a " conquering hero," and of his imprisonment as his " noble sacrifice in the causo of freedom and in fighting the battle of the employers of the Dominion," is, of course, absurd. TU battle of tho employers certainly needs fighting, and freedom needs protection against Labour lawlessness backed up by Ministerial neglect. But other weapons are necessary than indignant and illused men who elect to go to gaol rathjr • than pay the monetary penalty o'f their resistance to the law. The case of Me, Dixon is a hard one: the harder because, if the Government had had the courage to pass the Arbitration Amendment Act of -last'year, he would have been free from any voracious demand for back pay. But that by no means converts him into a martyr. That tho law is bad—so bad that the Government intends, or at any rate proposed last year, to remove the particular unfairness resented by Me. Dixon—does not alter the situation. Nor pan the suggestion be, entertained that the protection of Me. Dixon from an admittedly unjust enactment would have been a small grace on tho part of a Government which had'already grossly violated the fundamental law of British government by protecting a great body of offenders—tho aiders and abettors of strikes—from the punishment provided in the soundest and most salutary section'in the whole of our industrial legislation. It may be admitted that the friends of Me. Dixon have a grievanco against the Government for straining at the gnat of one little act of diplomacy after swallowing the carnel of an astounding illegality. But two wrongs do not make a right, and tho suspension of the law in Mr. Dixon's favour would have lost none of its impropriety through being tho complement of the grossly improper attitude of the Government in respect to the aiders and abettors of the Blackball strike. Tho special significance of tho demonstration in honour ol Jin, Dixon is its evidence of the public's in*

dign-ation at the wrong which has boon done to the country by the Government's misuse of its power. Had the Government always enforced the Arbitration Act with firmness and impartiality, Mil. Dixon would have received nobody's sympathy. Bands would not have played for him. He would merely have been a man who had chosen his own way of paying the penalty of his unfortunate collision with the law. As matters stand, he is a living testimony to the condition of things that has been created by the Government's truckling to Labour. While we may smile, therefore, at the enthusiasm of his friends, we cannot escape the significance of the incident as a remarkable public protest against the Administration that has turned New Zealand into the land in which men find it pays them to defy the law by going on strike. The public realises that Mil. Dixon was abandoned by the Government to the sharp edge of a law that it intends to repeal, and that it last year proposed to repeal, while the people who aided and abetted the Blackball strike have been permitted to escape the operation of an enactment that the. Government declares will' be strengthened .and made more effective.