THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF CORRUPTION BILL.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 304, 17 September 1908, Page 6

THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF CORRUPTION BILL.

It is long sin™ the country witnessed a more deplorable exhibition of political degradation than the proceedings in the Legislative Council on Tuesday night. There was the spectacle of a solid body of " dummies" maintaining a firm silence and voting steadily for whatever the Attorney-General liked to propose; and the more courageous but. equally deplorable exhibition of Dr. Fjndwy and the Hon. J. E. Sinclair defending the gag clause of the Second Ballot Bill with arguments of a character wholly absurd and contemptible. No time need be wasted upon the details of the AttorneyGeneral's appeal for the protection of the hard-up candidate, against his wealthy opponent. The whole of that argument was shattered in a sentence by the Hon. J. B. Callan, who pointed out that if the rich man would have an unfair advantage between the ballots if speeches and meetings were permissible, " it would bo equally true of the whole campaign." The Attorney-General gave a new turn to his attack upon the honesty of the press. . Ho has discovered that a leading artielo may be a paid advertisement in disguise! But as he agreed to a kind of concession which may leave the press free to criticise between the ballots, we need not deal with the press-suppression proposal any further. There is one source of satisfaction in a situation otherwise wholly disquieting. The integrity of the licensing poll, at any rate, is not to be involved in the wholesale ruin of liberties. Had The Dominion not pointed out some days ago that the Bill might imperil this poll,' we probably should not have had the new clause, which clears away all doubt on the subject. When the • House can pass a Bill involving such a gravely injurious consequence as wo wero able to detect before it was too late, what becomes of the Attorney-General's content tion that the House had properly considered the Bill?

With the members who really believe that between the two polls " a blessed rest would be welcomed," we have 110 quarrel. They may be quite sincere in their singular belief. But what will amaze everybody is that the Hon. J. R. Sinclair could say that " the House really wished for the clause," when we all know that it was suddenly sprung upon the sleepy Oommittco in tho early morning and incorporated in the Bill before members had wakened to its significance. This is a trifle, however, bosido that passage of his speech in which Mr. Sinclair " reminded members of their summary, rejection of a Bijl to alter the constitution of the Council, and suggested that, they .should allow to the other, House the privilege which they had on that occasion claimed .for themselves." In this suggestion of accommodating political jobbery, the unfortunate public is ignored altogether. The Hon, J. B. Callan, who said "the Council should act from higher motives than mere courtesy to the other House," and that "the interests.of the electors must be considered first," is clearly as much out of touch with the spirit of Parliament as lie is in touch with' the feelings of the million or so outsiders who pay the salaries of tho 120 odd gentlemen who treat each other so considerately. But it is not worth while wasting space in refutation of the feeble sophistries and impossible pleas that make up the case for the Bill. Nor need anything be said of the members whlo silently voted as the Government directed regardless of their plain duty to safeguard the rights of the people. As for the member who, incapable of uttering one intelligent sentence in favour of the measure, yet strove to stifle the speech of the opponents of the Bill, he may be safely left to the judgment of the public.

What the public has to realise is this: that whether the press is free to criticise or not, the right of public meeting has been taken away. In India the Act to suppress seditious meetings is proclaimed only when the holding of meetings is' a peril to public safety and pcace. The Second Ballot Bill proposes to suppress public meetings when the necessity for holding meetings is most urgent. This is an infinitely greater evil than any gagging of the newspapers. Everybody knows that between the ballots any Government owing to its control of the public purse can, acting through its touts and organisations, lot a district understand' that certain benefits will accrue if such and such a candidate is elected. Corruption will be busy; slander will crawl abroad. The incentive to both will be infinitely greater between the ballots than prior to the first poll. The necessity for exposing corruption and slander is thorofore greatest just at the very time when the only means of exposure is to be taken away. If the Government desired to obtain a free hand for the uso of subterranean agents, it could have chosen no better means than those it has introduced in the form of the clauses violating the dearest rights of the community. Is the public in sympathy with this application to them of an engine of tyranny that no ment in any other British-speaking community would dare to employ 1 Do the people of New Zealand realise that this clause in tho Second Ballot Bill means the loss of tho right of free spcech—a right of which the.v have been robbed without a shadow of justification? One thing is assured, that when the country fully realises the effcct of the gag clausos of tho Bill, it will not soon forget that it was' the Ward Government that crushed the most saacd right of a British community.

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