THE SECOND BALLOT BILL.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 315, 30 September 1908, Page 6

THE SECOND BALLOT BILL.

Many .people will read the report of yesterday's discussion upon the Second Ballot Bill, as doubtless many, members listened intently to it, in the hope of discovering the secret motive of the Prime Minister in introducing' the clause which strikes a deadly blow at popular freedom and the' liberty of the press. But Sir Joseph Ward keeps his motive well concealed. That the clause is aimed at some particular person or newspaper, or is designed to meet some particular <sase, few people will doubt who remember the Bill—the Criminal Code Amendment, No. 2,. 1005—which the late Premier introduced for the' ostensible purpose of removing an abuse, but the only apparent effect of which was the "gagging" of a certain individual who had embarked on a crusade against a member of the Government! There is no occasion to repeat the arguments which practically every reputable journal in the Dominion has urged against this Bill. What more need be said than that the Ward Government is striving to carry a proposal that no Government with any respect for itself would in any pther British community daro to bring forward? The Prime Minister actually had the effrontery to say that " not all the Opposition papers had opposed tho ' B a Sclause." Will ho name one paper of any standing, even in the Miniaterialist section of the press, which has not condemned that clause? He cannot. Even tho most staunch of the Ministerialist journals have revolted against the proposal. Ho stated, too, that he had furnished Mr. Massey with an advance copy of the obnoxious clause. This Me. Massey bluntly denies, and the Prime Minister- failed to rebut the denial. He said that the clause had not been hurried through the House. It is notorious, and it' can bo' proved, that the clause was passed before tho tired members had understood it, or, in some cases, even read it. The fate of the clause is still in doubt. If the correct Parliamentary practice is followed, it cannot be cxciscd oxcept by rejecting the whole Bill. Tho Government may make up its mind that the abandonment of tho Bill will be a small loss to it compared with the punishment that will fall upon the . authors of tho most disgraceful subversion of popular rights recorded in the history of the Dominion. The public is awake. '