A LAME DEFENCE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 948, 15 October 1910, Page 4

A LAME DEFENCE.

Oirß readers will probably wish to know what our morning contemporary_ had to say in reply to our article of .-Wednesday in which we showed that it had consciously misquoted a part-of Section 40 of the Land-Bill for-the purposes of its attack 'upon ' our demonstration that that .Section proposes- what is nothing less than the robbery of expropriated landholders. -Our contemporary's misquotation! appeared in this passage, of its Monday, article:

Lot:us examino tho process of spoliation under tho terms of tho Bill ■ in the case" of an estate valued at ,£IOO,OOO taken for' settlement. • The State would give tho owner equivalent to a debenture .bearing interest at the rate . of ■ per .cent or X 4500. a l ,year.,'. .'. Having received .WSOO a year for ton years, tho owner could then claim tho full capital sum (i! 100,000) from tho Crown, and in addition a premium of £12,500, .this being necessary to make up the "sum equivalent to the capitalised value of the rent calculated at 4 per cent." The portion of this, extract which appeare in inverted' commas so- appeared/in our contemporary,-and the only meaning to bo taken therefrom is, that it purported to bo a vorbatim extract from tno Bill. Tho only difference, and it ia the vital difference,

is that the Bill says five per cent and n,ot four per cent. This is how our contemporary, in its article of Thursday, faced its conviction of ■ having "faked" the Bill: ,

In connection with this phase of the matter we should, perhaps, say that a charge of dishonesty has been made against our explanation of the financial proposals of the Bill. To enable this to be fully understood we must explain that when the owner of an estate, taken on lease, demands that it be.purchased by. the Crown tha sum to bo paid him shall be equivalent to the capitalised value of the rent. This ; capitalisation appeared in the circulated copies of the Bill as 5 per cent, but since this boro error on its face—the annual rent paid by the Crown being per cent, and a 5 per. cent capitalisation being less than the declared capital value—we made inquiry and found that 5 per cent was a mistake for' 4 per cent, and the whole of our illustration proceeded upon this, the correct basis, of payment' to be proposed foi" the acceptance of Parliament instead of upon the .incorrect .basis' upon which our'friends have erected. a superstructure of . "rqbbery" and. adjectives.

In one way . this remarkable statement, appeals to: us. It .does seem' reasonable, that is, to say, that one should 'always .act; on the. theory theGovernment never mean's it: proposes in its Bills,' especially in connection.-with; the- land question. : But the'point at issue was, not what: the Government ought to have done or what the Bill ought to have said,but what the Government did do and what the Bill did say. Our. contemporary is really very foolish to/endeavour. to' deny, the plain; fact that, it A did—deliberately, ' as. its own; statement shows—resort to a misquotation with the dircct object' of imputing' dishonesty to .those who quoted : the Bill correctly/ Effrontery could hardly go farther. We have given publicity to tho incident not '.. because ~it matters very-' much ..what. our. morning contemporary says on any political question, but because, as straws show which way the wind blows, so the improper, ■tactics to which the. Ministry's-own newspaper is ready to resort indi-* cate very clearly the growing desperation of the Ministry, itself. >'y.