INDEPENDENCE!

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1182, 18 July 1911, Page 4

INDEPENDENCE!

We fear that Mr. Massey has caused our evening contemporary some little uneasiness by his rather pointed, though doubtless merited, strictures. In its issue of last evening it devoted something like a column of space in its leading columns to the task of replying to the half-a-dozcn lines in which the Leader of the Jicform party somewhat contemptuously expressed his opinion of its propensities for indiscriminate "nagging," and no doubt its readers wore properly ap-

preciative of the chance afforded them of learning what the attitude of iht'ir daily juurn.il on political questions really is. It would seem that the stage now reached by our contemporary as defined l>y itself .is that of an "Independent"—a most appropriate title, we should think, from a perusal of its leading columns. A few evenings ago, for instance, it published an article on the attitude, of the Opposition towards the borrowings of the Government, in which it. expressed approval of the fact that Mr. Massev had at last given the Government seme credit for its reproductive loans. It added that "while some of it [the 81 millions of borrowed money] may be said to have gone up in smoke, the bulk of it has not, but is represented by assets not much inferior to a balance at the hank." This is the view of the Government's borrowing and spending taken by our contemporary a few days ago. To show its "independence* , we may quote what it said on the same subject some little time ago :

"Our boasted buoyancy is really that of Mr. Micawber while he was blowing the proceeds of his last P.N. It is the buoyancy of borrowed money upon which must follow as the night upon the day a corresponding stringency and distress when the hour of reckoning comes. It Parliament: were to resign the function of a Board of Works and to reconstitute our antiquated and chaotic system of local government so as to allow these local works to be locally managed, the chiet temptation to profligate finance and political debauchery would be at an end. Without the very interesting explanation which it afforded its readers last evening there are many people no doubt who would be inclined to regard the somewhat apologetic attitude of our contemporary to-day towards the borrowing and spending of the Government as inconsistent with its previous fierce denunciation of the Government's profligate finance and as supporting Mn. Massey's view of the value of .its opinions. But if for "inconsistent" we read "independent" the difficulties of ouv contemporary can be readily overcome. A newspaper, or even a politician, may be Independent of logic; or Independent of previously expressed convictions on any given subject; or Independent of any greater purpose in life than to land on the safe side of the fence. In 1908, to quote another instance, our evening contemporary declared that "no longer is faith to be reposed in its (the Government's) promises —its time-serving actions tend always to the one end of retaining the power of government with as little trouble as possible." It said a week or two ago: "The. Government gets along by bowing io everything that it cannot bend and for some the bowing part of the business is that in which, it has chiefly shone"; and again "its lack of backbone was never more conspicuous." But our contemporary's sturdy "independence" of these and many other of its similarly expressed opinions of the Government is shown by its recent emphatic pronouncement regarding the Native land question, when it voiced its gratification that "the Government does not shrink from taking a perfectly firm stand against so monstrous a proposal (as the Reform party's policy) and it may be trusted not to waver while Sie James Carroll and Mr. Ngata retain their portfolios." Our contemporary's "independence," we fear, does not include any high regard'cither for consistency or for the principles which it. professes to stand for, for despite the. fact that it concluded a wholesale denunciation' of the Government with the exclamation: "Who other than a sharer of' the spoil can in these circumstances be expected to vote for the Government party as a party"; despite the fact that it declared that the Government, headed by Sir Joseph Ward, had been "steadily, descending the road of degeneration"; "it , now, as a salve to its own offended dignity, holds out the foolish threat that if it should find it necessary to throw in itfe lot openly with either party it may not be with the Reform party. We should imagine that the Reform party would welcome a definite pronouncement from our contemporary with much the same jubilation with which they found themselves definitely freed from any chance of association with the political extravagances of Mb. T. E. Taylor.