NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1257, 12 October 1911, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

-9 1 The Auckland Tlerald hits the Parncll nail right on the head in a sentence that is as pithy a summary of a political position as wc remember ever to have read : Tho wholo position is paradoxical. A politician who has never been elected to Parliament, but has taken part in tho Govornment for years, comes to a constituency with which he has not the remotest' personal connection, and claims its support because ho proposes to set right a series of bad policies for wliich tho Government ho belongs to is mainly responsible. That sums up the Attorney-General's candidature just perfectly. But we may also cast a thoughtful eye upon the details of his Parnell speech. At one point, so we find in the extremely full report of the Herald, he cast all restraint aside in his appeal to local feeling. Parnell would be the greatest commercial and industrial centre in the Dominion. He assured the electors that if ho were elected he would do his best, etc., etc., etc. The workshops at Newmarket must be enlarged. They would have the greatest export wharf. "It required no prophetic vision to see that Parnell would soon become one of the greatest centres of industrial activity in the Dominion." "The man who represented Parnell could look forward to being of greater service than in representing any other constituency." At this point a parenthesis tells us that the audience had sufficiently recovered from its stupefaction to contribute "cries of 'Oh!' and laughter." He hoped, the candidate went on, to have other opportunities of placing before them further cardinal principles of Liberalism. We are pleased that in his excitement and anxiety the Attorney-General admitted in this naive way that the cardinal principle is to promise anything and empty the soft-soap barrel every time. We> should not be surprised if, in the cool of the next morning, the good folk of Parnell did not wonder a little why tho Attorney-General did not feel all this about Parnell in 1903 or 1909 or oven 1910. In another column we give some particulars of the_ Family Home Protection Bill which, Mr. Massey has introduced, and which, we have little doubt, and indeed, hope, he will have the pleasure of seeing appropriated by the Government if it should chance to return to power after the election. The principle of the Bill, which docs not lend itself to brief summary in this place, is sound and admirable, and is not one to divide political parties: ultimately Sir JosErH Ward, if he continues in office, or Mr. Massey, if the fortunes of war go that way, will be applauded !for passing the Bill, or the substance of it, into law. The thing to be noted is the deep and essential difference between this proposal and any ordinary measure of "social reform" proposed by the Radical doctrinaire. The doctrinaire- * great sin is that ho leaves life out of his account: he fancies that men and women can be made happy, and society set in the right direction, by abstract fiscal and economic expedients, and he will force his theories upon mankind by any means —in Franco ho did it by means of the guillotine. Wc have frequently quoted a very fine saying by a good human Radical, Mr. Stephen Reynolds, in the Socialist New Age of June 2,. 1910. "I have read in your columns," he told the Editor, "Socialistic schemes which give one the shivers and make me savage; for they deal with the life, however imnerfert it is, that I and those I carc for live, The greatest tjTann^"—

and this is a sentence that cannot ba too much pondered—"to beware of in the next era is that of the intellectuals ordering other people's lives— they arc so well-intentioned and so cruel." Burkf, had long ago said the same thing in his own manner in his Tetter In a .\obtc Lnnl. The principle of Mr. Massey's Bill is, not an abstract ordering of other people's lives through fiscal or economic commands, but a recognition of a fact of human life that every good-hearted man of any experience has found and felt. The Bill aims at correcting the mass of law relating to property, not so as to touch the sound underlying principles of that mass, but so as to square it with human needs. As it stands, the laws relating to property are a machine that trample sometimes upon the family; Mb. Massey's Bill protects the family from the machinery. It is not because of its author that we have thus noticed the Bill—we should applaud the Prime Minister (and S9 would Mr. Massey) if he took it up—but becausc of its illustration of the difference between really human reform legislation and the abstract tyrannies of the Jacobin "reformer." London was much interested the other day by a sporting match between a clergyman and one of his parishioners. Wc need only give the tacts, we think, for thoughtful people to draw out their significance. Me. Reuben Websdal, an agricultural labourer of Tivctshall, St. Margaret, challenged the rector of St. Margaret's Church to "swap jobs" for a day. The rector accepted the challenge, and suggested that the "swap" should take place on the following Saturday, the stake to be a week's wages on either side. The rector made several concessions to Mr. Websdal, stipulating only for a time-table of the labourer's duties. He supplied his own time-table, as follows: 9.30-10—Retranslation of English into Greek. 10-11.30—Oecumenical documents of the faith. Keviso the "definition" of tho Council of Chalcedon.' 11.30-12.30—The Ilomo-ousion and tho Constautinopolitan symbol. 12.30-1 —Tiio "liapax legomena" of tho Apocalypse. 3-s—House-to-house visiting in 'St. Mary's. G-G.3o—Writo out notices for church porches and chcoso hymns for Sunday. G.30-9—Prepare two sermons and a children's address. The challenge was posted up in the church porch, and Websdal backcd out. If only glib ignorance could always be thus forced to back out!