The Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1895

Evening Post, Volume XLIX, Issue 114, 15 May 1895, Page 2

The Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1895

c OBEYING THE LAW. i ♦ l< If fishes had bad votoa we feel oertain the 1 peouliar regulation made under the Sea ' 7 Fisheries Act, and to which on a former t oooasion we have referred, would never have ? been submitted to the Governor for Ins Big3 nature. The fact that shop assistants have 3 votes has made the Minister of Labour care- % ful in dealing with the Auokland agitation. i For the Government to pose as obedient to t the law is pure bunkum. What is } the position ? The shopkeepers believed c that the Gazette notice was illegal, that no 3 Conference had met and properly fixed i Saturday. Whether that was so or not the shopkeepers were advised could only be ■ tested in the Supreme Court by a motion or proceeding in the name of the AttorneyGeneral. Permission to use the nime of the Attorney-General has been given scores of times in the colony, and haa never previously been refused. But Ministers refused it in this instance. They would notallow the question whether Saturday had or had not been properly appointed to be tested in the Supreme Court. Obedtonoe to the law was a mere secondary question with them. The Trades Council and some of the shop assistants demanded Saturday, and to them, as has been usual, the Minister of Labour made a profound obeisance, and the question as to the validity or legality of the Saturday halfholiday was not allowed to be tested. The shopkeepers have been adviaed that no day ' hats been legally fixed. Till tbat question has been authoritatively settled there is no disobedience to the law. It is the Government, may be, that is breaking the law, in attempting to force shopkeepers to keep ac a holiday a day never set apart for the purpose. We believe that if , as is always done in England and other oivilised countries where there is freedom, permission to nse the Attorney-General's name to test the legality t of the Saturday half-holiday had been granted, and if the Supreme Court had > decided that Saturday had been properly appointed, there would have been no trouble t in Auckland. But can the shopkeepers be blamed, when some of the ablest counsel in ) Auckland have advised them that Satnri day has not ia Auakland been properly or legally made a holiday, for refusing to be i bound by an illegal Gazette notioe? That is r the whole point. It should not be forgotten 3 tbat the provions notice was held by the Magistrate to be illegal, and that the * Minister of Labour had a new notice gazetted ; and whether this new notioe - issued about ten days ago, is legal, has not yet been deoided. A witty Frenchman said hypocrisy was the homage that vice \ paid to virtue, and that Ministers oaro ' J anything about obedience to law will not he believed by any one who knows their. , history. Did the appointment of Mr. William Fkasxr to the position of Sergeant-at-Arms show obedience to law? Has the deliberate setting auide of the Civil Servioe Reform Act shows obedience to , law? Has the non-pnblioation of the ' Publio Accounts shown obedience to law? Did the intimation to the Fort Chalmers deputation that the Sea Fisheries Act wonld - not be enforaed show obedience to law P We * venture to assert that no Ministry has ever so wantonly set aside the law whenever it became neoesßary to please its supporters, or to get votes by so-doing, as the present Ministry has done, and this talk now about obedienoe to law in the oase ' of the Auckland shopkeepers will not deceive anyone. The Premier conveniently forgets that whether Saturday is or is not a 8 legal half.holiday is the main question that the Auakland shopkeepers want authorita- * tively settled, and the Ministry so far has refused to give them the opportunity of having that deoided. It may be that it is Ministers who are not obeying the law, but who are attempting to enforoe illegally and improperly the observance of a day that has not by law been deolared to be the halfholiday.