TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 115, 17 May 1909, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Is the Basin, of history memory, to be bisected? Is the reBisecting the lentless "cutting up" Basin? to blur out the people's green ? Probably, afc the City Council's next meeting, a committee will submit a report on the question whether, on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number,. Ihe electric cars should be taken straight through the playing field, and from what we can remember of the councillors' attitude we are inclined to believe that the recommendation will favour the splitting of the square ten acres into two rectangles of five acres each. The advocates of the straightening process will plead that the cost of keeping the reserve intact is too heavy, in time and money. They will point to the wear and tear of material on the sharp curves, and the extra minutes that the deviation involves. It is rather a pity that the subject was not conspicuously raised prior to the municipal elections, for it was a matter on which the people concerned should have been competent to give their prospective representatives a lead. If the people were prepared to pay the price of wholeness for the Basin, the council's thought would have now been diverted from pieces. If they had shown a, willingness to sacrifice tramway service for field service, the council's task would have been made light. But it is not altogether too late for the citizens to make known thenwishes. The signs point to a bisection —they point to a municipal decision that the claims of the aesthetic are weighed down by the "practical"— but even if the lovers of an undivided Basin are not strong enough t o ward off the track-layers, they should be able to win over a strong enough body of opinion to safeguard the green halves against obliteration by public buildings for which sites can be found elsewhere. They should insist on two halves of green if the picks and shovels are ordered to imake a lino of division. The large .Labour" contingent returned to the House of Commons at Democratic the last general election Progress. has made it far less like 4, rich man's club chan it used to be, and the same democratic movement which brought this change about is bound to bring others in its train which will make the Mother of Parliaments still less club-like in its appearance. One of these inevitable changes was foreshadowed in a cable message from London last week. The motion, not of a Labour member, but; ot one of the Liberals, affirming the principle that members should be paid, has been carried in the House of Commons by 242 votes to 92. This is, of course, not the first time that the principle has been thus affirmed. In Mr. Gladstone's last Parliament a similar resolution was twice passed, but the majorities were not large, the fio- U re« being 276 to 229 in 1893, and 176 to 158 in 1895. Better majorities have since been eacnred, but none, unless we are mistaken, has been so overwhelming as that reported last week. A verdict of 242 votes to 92 must at any rate be accepted as conclusive ; especially when the adoption of the principle affirmed would merely bring the House of Commons into line with practically all the Assemblies which have been modelled upon it throughout the world. Democracy has found its way on to the green benches, and no aristocratic broom can ever sweep it out again. Why, then, should not democracy establish the principle realised by every other good master, and treat its servants as wortny of their hire? Portugal, once in the front rank of European Powers and a Perturbed centre of empire, occupies Portugal, a very subordinate position in our own day. Its great epic poet, celebrating its glories in the Lusiad, in his enumeration of the world-powers of his day, of which, of course he rated his own nation chief, did not think it worth while even to mention Britain ; but relative values have changed since he apostrophised the king to whom his great work was dedicated as the monarch on whose dominions the sun never set. That" king added nothing to the glory of his country's history, and from his reign its period of decadence is commonly dated. Today, few in Britain, whose travels or whose interests, commercial or political, havo not brought them into contact with the country, know anything of Portugal or the Portuguese, and no European language is so neglected. But for the immortal work of Camoens, and the commercial importance of Brazil, it would be even less known than it is. As for the old empire, it is no more. The colonial sceptre has passed from the two great Powers who shared ii three centuries ago, and though their languages abide in the New World their authority is gone. Men are asking now whether in Portugal the Thione also is doomed. From the time of the French revolution popular republican movements have had to be reckoned with, and various crude and futile constitutional experiments were tried during the first half of the last century. Destructive civil wais followed the Peninsular campaigns, and not until the great crucial year of 1848 was there anything like settled administration in the kingdom. The murder of the late King Carlos and the Ciown Prince, though it came as a shock to the world, was no surprise to those who knew the conditions of the country, the personal 1111popularity of the monarch, and the .strength and determination of the revolutionary element, especially in the cities. The lot of the young King Manuel and his successive ministers Ikm, not been enviable; discontent is widespread ; representative government is illusory, and the elections are shamelessly "gerrymandered," Less than three months ago, tli© horrible carnivnl travesty of tho

massacre of the late King' and Prince threw a lurid light on the popular sentiment of the capital. Saturday's cable news recorded the formation, under Wenceslau De Lima, of a non-party cabinet containing the most independent and safest statesmen available, and significantly added that "this is the last chance of governing with the present Chamber." It looks as if further trouble were in store. Far away, beyond the tracks that the liners cut between Where is that continents and the Happy Land 1 fragments of continents, there is a happy l.md, in the mind's eye. It is the home (call it Goldsbourne) of driven capital, the cash said to be bundled out of many industrial temples in many lands. A partner in a British firm declares, according to cabled news today, that "the Budget will tend to drive capital abroad." Last week, it was inferred by one critic, Labour legislation was to play the officious policeman in Australia, and "move on" capital that was loitering in the Commonwealth. For years and ye"ui-s, say some politicians, capital has been driven from New Zealand. Poor capital has been turned out of hearth and home, under various skies, and has it found no place to lay its weary golden head? Surely there must be a "Goldsbourne" in the regions beyond the cast of even the boldest of oidinary rovers of the sea, a fair island where no budgets abound, no tariffs, no Governments, no Opposition 110 statutebooks, no Hansards — nothing but capital, resting from all oppression, free from all subtraction and subdivision, and revelling eternally in the glories of addition and multiplication. There the shade of Midas, whose touch turned all to gold, may be the ruler of the peaceful realm, and the golden goose, laying aureate eggs all day long, may be' the chief figure in the dazzling court. There, too, surely abide the gold-amassing creatures described by dear old Mandeville and other chroniclers, and no pirate from the civilised world sets foot on the moneyed shore to rob them. There, too, may be the garden of the Hesperides, with the tree of golden apples, and no covetous Hercules may bear away any of tho crop. Are there no Drakes, no Hakluyts, no books to locate "Goldsbourne" and chart the way thither ? , Three or four weeks ago it was reported that "since the sup-. Oral Wagers, pression of betting in New York " a sum of about £10,000 had been cabled out daily for investment on races in England. The punters, and the persons whom punters loyally and royally support (the bookmakers) were under the impression that the Legislature had banned wagering from the turf, but the courts, the interpreters of the law, think otherwise,, states a message to-day. The wigged and gowned readers of the legislative mmd — sometimes a difficult Arabic book, as New Zealanders know— rule that the law merely prohibits the registration of bets. It iorbids the pencilling on material notebooks, but does not lorbid stencilling on the tablets of the mind. The cash fielders may roar the odds, and money may be paid to them in envelopes, I or they may similarly hand it £ut, but provided the bet is not " registered," nobody is liable to. prosecution. Presumably the punter who passes in an envelope does not wholly trust to the memory of his beneficent friend, the bagman. He no doubt puts sufficient marks outside and in to defeat the law but safeguard his own interests and the interests of the metallician, no longer a " bookmaker," but an envelope collector. Thus the law, as interpreted by the courts, is designed to discourage " bookmaking " technically, but not bet-making per envelope or word of mouth. It is something of a reduction to an absurdity. Did that report about " capital driven out of the country," to the extent of £10,000 a day, have anything to do with the interpretation ? Will the Legislature make the letter of the law harmonise with the spirit which it was supposed to possess at the outset? it seems to be another of the many American legislative comedies, in which the drastic easily becomes plastic in the legal machine. Two causes may reasonably be assigned for the comparatively Russian Police light sentence imMethods. posed upon Lopukhin, the late head of the Russian secret police, a sentence which, as it still awaits imperial ratification, may not, after all, be carried into effect. One reason may be what in Britain would be called "influence," and in America "pull." The accused is a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished Russian families, which counts for a great deal. But more weight may attach to the consideration that he and the witinessep for and against, know too much. Already, according to the cable messages, the press is protesting against the suppresion of evidence concerning the crimes committed and engineered by Azeff, Lopukhin's confederate, who is now hiding' somewhere from the vengeance of the revolutionary bodies whom he betrayed. It is also complained that the accused was deprived oi his legal light of speech, in defending himself against the charge of treason. In face of these facts it seems undeniable that the secret police do not dare to have their methods investigated in open court. They have the most potent of all reasons to "love darkness rather than light." It is impossible for a detective department to fall to lower depths than to engineer "pogroms" against the Jews and plots against the lives of dignitanes from, the Tsar downwards, that they may drag suspects into their net. What were the results in this case? A chief of police not only accessory to murderous revolutionary plots and assisting the conspirators to the very eve of intended execution, but ■exercising his intellect to devise new ones; a trusted agent of revolution, betraying his com- 1 rades by thousands to imprisonment and death, and working in partnership with a chief detective who holds his life in his hand. Moreover, it was not alwayg quite safe to apply the brake at the exact moment, and the slightest delay might mean the success of the conspiracy. Wherefore, it seems, that there lies jointly at the doors of Lopukhin and Azeff a large measure of responsibility for the deaths of the Grand Duke Sergius, Plehve, Father Gapou, and many others, while ever' a police-nursed plot against the Tsar's life came within an ace of success. Little wonder that Nicholas has "nerves" when his protectors are as dangeious as his open enemies. Little wonder, too, when such aie the recognised official methods, that the mouths of witnesses in the courts of law are closed.

Owing to tho severe weather conditions pi availing on Saturday afternoon, the riile match. Wellington Highland titles versus H.M.S. Challenger, was abandoned. The following meiabeis of the Highland Rifii's have received the Government gold service stars :—Colourfcergeant M'Donald, Sergeant Gardiner, Lance-Corporal Grant, and Private, M'Lean. Government marksmen's badges have been gained by Captain MycDairmid, Colour-Sergeant M'Donald, Seigeants Gardiner, M'Millan, Marsden, and M'Ardle, Corpoials Dob"son, Shannon and Corbett, and Private^ lb unison, Eves, and M'Leap.