LOOKING BACKWARD.

Evening Star, Issue 8506, 4 May 1891, Page 3

LOOKING BACKWARD.

TO THE KDrrOB. gj K a mathematician once said of • Paradise Lost ’: “It is very beautiful, but it proves nothing.” Many of us, I have no doubt, to our sorrow, found out the same thing after being led away by the American s charming little brochure. On the advent of Parliament (and one of the most class Parliaments too) such thoughts are fairly permissible, Are we in this nineteenth century to retrace our progress by enacting the statutes of old? The price of labor, the cost of food, even the minutest interest could not escape the statute book. In the end, perhaps, right of conscience will be interfered with. Looking backward, what terrible blunders the leaders in the recent strikes made. Those memorable words, “ The art of governing is not learnt in a day,” should he written in letters of gold over all our schools. Force on the one side can only be met by force on the other. The antagonism of labor towards capital is truly lamentable and wholly unjustifiable. On the other hand, capital has its duties as well as rights towards labor in allowing its fair proportion to both. One hopes the coming Parliament will settle down to amicably formulate laws by which one of the grandest colonies of the Crown can develop to her true position. Let us bury the hatchet of the wretched past, and, soaring to the region of romance again, paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s paradox Tne artist is the creator of beautiful things and “ All art is quite useless ” into “ Pailiament can create useful legislation,” and “ all Acts of Parliament may be useless i a the wild goose chase of attempting to regulate capital and labor.” —I am, etc., Ldmpeb. Dunedin, May 2.