A JUDGE ON DIMINISHING CRIME.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12704, 12 March 1904, Page 2 (Supplement)

A JUDGE ON DIMINISHING CRIME.

Mr Justice Bigham, addressing the grand jury at the Birmingham Assizes, said wherever he had gone on the Midland Circuit he found diminution of crime. He did not think it was difficult to find a cause tor this happy state of things. In the last forty o£ fity years there had been great solicitude for the health of the people They lived in better surroundings. Legislation had protected them against overwork and too early work. They were also better educated, and wealth had enormously increased, indicating good employment and good wages. “We were certainly richer now than we ever were before.”

PARTY BADGES. Whig and Tory as party appellations have fallen, the former completely, the latter comparatively, into desuetude. Of Democrats and Aristocrats as parties we never hear, and the Levellers have become Socialists or I.L.P. We hear less and less, too, of Conservative and Radical. Liberal and Unionist seem to be the accepted current term. In a political article of a column and a quarter in the “Times” recently, the word Conservative occurred but once, and only as defining a section of ihe Unionist party. It is curious how these party descriptions arise. Whigs were first so described as a term of opprobrium. The word is a contraction of Whigamore, which name applied to an uprising and raid in 1648. To the opposite party the name Tory was given by wav of likening it to certain Irish outlaws who went by the name of “Toree.”. “Liberal,” as a party denomination, was borrowed from Lord Byron, who used it as the title of a paper he founded; while Conservative became the label of those opposed to the Reform Bill of 1852. Free trade versus Protection gave names of a day, but it is not impossible that some lasting party title will be evolved from the current controversy. The Home Rule proposals brought forth the Unionist party, just as, half a century earlier, the advanced spirits of the Whig party dubbed themselves Radical Reformers. The Liberals absorbed the Whigs, as the Conservative party did the Tories. Now, taking the “Times” for guide, the Unionist party is to do the same in point of title for the Conservative party.