The Star. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1880. THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE GOVERNMENT.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 9, 12 May 1880, Page 2

The Star. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1880. THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE GOVERNMENT.

In the appropriations for last year, for the first time, we believe, since the foundation of the colony, a vote was taken for the unemployed. The question o£ how far Government relief is really desirable does not seem to have been fully considered. During the height of the distress which until lately has existed in Wellington, no one possessed of a reasonable amount of sympathy for the sufferings of his fellow-men, would undertake to criticise too minutely the theoretical aspect of the practice which has been inaugurated. However, it is now admitted that the number of unemployed has been vastly diminished, and that so far as the present is concerned, the worst of the difficulty has been tided over. The time has now come when the public should be called upon to face the position bravely, and earnestly to enquire whither the path upon which the Government have entered is likely to lead them. On December 13, Mr. Oliver explained that in regard to the vote of .£39,250 for the unemployed, =£19,269 of which had been expended, the sections " were undertaken to meet the necessity which had arisen owing to the depression in the labor market. The same thing had been done in other parts of

the colony. . . . The Government intended to keep on the system only while the necessity existed for it." This is, in our opinion, a very poor style of argument, if argument it can be called. Contrast it, for instance, with what J. Stuart Mill has to say on the subject : — " If the condition of a person receiving relief is made as eligible as that of the laborer who supports himself by his own exertions, the system strikes at the root of all individual industry and self-govern-ment ; and if|fully acted up to, would require as its supplement an organised system of compulsion for governing and setting to work like cattle those who had been removed from the influence of those motives that act on human beings." Elsewhere he says : — " Wlien the pay is not given for the sake of the work, but the work found for the sake of the pay, inefficiency is a matter of certainty. To extract work without the power of dismissal is only practicable by the power of the lash." Any one who is at all acquainted with J. S. Mill's writings, knows how earnestly and energetically he advocates the laborer's cause, and how anxious he shows himself that the poor should receive a full measure of justice from the State. Nevertheless, it is sufficiently evident that if his dictum upon this point is reliable, the present Government have been attempting an impossibility.

Within the next year or two, unless commercial matters improve greatly, we in New Zealand are unfortunately but too likely to have "the poor always with us," as Scxiptural authority warraht3 us in expecting will, under ordinary circumstances, always be the case. If this be so, it is highly necessary that both the public and the Government should examine into the question, and decide what course ought in future to be adopted. The original Poor Law Commissioners in England, by a careful collation of facts, first showed that "the guarantee of support could be freed from its injurious effects upon the minds and habits of the people, if the relief, thotigh ample in respect to necessaries, were accompanied with conditions which they disliked, consisting of some restraint upon their freedom, and the privation of some indulgences." This extract, and the abovequoted sayings of a great thinker, deserve to be carefully considered at a time when legislators in New Zealand have practically for the first time been suddenly brought face to face with one of the greatest problems of the day.