LOCAL OPTION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10216, 9 December 1893, Page 6

LOCAL OPTION.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sib,— Your correspondent W. L. Duncan, in your Tuesday’s paper, alludes to the “ fallacy”, of local option, and although a red-hot Radical, as he puts it, is afraid the people cannot be trusted to manage their own affairs. Be says, “ Let the principle of local option be established, and where will it end ?” in the improved condition of local affairs all round. When we can remedy _ abases, glaring abuses, on tho spot, local interests will be felt that are now dead. What we want is a larger increase of local government, and less of a central one. Only by this means can the vicious system of nomineeism cease. I allude principally to tho appointment of Magistrates and Legislative Councillors, as at present, by the Government. A late M.H.R. told me that the Government had written to him asking the names of auy persons he could recommend as Magistrates. At the first blush this appears very nice and confiding, but my friend told me he had declined, aa it might fetter his action. It might bo an attempt to catch his support, but it shows how we get our J.P.’s, and a precious lot wo shall have over us soon, after all this electioneering. It ia useless for the people to object; they are mere counters in the game. Under local option all this would be done away with, and a grand riddance, too. Those who have fought this local option in Christchurch, or local government ia the batter term, aa applied to public-houses only, would have had more sympathy from me had they taken a much broader view. They have told us that drunkard's spend the money of their families ia public-houses, and there stop. Why have they not carried tho illustration on to the other magisterial public-house and seen the poor family still further bled by the money considered necessary to appease justice, to which ia added costs for collection out of all reason in proportion. They tell us that bad immoral characters are found too often at public-houses to decoy men to destruction pro tern in houses of infamy ; but why not follow a case on when Bach pests are taken by the police to the other public-housewhere money ia taken ia broad daylight as in some measure an equivalent (for on payment of an uncertain sum we know they are again free) money that was. possibly in the pocket of some up-couutry simpleton, money that no clean hands could touch, yet not top dirty for the public puree. I could name other illustrations to the eame effect of thia result of nomineeism. I decline to believe the people of Christchurch ara willing parties to such facts; if they elected their own magistrate such things would seldom bo repeated. We should then have but one case of a man fined £lO for insulting a railway stationm aster, as recently occurred at Ashburton, and that where much provocation was admitted. But the magistrate is not responsible to anyone here for his action; he is a Government nominee. How interesting if someone would say how he became one. Elsewhere wo have a case of a poor woman sent to gad for three months for some trivial offence in a country township, and numbers of letters have apppeared in tho papers in protest. Nob a word of explanation lias .been given for ■such a freak of justice; the J.P. is unknown in hia secure nominee position, and is not accountable for any outrages. _ How strange, too, ia justice meted but, say in the case of personal assault. This is a form of treatment -that can be had by paying for it, always with: costs, be it remembered, provided always that no damnation or condemnation is used, then no money Is taken. Why not ? Can anyone give a sensible reason ? You can beat a man or woman with comparative impunity, but you must not curse or condemn. We have abundant evidence that our laws are quite equal to all occasions. Tho appointment ot Mr Martin as Resident Magistrate f6r Wellington is a great proof of this. Mr Martin’s reputation was made here before the Government nominated him, and it is no feather ia its cap. Ha wont to Wellington determined to make things better, and has done so. He took no new legal tools to work with; he simply need those ho found. We read in Wellington notes of August 29 last, c ‘ Mr. J. C. Martin, R.M., with the view o! ridding Wellington of rogues and vagabonds, has instructed the police to place several such characters who appeared before him to-day on board the steamer for Australia, and if they did not clear out a sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment would bo imposed.” Thia ia the sort of man we want all over Now Zealand, and is a fair sample of what we might expect under a local government power of appointment. These remarks of Mr Martin’s have been made much of all over New Zealand. Why ? Simply because of their novelty in the expressed determination of one Magistrate—a nominee—to do his bounden duty to the public. Let net Mr Duncan be afraid of local government. The mob rale he so much tears will never come under such a form. It is rather the out come of what we have at present, and I join him ia his words “God help as; no engine of tyranny has ever been half as destructive ” —as nomineeism.—l am, &c., W. A. SHEPHARD.