The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1908. THE OPPOSITION RALLY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIX, Issue 14609, 17 February 1908, Page 6

The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1908. THE OPPOSITION RALLY.

The Opposition held what our prohibitionist friends would call a "rally" in Mr Maasey's constituency on Saturday. It was really an affair of tea and cakes, but the leader of the Opposition and some of his henchmen gave it a political significance by delivering speeches. Reading the- Press Association's sympathetic report of those speeches, we marvel more than ever that there should be people in New Zealand willing to hand over the management of the country's affairs to the speakers. We do not marvel that the Conservatives should have remained so long in opposition. Mr Massey himself considered that the occasion demanded generalities, as indeed it did, but we look in vain for any expression of political principles. He did say, it is true, that " he wanted this country to become one of the fairest and freest on God's earth, where there should be no extremes of wealth or poverty, where the man who had energy would be given the opportunity of coming to the front." But he quite omitted to say what principles would guide him in preventing the wealthy from becoming wealthier and the poor poorer. During all the history of New Zealand since 1900 have we onco found Mr Massey's party advocating one single honest measure for the better distribution of wealth? Have we once found it departing from its settled policy of securing the wealthy man in the possession of his special opportunities to become wealthier? Has it ever given its 'acquiescence to a measure designed to assist the poor man iu "coming to the front?" Has it once ventured to oppose its friends, the great land-owners? Mr Massey did once, we know, advocate an increase in the graduated land tax as a method of checking the aggregation of estates, but his party declined to follow him, and when his friends remonstrated with him he made a prompt and ignominious recantation. "We find him now declaring that the question of the da> is " whether a man should be allowed to reap the reward of his industry, or whether, by taxation or other method.?, he should be compelled to share the fruits of his hard labour with others less industrious or less energetic." This is the sort of specious nonsense that we have learned to expect from Opposition speakers. There are men who labour honestly and industriously every day for a mere pittance, and must continue to labour for this miserable reward because they havo never had the opportunity to use their strength and their ability for their own enrichment. To hear the leader of the Opposition talk, wo might imagine that lucky speculation was " hard labour," or that it was "hard labour'.' to inherit a hundred thousand pounds. The intention of progressive taxation, in any case, is not to make a wealthy manshare his wealth with other people, but to make the wealthy man contribute to the cost of administering the country in proportion to his ability and the magnitude of his property. Mr Bollard, who followed his leader, has visions of 10,000,000 people engaged in rural ocupations in New Zealand, 10,000 of them owning the land, we suppose, and the others working for them. How many people would Cheviot be supporting now if the Opposition had had its way? . All these Oppositionists are fond of talking about " the rising tide of Socialism," but we observe that they never venture to condemn the measures that have the slightest socialistic tinge. State ownership of telegraphs and railways. State advances to settlers, and State supervision of the meat' trade, are examples of national co-operation, and to that extent they are socialistic. But there is not a constituency in the colony in which an Oppositionist would now venture to condemn such enterprises. Honesty is the last virtue we

can credit to these politicians. Ml Lang boasted that he could find six Opposition members who would conduct the business of the country as efficiently as do the eight Liberal Ministers. Happily, the experiment is never likely to bo tried, but it would be quite in keeping with Mr Massey's policy to make- the reduction of the Ministry one of the planks in his platform. It the promise were ever kept it would doubtless be by abolishing all the departments that have been created pinco the seven members o-f the lsst Conservative Ministry were in office. Sir Harry Atkinson's colleagues had no Railway Department, no departments of Agriculture, Labour, Public Health, and Industries and Commerce to engage their attention, no advances to settlers, no tourist resorts, no workmen's homes, no great land purchases to supervise. Probably the work of administration has been trebled in the last twenty yeans, and yet Mr Langthinks that he and five others could carry it out efficiently!