SINLESS SYDNEY. New Zealand's Example.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 290, 20 January 1906, Page 6

SINLESS SYDNEY. New Zealand's Example.

WE are accustomed to regard Sydney as the least holy of all colonial cities, and Adelaide as, in very fact, "the Holy City." It is astonishing, therefore, to read the cable referring to the fact that the Adelaide Japanese Consul, while in Sydney, could not entertain his friends at his hotel, and had to drag them about the streets ; was not permitted to smoke m Hyde Park; and was ordered to drive at a walking paco past a church ! Which is probably very true indeed, and shows how the sweet, soft influence of New Zealand is percolating even the sin-hardened hide of Sydney. • * * "Such Pharisaism does not make for a robust nation/ said the distinguished visitor, which shows that the aforesaid distinguished visitor doesn't know what he is talking about. You will note that he was a visitor. Therefore, the hotel licensees didn't know whether he was a police officer, a spy, or what not. This licensing law has been made both here and in Sydney, and it will be observed both here and there — while the police are looking on. • • • The i,ew South Wales people or the New Zealand people are not Pharisees — but the authorities are the highest type of this class of people. Official silliness does not make a whole people silly. It makes the whole people laugh at it, and go away to break another silly law. In New South Wales a man may be still hanged for sheep-steal-ing. He may be put m gaol for seven years for following his occupation on Sunday, but he can follow anybody else's occupation. • * * Of course, the liquor law ordnance that prevents both New South Wales and New Zealand boarders from using an hotel as they would their own home is, and always will be, ridiculous, and will never be observed except when the police are looking, or the goody-goodites are nosing around. For a man to have no place on earth but an hotel to take his friends to is hard enough, but not to be able to' take them there, and to be compelled to drag them — we will say — up and down Cubastreet for half-a-day, is the punishment of Tantalus. • • • And what is going to be done to make laws less silly, and politicians more sane? Absolutely nothing. These things run m cycles. People want Labour rulers one week, and capitalistic rulers another. They howl for water to-day. To-morrow they cry for beer. They rave for Sunday trams here, and cry them down elsewhere. In fact, public opinion is unstable as water, and politicians, in trying to> follow the trend of public opinion, make a statute book a thing of shreds and patches, which annoys Japanese visitors, and makes them write to the papers. • • • Stupid laws don't make us holy — they only frighten us, and make U 3

wicked. The fact that a man cannot take a visitor into his hired sit-ting-room in an hotel on a Sunday does not make you, or your visitor ajiy more moral or holy, and it does not make you a Pharisee, or rob the nation, of its independence. The nation three times out of four climbs in the back way. And the law remains a h'ass, to use the memorable language of Tony Weller.