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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9244, 22 December 1888, Page 4

Hitherto our city has been happily distinguished for kindly consideration for the Salvation Army. But from the proceedings narrated in another column it would appear that the police contemplate. thM hAi-i'vinff persecution wnicn

has been extended to this organisation in certain other parts of the colonies. Wo think it should be known that this is not in accordance with the sentiments prevalent among the people of this city, in relation to the Salvation Army. It is, of course, advisable that this body of workers in the by-ways of social life should cause no obstruction in tho public thoroughfare ; but they have clone more good in the time during which they have been in Auckland than the police have over done, and are much more deserving of the confidence of the people as an agency in promoting the peace and order and moral good of the neglected classes ; and we do not hesitate to say that if the police contemplate raiding the Salvation Army they will have public opinion to answer to, and that is a force before which even the police must bow. The case brought before the Court yesterday Against tho Salvation Army was 'a vain ped-u pone. They were creating no obstruction. A man driving furiously past was subsequently the cause of an accident, for which he was since punished ; and tho evidence showed that he was solely responsible for tin* _ occurrence ; and he gratuitous otliciousness of a policeman merely was the cause of a. charge against the Army being brought before the Bench. With casuals on the Bench, ai>y vagaries in the administration of justice need not create surprise ; but this city has seen the good works done by the Salvation Army, and some very' evil works done by the police sometimes in arbitrarily arresting innocent persons, who have obtained no redress ; and we mistake the temper of the people of Auckland if they will allow the police to harry me Salvation Army. That organisation is one of the products of the social development of modern times. It directs its attention to the classes that have been too much neglected by the Churches and by society in the past; and which, being so neglected, have furnished the major part of larrikinism and crime. To the reform of those classes, and their elevation in the religious and social series the Salvation Army have directed their attention with indisputable success ; and, if their methods are not conventional, it is because the conventional and dignified methods of the Churches have been, in relation to these classes, a failure. So far the Salvation Army, notwithstanding some eccentricities, have been successful ; and their successes and their humane and merciful and good works among the outcasts of society are before our eyes, and are appreciated by all the right-thinking or our citizens— even although, peradventure, they may not have attained to the elevation of the moral conceptions of a policeman.