POLITICAL PERSECUTION IN NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10628, 17 December 1897, Page 3

POLITICAL PERSECUTION IN NEW ZEALAND.

TO THE EDITOIt. Sir,—Every lover of civil liberty and fair play will applaud Mr. Bollard's efforts to get a Civil Service Board appointed, so as to stop the political persecutions so lone and relentlessly carried ou by the present Government. If a powerful religious body persecuted a weaker one as the Government persecutes th( minority who differ from it, the civilised world would ring with cries of shame. Those of the workiog classes who receive Rifts from the Government at the cost of others of the working classes' should realise that the iujustice which has clouded the lives of their neighbours' children would at once cloud their_ owu children's lives if they claimed their rightful liberty ot speech and freedom of action, and no longer submitted to the soulless toadyism that alone wins Governtnentfovours. Recently a leader of tlwLiberal association, meeting a man of the wrong colour who had been "retrenched, 1, said to him: " You should join the Liberal Association, the Government knows who belong to it. Heavens! has it come to such a pass that men will sell their political freedom for a Government soup ticket ? Those of us will still dare strike for liberty must stand closer together. Let men who are not arrant cowards consider wh»t follows, and if their blood does not boil to stop the Government persecutions they will deserve all the oppression their children get. Existing law provides that appointmenc of cadets' to the Civil service shall be made after certain examinations and according to merit and priority of application. But this law is violated and boys who have won foremost places and appointments have been passed overevidentlybecame their parents are politically against the Government, and boys who were unqualified according to law have been taken on, evidently because their parents supported the Government. Thus innocent boys have been grossly and unlawfully punished because of their fathers' political opinions, and it would not be one bit more cruel or unjust to punish becanse of their parents' religious opiuions. Hence we should beware. But no Government can stand long on injustice and tyranny, and even many of the working classes are beginning lo realise that the present Government tyranny and persecutions have gone too far and must be stopped. They cry " Down with political persecution." Every mother in New Zealand should espouse the cause of freedom until this cruel tyranny be overpast.—l am, etc., F. G. Ewington.