NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20516, 18 March 1930, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

DESPOTIC POWERS. One of the first acts of the Lord Chief Justice in the new legal term has had the effect of giving point to his argument embodied in "The New Despotism.' By a majority, composed of Lord Hewart and Mr. Justice Talbot, a King's Bench Divisional Court has decided that if an Act of Parliament provides that an order of the Minister of Health, when made, shall have effect as if enacted in the Act, these words are sufficient to give validity to the order, although the order was irregularly made. The matter arose from the issue of an order embodying a housing scheme in Liverpool, to which objection was made that the order was ultra vires as no opportunity was given for persons affected to make objection and no local inquiry was held, both conditions required by the Act precedent to the issue of an order. To that contention the Minister replied that he had made the order and that it was notcompetent for any Court of law to inquire into its validity. And the Court has held that if the Minister says he has made such an order, it cannot • inquire as to whether the conditions precedent have been satisfied. MACHINES AND MANPOWER. " There are about 2,500,000 fewer workers employed in agriculture, factories, railroads and mines in this United States than there were 10 years ago," the New York correspondent of Lhe London Daily News wrote last month. " This wholesale ' scrapping ' of wageearners has taken place during a decade when American prosperity roso to such glittering heights that the country was the envy of the rest of the world. Hundreds of thousands of these dispossessed men and women have found work in new and growing industries, such as automobiles, road transport and radio, but in making the change they have often had to accept lower wages, and have had the anxiety and expense of changing their homes. The new industries, however, have not been sufficient to absorb the displaced labour, and an exceedingly conservative estimate would put the difference at 800,000. This growing army of workers, displaced by machines and unable to find alternative jobs, is providing the United States with a problem far graver than any temporary dislocation caused by the recent collapse in stock market values. . . In the past, whenever machines have displaced men, new industries have ultimately sprung up to absorb the unemployed. Now, for the first time in history, there are indications that this compensatory process may have come to an end, and that the trend of modern invention may be to make less work for idle hands instead of more."

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. It is now nearly two years since the proposal was first made to appoint a committee to prepare a complete record * of Members of the British Parliaments from 1264 down to 1832, the date of the Reform Bill, and nearly a year since the Treasury appointed such a committee. What is desired is a comprehensive guide which would tell what is known of the history of individual members—identity, dates, Government and other public positions held, a sort of " Complete Peerago " for the House of Commons, in fact —and would give information also about the electorate, methods of nomination and results of elections. When the committee met for the first time last April thes'e points were emphasised as indicating the goal towards which work should bo directed, and it was decided to appeal for help to private individuals as well as to archaeological and historical societies, the Public Record Office, and the great libraries and Universities. Colonel Wedgwood, one of the promoters of this investigation and the chairman of the committee, in a communication to the Times, says the committee's researches have shown in a striking way that before 1832 most constituencies were uncontested at every General Election. Colonel Wedgwood's list, from 1640 to 1831, shows that in each election there was no contest in half and often in a good deal more than half the constituencies. "It seems impossible," he thinks, " that we have got as yet all the contests that took place, e.g., in the hotly contested elections of 1681, 1784, or even 1831." That there are great gaps in our knowledge is illustrated by Professor A. F. Pollard's statement a year or two ago that, though Sir Thomas More, perhaps the most illustrious of our Speakers, sat in the House from 1504 till his elevation to the Woolsack in 1529, we do not know a single constituency for which he sat and hardly the names of a dozen of his colleagues.

EMPIRE ECONOMIC POLICY. Discussing the trend of economic policy in tho Dominions, the Times Trade Supplement says:—lt is always easy to be wise after the event, and now that everyone knows how the development of the Empire has proceeded it is not particularly difficult to point out what the statesmen of earlier generations should have done to direct progress into channels more advantageous to these islands. Unfortunately, statesmen will have no opportunity of putting into practice this belated wisdom, for there are no' more wide, open spaces awaiting the advent of British pioneers to establish new Dominions. But if it is not very helpful to know what our forefathers ought to have done, it is definitely mischievous to advocate policy which takes no account of what they actually did. For good or

evil it was decided long ago that the great colonics in the temperate y.ones should have tho right of self-government, which includes, of course, the unfettered right to adopt whatever fiscal policy seems most expedient. There was a time when there was enthusiastic support for a policy of reciprocal preference in trade. At the Colonial Conference of 1907 the plan was unanimously approved. But tho United Kingdom steadily refused to enter into any such arrangement, and this opportunity was lost, just as an earlier opportunity to establish free trade within tho Empire had been missed. In the last 20 years the position has changed. Today the Dominions are determined to develop their own secondary industries and to safeguard them against the competition of manufacturers in tho United Kingdom. That may be a wise policy, or, if carried to extreme lengths and enforced too suddenly, it may be an unwise policy; the point is at the moment irrelevant. The fact that is important and relevant is that this policy holds the field and will not be changed, und it follows that any efforts which are made to develop trade within the Empire must take the present facts into consideration or be doomed to ultimate failure. It is permissible to regret the facts; it is unpardonable to ignore them.