THE GREEN ANTI-PAUPERISM SCHEME.

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 6863, 20 April 1883, Page 2

THE GREEN ANTI-PAUPERISM SCHEME.

Messrs 11. S. Eisir, AI.H.E,, and Mr M. W. Green, AI.H.E., both of Dunedin, wore to have replied to Alajor Atkinson with counter-schemes of national insurance and pauperism extinction of their own. The glittering Pi sir, after the manner of the fishy tribe, lias glided away and been no more seen in public since. Air AI. W. Green is a horse of a different color —a green one. The substance of bis scheme has been telegraphed, and was published in our issue of last Friday. The Greens are a remarkable family, and very enterprising. Not long ago the Reverend Green ascended the loftiest of our mountains, Alount Cook, and now we find that the ox-Eoverend Green has plunged into the deepest of our political bogs, and still lies there floundering about in the mud with infantile joy, and, in view of the two events, past and future, tho non-Reverend Green, the author of “ The History of tho English People,” lias died with envy of the exploits of his two New Zealand cousins, and of annoyance nt the fact that these are English people of his own name, whose deeds ho could not oven imagine. Still we don’t admire Air AI. W. Green’s late exploit as a work of art and constructive statesmanship. Wo cannot help fancying that the gentleman with a fabulously large conscience has found that same conscience so big as to creep .up into that part of his system occupied in moat men by the brains. Of course ho means well, but be does not seem to know exactly how to do it. His scheme of national assurance and pauperism extinction has nothing about national assurance iu it, and proposes not to extinguish pauperism but to cultivate it. Under the new verdant proposal, a New Zealand poor law of the old English pattern is to bo started, but the endowment is to come from funds derivable from a new source, namely, publicliouso profits, which he proposes to nationalise. In fact, Air Green’s project is, first of all, to eradicate the drinking habits of bis fellow colonists, and then to make a handsome profit out of them when they are nonexistent. He desires the Government to buy up all the publichouses, and then conduct them on the Gothenburg principle as State publichouses. Now, the Gothenburg scheme is not, in our opinion, absurd, and, indeed, has its strong points, but it will not do everything Mr Green wauts. By this method alone,

however, he thinks he can stop almost all’the drinking, amounting, he says to £2,500,000 a year : all occasioned by the improper seductions of tho existing publicans, and having thus destroyed our drinking habits, our enterprising legislator proposes to put the profits of our drinking into the pockets of our paupers. It seems to our limited conscience t hat to take theselarge profits out of a traffic which Mr Green wishes to see destroyed, and thinks he can destroy, is something like taking the breeks from a Uighlandman, and even if we could take away the supposititious breeks, in denuding the publican wo might be robbing the wrong culprit. It is not quite certain who are the people really answerable for our over-much drinking. Some time ago a bcncrolcnt chaplain of Newgate Gaol, asked a prisoner, “ Aty poor fellow, what brought you to this place?’’ “Two policemen brought mo hern, sir,” was the matter-of-fact rejoinder. “ But had drink nothing to do with it?” the chaplain continued. “Oh 1 yes, sir,” tho convict replied ; [“ they wore both of them very drunk, or they wouldn’t have brought a man like me here.” So also now. The publican thinks that it is not ho and tho liquor that seek the drinking man, but the drinking man who seeks tho publican and tho liquor, and will got it some-, bow, whether from State publichouso, private hotel, or from no publichouse at all. Air Green also, wo may remark, has prudently omitted to state how ho will replenish the Treasury after he has given his liberal bounties on pauperism with one band, and destroyed the Customs revenue with the other. Perhaps he imagines that he himself will never be Colonial Treasurer, with the troubles of providing a revenue. But, who knows? A Liberal Ministry may come into office, and political gas is always in demand in our House of Eepresentativcs, and Mr Green can supply that article iu boundless quantities. As a further step on the road to Paradise, Air Green would introduce the brilliant policy of protective duties, which is now in voguo in Victoria, and has proved so thoroughly “ Liberal ” that it has given away a good deal of the Melbourne trade to Sydney, and is, in fact, making the latter the chief commercial port of Australia. Air Green’s last and crowning mercy of his scheme is to lease from 5 to 50 acres of land to each of his friends, the bibulous paupers, and settle them on that laud in order that they may grow greens or other produce there. Has it ever occurred to Mr Green that perhaps the land might be of no use to that particular class, even if a free gift of it were made ? Perhaps—though we are almost shocked ac the profanity of our own suggestion—even Air Green himself, if the State endowed him with the fee simple of 50 acres of good laud, and also threw in a plough and harrow as well, at the end of the year might be poorer than at the beginning, and so earn less than nothing by bis settlement on tho land.