The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1920. CORRUPTION!

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10542, 19 March 1920, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1920. CORRUPTION!

The Stratford election petition has proved to he the most ridiculous proposition that over wasted the time of a Court of Justice —even ''Election Justice, At the outset of the discussion ensuing on the verdict, one notices in passing the rather curious coincidence th9t the Stratford constituency is the constituency of the man who some year’s ago began his political career by a wholesale charge of Tammanyism, and has just etnphasised. it by the success of an equally preposterous accusation. On that former notorious occasion an amazed public found itself seriously asked to believe that the worst practices of the most corrupt localities of modern political life were common in . New Zealand. The good Fame of Parliament was assailed in terms applicable only to brazen corruption, bribery, and scandal. In the same fashion —only with more formality and deliberation —an equally amazing charge is sheeted home in the Election Petition Court. For weeks the public has been wondering what awful depths of corruption have been sounded; it has been puzzled to decide whether the Liberal candidate unfortunate enough to have won a majority of electors at Stratford was, or was not, a disgraceful pariah, fit for any cruelty of drastic punishment; it was invited to conclude that the iniquities of Tammany have once again been eclipsed by New Zealanders. As to the punishment, strict justice required "something lingering, with boiling oil in it,’’ and nothing less was expected from the Petitions Court, as far, that is to eay, ns the law would allow the righteously-incensed judges to go. The actual fact, after all this preparation fell short of tho expected bad mark. Tho accused person has been declared guilty of an offence which is not a moral offence, and ought not to bo a legal offence, and awarded a punishment which proclaims to tho world that he has committed the basest crime under the electoral law, which tho judges themselves .have declared he did not commit.

This caso ought to prove salutary. Some yeans ago the Legislature got a fit of prudery. There -was no evidonee of any very grave election evil; none of anything approaching even remotely in colour tfio things that men understand when they talk about corruption. Nevertheless, a flood of cant carried away the Legislature, which neither possessed perfect purity nor dttired to possess it. The hypocrites

of the Legislature moaned, and groaned, and laboured, in imitation sackcloth and make-believe ashes. They washed away with crocodile tears tho sins they mendaciously attributed to other people. They ended by forcing a dazed and weary Legislature to surround itself wjth a barbed-wire entanglement of artificial crime. How ridiculously and mischievously artificial, this Stratford case shows us with a clearness most disagreeable. It shows us with startling force that a candidate who committed an artificial crime, manufactured by a panic-driven, thoughtless Legislature—a crime bearing no resemblance to any sort of transgression under heaven; a crime which could not possibly have any effect whatsoever upon the result of the election which he was contesting—has been punished by the voidance of his election, condemned to pay the costs of his defence, and covered with the obloquy which is the portion of offenders convicted of any form of corruption. We have groat resppet for the judges who pronounced this decision. But the greater our respect for them, the greater must bo our contempt for a.law which masquerades foolishly as a champion of electoral purity. The law decides, with owlish solemnity, that the mere exhibition of a painted rag is dangerous to the political morals of a free citizen; that the flash of a film is enough to buy him, body and soul. This law, by its artificial manufacture of crime, degrades the whole electorate of the men and women of New Zealand below the level of tho monkeys in the Zoo. Let us march to Newtown to feast our amazed eyes on our superiors iu those sordid cages I Let us wait patiently for the Legislature to complete its logical process by setting the monkeys free and putting the citizens of the Dominion in their' places, as persons unfit to b© at largo. This provision of the electoral law is a gross insult to every man and woman of the Dominion. It is also a fatal slur on our representative institutions. Either tho law must bo purged of its absurdities, or we must be prepared to give up government by representation.

This hypocritical straining after a perfection which is beyond all possible perfection has an even worse side. It is an instrument of oppression. It punishes very severely every man who does a thing not only not wrong in itself, but incapable of ' any sort of evil effect—and this in a manner which the average man is unable ,to suspect. Walking in tho path of perfect honesty, the victim in this case finds himself suddenly lost in the abyss of corruption and branded as an unworthy citizen In every place -in the world accessible to the telegraph. His only consolation for his loss of tinie. money, and reputation is that ho is allowed to risk more time and money and reputation to retrieve himself by going before the electors again for their suffrages. Such is tho consequence of the artificial manufacture of crime. Now, the object of this precious statute was greater electoral purity, not greater oppression of innocent persons. Here is a law which insults the electors, brings representative institutions into contempt, and oppresses individuals. The case for its amendment is overwhelming.