CONCEALMENT AND CANT.

NZ Truth, Issue 276, 8 October 1910, Page 1

CONCEALMENT AND CANT.

• • • . ... »' The Ldg-If timing of Literature. "MORALITY" AND MANACLES IN MAORILAND. Why New Zealand is Being Bled of Its Young Men. LORD MAGAUUY ON THE PERNICIOUS FOLLY OF FETTERING LITERATURE. $ (From Sydney "Truth.")

**Ehe Athenian. Comedies, m which there are scarcely a hundred lines together witWut some passage of which. Rochester would have been ashamed, have been reprinted at the Pitt Press and the Clarendon Press, under the direction of Syndics •ndidelegates appointed by the Universities, and have been illustrated with notes by nVetend, very reverend, and right reverend commentators. Every year the most distinguished young men m the kingdoms are examined by bishops and professors of divinity on the " Lysistrata " of Aristophanes and tha Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is certainly something a little ludicrous m the idea of a conclave of venerable fathers of the Church rewarding a lad for his intimate acquaintance with writings compared with which the loosest tale m Prior is modest. v. But, for our own part, we have no doubt that the great sooieties which direct the education of the Eriglish gentry have herein judged wisely. . . . The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, not a valetudinarian virtue— a virtue which can expose itself to the risks inseparable from all spirited exertion— not a virtue which keep 3 out of the common air for fear of infection, and eschews the common food as too stimulating. ... We are, therefore, by no means disposed $o oondemn this publication (the plays of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar), though we certainly cannot recommend the handsome volume before us as an appropriate Christmas present for young ladies. — Lord Macaulay, " Critical and Historical Essays."

The men and women of Australia twmld do well to beware of the blight Of ;.• intolerant Puritanism settling upon -the Commonwealth ; for its ef- . teaks m that Puritan-ridden colony, : N^w. i Zealand, have been most injurious and detestable. The ascendancy, of the Puritan element m that little • biomtaion has so disgusted young men wttih.New Zjealamd that, for a considerable naunber of years, they jii>> i > ,foeen leaving New Zealand m great numbers, m search of a countiy.where they can find some com- ' pfcnsation, m individual liberty and reasonable enjoyment, for that fate that compels us all to earn our bread by-work. Into Australia young tsew ZealaiMters pour m thousands every year. ; and they remain m Australia. Every statistical return of the figures of immigration whioh is issued by the Commonwealth Bureau of Statistics proves this to be the fact; and shows to what an extent Australia is gaining population at the expense of New Zealand. The latest return (Which lies before us as we write) shows that, during the seven months of this year, for which year the figures are given, 17,896' persons arrived m the Commonwealth from New Zealand, while only 11,137 persons leit Australia for New Zealand. Thus, during the seven months of this . year, Australia gained at the expense ©f New Zealand to the extent of 6840. • This is not something that is peculiar to this year, the gain of Australia at the expense of New Zealand has been constari^Cice the Puritanical or •••Wowser" e^Wenfc became decidedly predominant m New Zealand. ( ■•"-. One of the latest instances of the power of the Wowser, or Puritan, m ,New Zealand is a Bill that has bt-en introduced Into the Parliament of the little Dominion. This •is called an "Tndecent Publications P.iil" •: and a perusal of its provisions *s»hb.W that it is actually intended to -■vjel'.up the magistracy of New Zeaj iland as sole judges as to what constitutes "m r 'e"ency" m literature, m r journal ism, and m art. A careful .*■» study of this precious Bill shows *«tliflt although, with the most sttirlfoiftrl '-arc:, it might be possible for a • to avt ! d the pains ard nenalttes of tnc new Bill— if it should

really become law— it will not foe possible for any bookseller, to .offer, with safety, anything for sale unless it has previously secured the approval of the Religious Tract Society, or some similar organisation. Indeed, it is very much open to question whether all the publications of even the Religious Tract Society would meet with the approval of some of the magistrates likely to adjudicate under this proposed.Act—unless those magistrates should discover that the works had been published by the Religious Tract Society, m which case they would probably be approved. • • • One of the most important and most dangerous of the changes proposed to be made relates to the conviction of the person who is .unfortunate enough to fall into the clutches of the authorities of New Zealand, and with a charge against him, or her, of having sold or published indecent literature. At present, sueh 1 a person cannot be convicted summarily, except with his own consent. He must, if he prefers it, go before a iury, and, if he should be a man of unusual ability, or if he happens to meet with a jury whose minds are free from> Puritanical prejudices; he may be acquitted. In the hands of the magistrates, however, bis fate would be different. Magistrates have, proverbially, a bias m favor of the views taken by other men m authority, and they are particularly prone to see "eye to eye" with those who have appointed them, and have the power to remove them. Possibly, it is for this reason that the new Bill provides for the abolition of Trial by Jury m cases under the ■new lav/. The memorandum published on the front leaf of this Bill is •— At present a person charged with the sale and publication of indecent literature cannot be convicted summarily, except , with his own consent. . . It is provided by this Bill that all such offences can be dealt with on summary conviction, but by a Stipendiary Magistrate only. « • • Under Section 10 of this precious Bill, any magistrate may, upon a complaint being made to him by a constable that there are indecent documents m any place, give the con •

stable a warrant authorising him to break .open doors "with such assistance as may be necessary,'' whether iby day or night, "and to search for j anid seize any indecent documents." The documents having been seized— if they be found— the victim of the j search-warrant may then be. taken before the Magistrate, under a sum.ir.„.!.»• issued by virtue of sub-section .2 of Section 10, summoning the occupier of the house to- appear before him to show cause why the articles found m his house should not.be destroyed. Furthermore, any person who commits one of the numerous acts that this Bill declares to be. offences, may be fined one hundred pounds, or sentenced to imprisonment for three months. • V. 9. ■ Hitherto, the law of a British community has made an employer liable for what is done by his servant. Long experience has proved this pro-., vision to be, m the mam, just. It 4s m accordance with the old maxim of Roman. Law that he who performs a thing through an agent, does it himself. Like most things of human contrivance, however, this principle, when acted upon, sometimes leads to the doing of acts of injustice ; but what will be said of a proposal to make the employee responsible for what is done by his employer ? This is proposed to be done under this new Bill, m Section 4, which is a. most drastic drag-net provision to enable • the authorities to sieze anybody who has the 1 least connection with a periodical which a Dogberry or a Shallow may declare to be "indecent." The provision is as follows : — If any newspaper printed, or published, or sold, or offered for sale m New Zealand contains any matter or thing whereby it becomes an indecent document, every person who, at the date of the publication of that newspaper, is, or acts as, a printer, publisher, proprietor, manager, editor, or sub-editor thereof, and every person who consented to the insertion . therein of that matter or thing, shall, without excluding the liability of any other person, be conclusively deemed to • have caused that matter or thing to be inserted m the newspaper, and shall be severally guilty of an, offence under this Act accordingly. • • • Another extraordinarily outrageous provision is one wherein any reference whatever to a pathological condition of the human means that the Creator has designed for the perpetuation of the human race may be declared by a magistrate to be "misohieyous" or "immoral," and may be dealt with m accordance, with the punitive provisions of the Bill. It is difficult to conceive of anything that is likely to have a more, "mischievous" influence than this very provision. It will certainly have a tendency to intimidate those who might think it their duty to deal with many matters' that, for the public good, ought to be dealt with. About the end of last year, the "New Zealand Times," a Wellington daily newspaper that is generally regarded as the organ of the Government of New Zealand, devoted considerable space to the consideration of the destructive prevalence of certain contagious diseases m New Zealand. Owing to the power of the Puritanical element, nothing whatever is done by the authorities of New Zealand to prevent the spread of these diseases, and the effect is horrible. In New South Wales, the law has been so altered that vagrants are— if convicted of vagrancy and found to be diseased— detained under Premier Wade's law until cured. (This excellent law was, It might be here mentioned, opposed by most of the members of the Labor Party.) Tn Brisbane, women of a certain class are examined weekly, and a similar thing is done m Launceston, Tasmania. Nothing of the sort is done m the Dominion, and the awful consequences were dealt with pretty thoroughly m the "New Zealand Times" last year— much to the indignation of the Wowsers, or Puritans. Under Section 6 of this new Bill, the "New' Zealand Times" would not dare to do again what it did last year. • • • Section 8 of this Bill, attempts to sweep away, altogether, the necessity of esftablisteag guilty knowledge before a person, can be held to have committed an offence. Whether it ,can do this— whether the highest courts m the Empire, those which . are still! open to appeal by any British subject, will decide that any Colonial Legislature has power to do this— is another matter. Possibly, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council would decide, on appeal, that the proposal to -.sweep away trtiei necessity for establishing guilty knowledge was repugnant to the laws of England, ami contrary to natural justice ; but no British subject ought to be put to the expense that such appeals necessarily entaiil. This precious Section 8 is as follows :-t 8. It shall be no defence m a prosecution for any offence under tbis Act thJit the defendant had no knowledge that the document, matter, or Miing to which the prosecution relates was of an indecent nature. . « «> 9 This latest device of the doctrinaires of- demented democracy—-cle-ment od to the extent that it permits

itself to be ruled by poHticians who pander to noisy and self-assertive little cliques of. "dour" and intolerant "Evangelical" Puritans— -is desigrned to sweep away, m order to please the Paul Pry Puritans, some of the most valuable of the safeguards of the liberty of the subject. The famous Chief Justice Coke declared an Englishman's house to be his castle,- and the great EarL 'of Chatham said no matter how dilapidated the dwellinig of the poorest of British subjects might be, their King even could nipt enter it without the par-mission of its occupier. This riiglht of a British subject is to cease, -however, if tdie Englishman comes to the Southern Hemisphere and settles m New Zealand. In that British "Dominion," the Englishman is to be placed at the mercy of a com-moon constable, .who, if he has "reason to believe" that there is something "indecent" m 'the Englishman's house, rimy break' into it at the dead of night, and. may seize anything upon which he may choose to lay 'his haaids. .Furthermore, the victim of this outrage may then be taken— -not before a jury of Ms < fellow oounrtrymen—but before a magistrate (perhaps improperly desirous of pleasing the Puritan-placating pack of poMcicians m power), and that magistrate may -send him to prison for having upon his premises same work of literature that, the magistrate—possibly a man almost destitute of artistic knowledge and literary judgment—may choose to consider to be improper. - * • • A few years ago, an attempt was actually made, m New Zealand to prosecute a bookseller for daring to sell the works of William Shakespeare, the greatest, man of literary genius that England has produced. The prosecution failed ; but it probably would not , fail under the "Indecent Publication Bill." Unq.u-esia.on-ably Shakespeare is "indecent" (according to modern Puritanical ideas).-, there are expressions m "TroiLus and Cressida," m• "Romeo and Juliet," m "King Lear," i© "Anthony and Cleopatra," and many other of the plays or poems of Shakespeare, that no modern writer would dare to use. The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, too, may be called "indecent" ; so may those of Ben Johnson, Philip Massinger, Joshm Ford, Wycherley, Congrave, Otway, Sir John Vanbrugh, and many other playwrights. Daniel Defoe, Dean Swift, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, the Reverend Laurence Sterne, Lord Byron, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne, and Shelly have all written works that it would certainly be possible to convince a New Zealand magistrate were "indecent," "immoral," or "mischevious." Yet, if. the writings of these great men were destroyed, the human mi>nd would 'ibe the poorer, and civilisation less advanced. What is qiuite certain is tih-at, if the New Zealand "Indecent Publications Bill" becomes law, the writings of the men that we have mentioned can only be sold by New Zealand booksellers at the risk' of fine or imprisonment. •' • m Is our literature to be emasculated—castrated—in order to suit "young ladies" arad the .gloomy pul-pit-pounders of Nonconformity ? Let the Nonconformist Conscioncers and those inclined to favor a censorship such as is proposed, peruse and ponder the words of the great- Protestant historian, Lord Maoauly, which are to be found m his "-Critical and Historical Essays," and wihich we have (quoted at the head of this article. Macaulay was a religious man, and a zealous Protestant*—indeed, ihere are some students of his writings who regard the zeal for Protestantism exhibited m his "History of England" as even unscrupulously excessive ; but he was no Puritanical persecutor, no believer; m stretching his fellow-men upon a Procrustean bed of a' certain (artificial standard of so-call-eld "decency m literary and journalistic matters, a standard ' that would render the publication of the works of oven one of the great Puritans, John Milton, perilous to the publisher. *' W * If the New Zealand Parliament passes the "Indecent Publications Bill," it will prove itself more nar-row-minded than the Puritans of England who elected the "Praise God B arch ones Parliament," and set up the tyrant and canting hypocrite, Oliver Cromwell, as the ruler of England ; they will show themselves more reactionary than the Scottish Puritans, who had alleged witches worried to death by ferocious dogs ; or than the Geneva Calvinists, who sought to maintain "decency" by tine use of* the- stake and the faggot. The democracies of Australasia should set an example to the rest of tine world m tolerance of literary expression, and should welcome the serious discussion of, and give publicity to, all the facts relating to the very things that the. "Indecent Publications Bill" says should not be published. If such a Bill be passed, it will certainly consider; 1 My increase the already disi'Jitrous exodus from New Ztui.'aKi ;

and will stamp the "Dominion" as the habitat of a number of narrow*minded, joy-hating, -.cruel, and- gloomy Jfanatics, from which place all sensible men should keep away ; or, if tihere, get away as speedily, as possible. . .The' unrestrained tyranny 'of Puritanism j would depopulate New Zealand. Thus it will be seen from the above power/fully penned protest .agsainst tiiq damnable Puritanic . domination of .Parliament, People and' Press m New. Zealand, that the people of Australia' have been given an idea-' of tshe- lengths which the parson-whipped and bossed politicians of New Zealand will dare. That such an unwarrantable and outrageous attempt to leg-iron literature and liam-strmg an outspoken Press should be considered , by a Parliamentary Committee 'without receiving at the hands of that Committee careful attention and a revision of those provisions destinctly infringing tOie righ + s and liberties of' the subject would seem only reasonable even m New Zealand. This Indecent Publications Bill emerged from the Statutes Revision Committee on Tuesday last, wfrth the recommendation that the Bill be .allowed to proceed with the amendments. That some semib'la'nce of sanity manifested itself m members of that cormmittee m revising Findlay's famous, if not infamous, Bill may well be presumed wfien the amendments recommended are considered. The various subclauses of clause 3 of the Bill provides that it is am oflenoe m any person who delivers or leaves or causes to be delivered , or left on premises m the occupation of any other person any indecent document. There was no; escape. The lack of guilty knowledge, or "miens rea," could not be ; offered as a defence. The Revision of Staimtes Committee,; however, decided otherwise, because it added these ycry pregnant words, "knowing or 'having reasonable" means of knowing r that such document is indecent." To clause 8 the Statutes Revision Committee have, also, added 1 the following : Unless he also proves that he took all reasonable means to ascertain the nature as regards decency or indecency of such document, matter or thing. Another deletion worthy <pf note is clause '11, which provides that a constable may arrest without warrant amy person found committing any orience mentioned m the various paragraphs of section tihree. The Bill passed the Comitnititee stage 'last Wednesday, and no doubt, as it at present stands, will, become the law of the land. However, so far as the columns of this paper are concerned, "Truth" views the Bill with indiffierenoe. It can affect "Truth" no more tEan any other paper m the Dominion.