The Oamaru Mail. FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 1911.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10782, 2 June 1911, Page 3

The Oamaru Mail. FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 1911.

Tee whole Dominion is wiping its eyes to ascertain if it has The Northern read aright the reFarmers' Unfon. ports of the last annual meeting of tho Fanners' Union at Woodvillo. It is wonderful that there was not a word against the Government. Still more wonderful that the Agricultural Department seems to have attained to pride of place in tho deliberations of this body. In tho. matter of testing herds, in respect of regulations against diseases of various sorts, in the control of agricultural industry by the experimental farms, in all these things the Union showed itself the Government's most devoted. Of course the freehold came in for the usual resolution —an insistence that nobody who wauts land shall ever be allowed to have it except on freehold conditions —was passed, but as there is no majority in favor of such tyranny anywhere, the Government need not lose many nights' sleep in consequence. The most wonderful thing, however, was in the statement of the President, Mr G. Wilson. Tho passage after anathematising the labor troubles went on to inform the lieges of the Union that the effect of these had been to throw so much money out of employment, that now was their opportunity for getting even with illconditioned mortgagees and moneylenders anxious to bleed thorn too much. The times had altered through the labor troubles to one of competition among the money men. If the farmers would only keep a stiff upper-lip they would get all the money they wanted, on their own terms from those wretched tyrannical capitalists. It appears then that the Labor unions are uot the only troubles of the farmer, or even the worst of them, for they enable him to attack the far worse trouble of the too acquisitive money lender. It seems then that capital so far from flying the country has been staying here to bleed and maltreat the unhappy farmer worse than the labor parties, who really are a help after all: We should not have said that of the farmer's views. But as it is Brutus Wilson who says so, and as Brutus is an honorable man, we must be very respectful to his evidence.

Me Massey has reached southern latitudes unijnpeded The Augean Stable, by northern failures. He oven essays other failures, and he is not disappointed. Hence he has attacked _at Invercargill what he chooses in his impudent fashion, that scorns all effort to produce evidence, to call the "Augean Stable" of administration. It is pleasant—for us not for Mr Masscv — to reflect that this attack is made at the very moment when the northern farmers are blessing the Administration for what it has done for them and asking as a corollary to do far more in its own inimitable way. Mr Massey ought really to have kept himself informed of the date of the farmers' meeting. Not that it would have made any difference, because the case on which he relies is in itself rotten. He may really imagine that everything he disapproves or misunderstands is an "Augean Stable." which only requires his single statement to be accepted to that effect. But the public can not take sucli a political line seriously. .The public will require something more from tho men who, after opposing the Liberal policy, are posing as its authors and best friends.

Election campaigning is growing fast and furious. Mr £50,000 for Millar's promise Railway Servants, that he will, noxt session, propose that an amount of £50,000 he added to the wages of railway servants has aroused tlio Opposition's capacity for evil imputation. Because it, is done before an election it is hy Tory persons and papers pointed to as another instance of "spoils to the victors." It is, however, only the logical outcome of the increase of the railway revenue to an amount beyond that which is necessary to pay interest. If the announcement had been made after next election, the Opposition would have proclaimed that the money was intended as a thanksoffering for the cordiality with which the people had supported the Government. The fact is that the Government can do nothing to please those . whom it, by its popular and beneficent acts, is keeping in the political shade till patience is exhausted. It would bo , difficult for the Government to carry oh any. of its operations without laying itself open to the sting-of the Opposition tongue and pen. The more numerous are its good works the more intense the political hatred of its enerriie's. But these detractors are overdoing it. The Otago Daily Times warns the l peoplo of the "danger that is associated with the existence of State Socialism," and demands that "services that are now conducted by the State shall be . . . placed under the control of independent boards," then there is a peroration on "political cor-ruption"—-probably our readers have i heard the phrase repeated so often that they begin to wonder whether the accusers should not be kept under restraint, and what sort of country they are really living in, or whether they have drifted unconsciously frorn popular government into an autocracy where Masseyism has somehow or other insinuated itself. There is nothing like asking these discontents what they' mean •by "State Socialism." They dare not explain, but trust to a mass of | generalities to create confusion in the ' public mind. The cry that "State Socialism" is ruining the country is growing monotonous, like all the other Masseyite diatribes. Amongst those things which come uiider the designaItion are : Advances to settlers, loans to local bodies, the reservation of land as national endowments, and old-age peni.sfohs, none of which would have been in' existence if the Opposition had succeeded in its antagonism to them, and which, to be consistent, they ought to promise to 'abolish —when they get into office. This is the very pith of Masseyism, which has been thrust upon us recently in its most aggravated and insolent form, whilst its leaders and myrmidons claim for it all the courtesies which are due only to honest endeavor.

In yesterday's Otago Daily Times a letter appeared over the signature of Mr J. J. Ramsay defending Sir Robert Stout's appointment as Commissioner to consolidate the Statutes, and as a

I Commissioner to investigate the native lands, with the object of securing as . much as possible of them for settlement. Mr Ramsay shewed that Sir Alexander Cockburn (Lord Chief Justice), who acted' as Britain's arbitrator and advocate on the Geneva Alabama Conference. and Mr Justice Johnston, who was a member of a Commission appointed to revise the Statutes, were paid. He states that the Lord Chief Justice received £I2OO for a little over three months' work, and the Times, in an article on the subject, confesses that it 'does not know whether Sir Alexander was paid for his services or not, but impolitely adds: "Perhaps Mr Ramsay", whose knowledge of" the circumstances is so intimate that he is able to tell us the exact length of time over which these services were extended,- will oblige us by supplying us with his authority for the statement." The case and counter-case were, says Cassell's "Dictionary of English History," presented on the 15th of April, and the final decision "was given ou the 14th of September of the same year." The amount of the payment made to Sir Alexander may be gleaned from Imperial Parliamentary Records. Neither Mr Allen nor the Otago Daily Times expected to be confronted by such evi- ! dences of the world's custom to employ the best men available to do critical work. The men who are empowered to make the appointments do not permit themselves to be prevented from doing their best, as custodians of the people's affairs by the chance that ulterior motives may be attributed to them. The most noble characters that have ever adorned the pages of history by their deeds have not been free from the slanders of the envious evil-minded. It is their reward. Mr Ramsay has done well to expose the hollowness of the cant that is being preached by the Government's opponents, who would have liked nothing so much as the appointment of an unfit man to do the work entrusted to Sir Robert Stout, so that they might have been, able to point to its omission to entrust the work to that self-same expert.