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THE OTANGO WITNESS, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY NOVEMBER 5, 1891.) THE WEEK.

" Nnnqntun aliud natnra, blind i»plentl» dlxlt."— Juvimu. « Good n»tur« and good sensa must «t« loin." -Popi. We dare say that there may be some who imagine that the recent inti«Let it Go." mation of the withdrawal of a quarter of million of capital from the colony by one company alone, in consequence of the legislation of last session, will have the effect of checking the policy of confiscation, extravagance, and political corruption .which is now in the ascendant. We do not sbare any such view. Those who are led away by so complete a mistake owe their error to forgetfulness of the fact that, whoever may believe the Government policy to be right, the Government themselves certainly do not. It will be no surprise whatever to Ministers to hear of the wholesale withdrawal of capital, the stoppage of improvements, and the general paralysis of enterprise, as the result of their crusade against property. They know perfectly well that such a result is inevitable, and they probably know also that the result has already begun to operate. But they did not adopt their policy in order to benefit the colony. They adopted it in order to acquire and maintain themselves in office. In that they have succeeded, and in that success lies their answer — unavowed, of course, but conclusive — to any objections based on the withdrawal of a quarter of a million of capital, or a quarter of a billion if we had it here. So I long as passion, ignorance, and prejudice—by which astute politicians have profited in all ages of the world, but never so glaringly as now — are in the ascendant, it matters little what the economical facts of the era are, or which way statesmanship joints. Probably the Government will be at the trouble to deny the truth of the lobs to the colony of this particular £250,000 through a single investment company — they may or they may not. Whichever way it is, the £250,000 is only one of many such items. It would p3rhaps never have been conspicuously heard of but for somebody at the other end of the cable in Australia or somewhere having so muddled up the item with the affairs of a local bank as to render it absolutely necessary for that institution to give widespread publicity to the true meaning of the message. But whether the Government deny it or not, no such result will affect their minds j for a moment, so long as the blindness and ignorance to which they pander remains unenlightened. To keep it from disastrous enlightenment they are using the money ground out of the hard-working settlers of the country in order to provide work at glorious prices for the "unemployed," who are daily being added to by the stoppage of employment and dismissals on the country properties, and daily subtracted from by the creation of Government billets and the multiplication of fat co-operation contracts. What puzzles us is that the very farmers doc't leave their farms and flock to the towns so that at least they may have a share in the use of their own money.

It is^ of course a poor thing for a Government to shape the policy or Th« only war. a country in such a way as xneOßirwar. aboye aU thingg tQ retain office for themselves, regardless of the welfare of the country they are engaged in governing. But after all, a country under English i institutions is generally about as well governed as it deserves to be, and we take New Zealand to be no exception to the Want of organisation alone is, we believe, responsible for the curious anomaly of a Government transparently and recklessly selfish holding office in the very teeth of the intelligence of the country, and go disorganising and paralysing its greatest interests as to lead to the hasty scuttling of capital anywhere, everywhere out of the place. If those who have a stake in the country won't register, won't present a front to the enemy, won't even vote (as thousands of them do not), they must expect the continuance of the present system of setting the foot of the " unemployed " labourer on the neck of the toiling country settler. They must reconcile themselves to the notion, to which Minister* bow down, that there is something sacred

The General*

about picks aad shovels and saws and planes, masons' adzes and tailors' geese, and something disgraceful about the occupancy of a woolshed or the use of a double-furrow plough. Ministers are plausible enough when they get into the country, and try their very hardest to bamboozle the settlers with smooth sophistries and specious sinuosities of speech ; yet they unhesitatingly sell their rural audiences over again to the secretaries of the city unions as soon as ever they get back to town. There is, as all may note, and as some of the speeches at the Balclutha banquet amply indicated, a steadily advancing perception on the part of the farmers that they have been tricked, used, andjsold ; but although nearly all the farmers' clubs have spoken out more or less strongly against what is going on, there is still every appearance of an ultimate relapse into the fatal apathy which has resulted, through the selfishness and truckling of politicians who should know better, in the uncontrolled domination of a single class in this community. That is why we say that, wretchedly as New Zealand is governed;now, she is probably about as well governed as she deserves to be. The remedy is in the hands of the people, if the people care to declare that henceforth all classes shall be treated alike with justice and uprightness, that New Zealand shall not cause herself to be advertised to the business world in the terms used about a jerry building society, and that honesty, self-respect, and all that is meant by " straightness " shall be absolutely demanded of her leading politicians. When that time comes Mr fiallance will — take the Agentgeneralship. General Booth has won golden opinions throughout this colony. His unquestionable earnestness once recognised, and the idea Gingering in the minds of more people than would acknowledge it) of his being a noisy charlatan once effectually dissipated by actual contact with his magnetic personality, people of all classes have enjoyed the charm of hie manner and the fire of his discourse. We do not know that he will do any conspicuous good in New Zealand; but his stay has been made pleasant, his "officers " happy, his "soldiers" uproariously enthusiastic, and the general public— which wanted a "show" to enjoy, and has got it — fairly well satisfied. Laying aside the question of devoting any considerable part of New Zealand to the construction of a way oat of " Darkest - England," these are about the only objects General Booth's visit is likely to achieve, except of course whatever pleasure he may himself derive from his trip. Doubtless the Salvation Army in its local developments -will be satisfactorily stimulated, whatever that may be worth. We do not know -whether General Booth is a musician, nor have we any sufficient opportunity of judging whether the quality of the so-called music served out by Salvation bands to the initiated (and unfortunately to the rest of us as well) is peculiarly atrocious as compared with the harmony available from their congeners in other countries. We trust, however, that it may not be considered flippant to suggest (since all that a good many of us know of the Salvation Army is conveyed to us in the sound of drums, trumpets, and other instruments of torture) that one of the urgent needs of the local army is an improvement in the musical standard. General Booth might do worse than seek to confer on New Zealand some measure of relief in this respect at the hands of his myrmidons, by way of return for whatever hospitality he has experienced from kind hearted residents. He ought to remember that there is no ' way out of the sound of an unspeakable band in the centre of the city — unless indeed you take a train. People have not the slightest objection to red stripes and pewter S'e, and no really cogent ones even to the most truly awful bonnets ; but bands in which several minor differences of opinion exist are distinctly an infliction. The really good work done in many ' respects by the army deserves a better heralding forth than it gets, and might easily have it. At the same time it is not desirable that we should shut * our eyes to the weak points of the organisation, the most prominent of which are probably the unsettling influence of the frequent meetings on the family circle and the bad habit inculcated in the younger members of merely regarding their homes as places to eat and sleep in, all their spare time being spent in the unhealthy atmosphere of a crowded barracks, or in parading their zeal in the I cause in the streets or squares of the cities. These strictures were urged against and applied with equal force to the Methodist revivals of a few decades ago, and no doubt time's ameliorating influence will work desirable changes in Army methods in much tbe same way as it has done in the case of its precursor. We have always supported the proposals of the' Government with regard to the reduction of inland postage, though these proposals have received very trenchant criticism at the hands of the Opposition. When, in fact, Mr Ward's intended reform underwent the usual shuffling process common to most other Government measures —in other words, when, after greatly vaunting it as an immense boon to the people, the Postmastergeneral weakly consented to postpone its operation first for six months, and then for 12^-we acknowledged the Liberalism of the measure, and deplored the vacillation which interfered with its immediate adoption. It must be confessed, however, that there is something novel and striking in the presentation of the case against the reduotion, as recently set forth by the chiefs of the Opposition at Balclutha. It was pointed out that the income tax proposals of the Government are calculated to bring in about the amount estimated to be lost to the revenue by the introduction of the penny post, and to bring it in from the pockets, practically, of the same set of people. This is rather a serious allegation, and tends, we must frankly own, to somewhat disturb the complacency with which we, among others, have regarded the proposed reduction. The statement; ought certainly to be dealt with

Milk and Water.

promptly fro#a the Ministerial standpoint, and its fallacy, if it is fallacious, made clear to the people. If it is true that an entirely new tax has been introduced, and an irritating and inquisitorial house-to-house visitation by tax-gatherers set up merely in order that the people who gain by the postal change Bhould. be made to pay their savings into the Treasury still, in an infinitely more objectionable way, then an act of stupendous folly has clearly been committed, and the sooner both the postal reform and the income tax are repealed the better. The Government have better means than anyone else of ascertaining whether the reduction of postage actually does benefit most the classes who will pay the income tax; and they can hardly afford to leave the matter where it is, since, as the Opposition has stated it, the case is one of ludicrous absurdity. While on this subject .we may express a hope that on a cognate matter the Post-master-general is not surrendering himself helplessly to the exigencies of red-tape. An intimation has been made in the public press that in future telegrams written on the old forms cannot be accepted. This is a distinctly retrograde movement. Under the regulations which have been in force for many years, and still are so (see the late3t Postal Guide, dated Ist October 1891 and published by the authority of the Postmaster-general at the Government Printing Office) telegrams are always accepted " whether written upon the prescribed form, upon any other printed form, or upon plain paper " (regulation 2). Many people have occasion to scribble telegrams on odd sheets and send them in to the nearest office — perhaps many hours' journey. Life and death may depend on the acceptance of such telegrams. It is monstrous to suppose that telegraph clerks are to be held justified in refusing to transmit any legiblywritten message of a bona fide character merely because it is not written on a particular official form. A good many of our readers are interested in dairy factories; some, no doubt, also in synods. Hitherto it has' been part of the duty appertaining to the editorial department of the Witness to separate these two interesting and profitable subjects, and to assign to each of them its due position in the various divisions of the paper. Thus, people who wanted to know how dairy factories get along turned to our agricultural and pastoral columns, while inquirers interested in the working of synods examined those pages which are (or should be) furthest removed from the sporting department. So far as thq Witness was concerned we have found this arrangement satisfactory in practice, and we have had no complaints from the dairy factories; but it will, we fear, no longer be pleasing to the Presbyterian Synod. We are not able to say why that body, within a few hours of first meeting, started off in full cry after the wicked factories and their still more wicked clients ; but there the fact is, and we are somewhat at a loss as to how to defend the farmers against a charge of impiety which ought clearly to have been levelled rather against their cows, and at. the same time preserve that attitude of deference to ecclesiastical authority which is so excellent a thing in the average country settler. Somehow or other, nobody knows now, it has suddenly come about that the dairy factories have been elevated into important local agencies of the powers of evil, and the farmers who supply them have been given to understand that they have been committing the greatest enormities, whereas they have not hitherto had the faintest 'idea that they were offending anybody in the world by milking their cows on Sunday and omitting to let the product become sour before Monday morning. We do not, however, feel at all disposed to make too much of the absurdities involved in the recent synodical discussions. These are matters about which ministers (as indeed one of themselves bluntly told them) mostly know next to nothing at all ; and under such circumstances their opinions upon them must not be taken too seriously/ When they solemnly counsel farmers to put their milk in the water from Saturday night to Monday, they " give themselves away " to everybody who has any practical knowledge of the subject so hopelessly that the whole thing becomes serenely unimportant.' It may be better advice than a hint to put water in their milk, but that is probably about the best that can be said for it. ! More will doubtless be heard of that very curious letter of Lorcl "None bo Deaf Onslow'S to the Bishop of AfThoie," Dunedin, exousing himself * 0> for absence from the Selwyn College ceremony on the ground that he was about to entertain Mr Ballance for a week, and was "making arrangements for him to see some of the praotical work carried on by the agriculturists of Canterbury who have estates of I some size." We have not the slightest doubt j that in this intention his Excellency is actuated by most praiseworthy motives, The idea of attempting to educate the Premier in things he knows nothing whatever about) but in regard to which he has not the slightest hesitation in making himself responsible for revolutionary legislation, is not at all a bad one, and under ordinary circumstances might be attended with salutary results to the country. The circumstances, however, are not ordinary, and Mr Ballance's introduction to the operations of practical agriculture will be attended with just no results at all. Lord Onslow, in fact, is making just the same kind of mistake to which we have just referred as being made by those who imagine that the wholesale withdrawal of capital from this country which is going on, will induce a pause in the sinuous policy upon which the Government are being driven by their taskmasters. Mr Ballance knows already, what the large Canterbury agriculturists seek to teach him, that to compel these men by grinding taxation to dismiss their labourers, restrict their operations, and stop their improvements, is a thing that cannot possibly be otherwise than detrimental to the colony. Why should Lord Onslow help to make the Premier more uncomfortable than he already is 1 It would be much more merciful to keep

the damning facts from cruelly obtruding themselves on Mr Ballance's unwilling eyes.

Mr Ward Will .Please Explain.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW18911105.2.97

Bibliographic details

Otago Witness, Issue 1967, 5 November 1891, Page 24

Word Count
2,851

THE OTANGO WITNESS, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY NOVEMBER 5, 1891.) THE WEEK. Otago Witness, Issue 1967, 5 November 1891, Page 24

THE OTANGO WITNESS, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY NOVEMBER 5, 1891.) THE WEEK. Otago Witness, Issue 1967, 5 November 1891, Page 24

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