THE WEEK. The Otago Witness WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1892.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2008, 18 August 1892, Page 24

THE WEEK.

The Otago Witness WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1892.)

" Nunquam allud natara, alind aaplentla dlxlt."— Jovisiti. " (Hod nature and good sense must over Join." — Pom. A somewhat laboured explanation has been given, evidently under OppoThe sition inepiratioo, of the tiue Vole of meat-inp o£ Mr Brace's Confidence, amendment to the motion for the second reading of tho Land Bill. It is said that Mr Itolleston and his party knew quite well that the motion must be lost, but dot raed it desirable, as a measure of party tactics, to pin Ministers down to the auti-freehold principle ;is a. definite tbiug by compelling them to reject a motion which declared in favour ot the: continuance of freehold tenure. There may be something in this, bat it; has the general appearance of being a little "thin." It is true that the shilly-shallying; of Ministers with the qaestion of abolition or continuance of freehold is not only very.paltry in itself, but; productive of much public* inconvenience and coEfusion.and veiy serious, waste of time. But i£ the Opposition have found it impossible up to date to extract from the Government a plaiu, honest word on this important que»tioD, it does not follow that tbey arc now entitled to say that the defeat of Mr Bruoe's amendment by a party vote affixes irrevocably to the Ballanoe Government the credit or discredit (accordicg as it may be viewed; of a policy ot land nationalisation. The Premier, very properly as we thtak, accepted tbe [motion as one of, want of oonfldeace .

Ho could hardly do less, siuc-J it proposed to attack the principle of one of the policy bills. Having done so, the motion lost much of its verbal significance, as motions of want of confidence, in whatever mask they may appear, almost always do. Members under the impetus of an urgent party whip, disregard the meaning carried on the face of the motion, and range themselves in the lobbies according to the stcondary principle it iE3pl.es — that of confidence or otherwise in the Government of the day. Probably the Minister tor Lands blundered, from his chief's point of view, in pointing to the vote not as an expression of confidence in the Government, but as a condemnation of the freehold principle fey a majority of the House. In doing so he somewhat spoilt Mr Bal lance's tactios, and rendered hia own position more " mixed " than ever ; but even with this we hardly think the Government will be in any way troubled, or the Opposition benefited, by the result. The real intentions of the Government about the retention of the freehold tenure remain now, as they have hitherto been, absolutely unascertainable — Ministers continuing as hitherto to contradict themselves and each other on the point in a way that no straightforward person can, with the best intentions, make head or tail of.

We believe the country honestly desires that a conflict should be averted Tho over the Land Bill, and in Freehold spite of the party vote the Question. other day it is perfectly well

known that seveial members on the Government side are " of the wrong colour" on the question of the freehold tenure. The Government, as we have said, does not avow that it means to abolish fieehold — in fact the bill, like last year's bill, does nominally provide for cash sale?, although deferred-payment farms are to be put an end to. The new system of perpetual lease tenure which Mr M'Kenzie proposes is surely well worth considering, and we see no reason at all why, with proper modifications — or even, if necessary, without them — it should not be added to the others. In fact, the bill nominally containc provision for every desirable form of set'lement except deferred-payment, which, so long as it suits some people (as it still does) ought not to disappear from the list of vaiied attractions which New Zealand can ofEer to the intending settler.

The real blot on the whole bill is the determination which runs through every line of it to make the Midster for Lands for the time being practically the " boss " of the whole of the settlements and the settlers as welJ, and to deprive tbe people of every vestige of influence or choice in the matter of " settling down." If the bill should be carried in its present form, settlers will have to sue to the Minister for Lands as a patron, a sort of glorified big landlord, instead of regarding him a3 the officer through whom the rights conferred upon them by Parliament are to be made formally available. Such a retrogression to the worst form of ultra-centralism is surely at best a mistake. We mustcocclude that Mr M'Kenzie believes it i 3 best for the settlers to remain suppliants rather than to be told what their rights are, and assured that, such as they are, they can be maintained in spite of any whims or fancies of transient Ministries. We can hardly think that Mr M'Kenzio is so much guided by mere personal vanity in this matter as some Opposition speakers assert. He must know perfectly well that he will not always be a Minister, and that tbe powers he i 3 now straining to acquire for himself may any day pass to somebody el~e. 33e that as it may, he has produced a bill which with very little alteration could be made useful and beneficial, and yet he is refusing to allow it to be made either because of an inordinate desire to make himself, and we suppose all successive Land Ministers, the " boss " landlord of the settlers. Surely it will be a reproach to the House if a serious quarrel bhould arise over what ought to be, after all, so easily adjustable a trouble in connection with an otherwise acceptable bill.

We have not been slow to endorse, on every occasion when it could truthGovernment f u ll y be done, the favourable Under things which it has been the Mask and fashion to say of several of Hood. the new members on the

Ministerial side of the House. With a very few notable exceptions the socalled Radical section (by which is meant the members who mistake their own political babyhood for the embryo of a revolution) have exhibited ability, thoughtfulness, and satisfactory capacity for public usefulness ; and though they have made it evident that they have mostly not yet risen above that early stage of thought which seeks the promotion of the general interest solely through the destruction of the particular (and so injures both) they have done, and will do again, much good work for the country.

But there is one respect in whic'i the Ministerial majority, under the astute manipulation of the more cunuing bauds in the Ministry itself, is distinctly betraying its trust. In condoning and even assisting, as •they are doing, the systematic concealment by the Ministry of what is goiDg on in tl.e departments and in connection with tl.e spending of the public funds, the members of that party are committing nothing less thau an outrage on the people of New Zealand, and one which it is the very essence of true Liberalism to denounce and defeat. This is no party matter. By whatever *party this systematic concealment, this cunning evasion of the truth, this determination to govern the people under cloak ■of secrecy at all hazards, might be practised, it would be equally odious to every one who cares for libeity and honesty in our public life. We do not remember that such things as are now daily repoited from Wellington have ever been attempted in our Parliament before. The complaints are not even confined to the refusal and evasion of necessary returns by the Government : the allegation that false" returns are presented is reiterated again and again, and with all allowance for party bias on the part of the accusers it is impossible that the public should not conclude that the Star Chamber •style of government which Mr Ballance and his colleagues have introduced is being •carried to the natural and inevitable end of euch methods — namely, seoreoy at all tiasardj!,

We have said that those who conntenauce this kind of thing are betraying their trust. More, they are being used, and used for purposes which sooner or later will expose them to the righteous anger of every political party #~rinout distinction. Let us at least have openness in our public affairs ; and if we cannot get Ministers who are voluntarily straightforward about things that the public have an absolute right to know, let us at least have representatives who are not afraid to say that they shall be compelled to be bo, however much they may fear the details it is necessary for them to reveal.

Tkerc are certain microscopic occupan's of our pools and rivers whose The peculiarity it i 3 to supply Kaitangata their internal cravings by the Fund. creation of artificial whirl-

pools in the surrounding medium. They are endowed, in the neighbourhood of their jaws— which are voracious — with an immense number of waving feelers, by manipulating which in a peculiarly skilful and insinuatiug way vortices are caused to form in the water, thus conveying everything that is good into the common centre, where it rapidly undergoes complete absorption.

It takes a fairly good microscope to make the various forms of Vorticella and Rotifer f which are the principal families answering to the above description) visible to the naked eye; but those who are without such appiiances can study the sarad phenomenon with much edification by keeping their regards fixed for a short time upon the Public Trustee, as evolved from his less pretentious forebears by the favouring conditions of recent political methods. The Public Trustee, as we know him now, is rapidly developing into an alldevouring creature of prey. In fact, it would seem to be only a matter of lime, if certain politicians have their way, when every kind of property, public and private, v/ill be sent flying and swirling into the open fishing bag of the Public Trustee.

The "intake current" just now being set at work has at the other end of it the Kaitangata Relief Fund, which most people would be glad enough to see left, for whatever purposes it may best serve, unde^r the admirable management of its existing guardians. The position taken up by these latter in regard to the proposed legislation, by which it is intended to shelve them, is moderate and sensible. They recognise that it is desirable to allocate in some formal way to certain desirable objects the portion of the relief fund which is not required for the maintenance of those who were thrown upon charity by the terrible accident of 1879 ; but they desire that the expressed wish of the contributors as to the disposal of this surplus should be respected iv whatever legislation is passed ; and they naturally desire that when the time comes for yielding up their trust they should resign it into hands which will distribute it, as theirs would have done, in accordance with the mandate conveyed to themselves by the contributors.

This is not only reasonable, but honourable ; and as, moreover, tho Public Trustee business is being at present quite absurdly overdone anyhow, we trust to see important modifications in the Hon. Mr Seddon's bill before, if ever, it becomes law. The bill for electing land boards by manhood suffrage is eveu more The Very ridiculous— and in its relaliatest. tion to the farming interest, even more coolly audacious — than the measure proposed last year for applying the one-man-one-vote prinsiple to county elections. Mr M'Kenzie has far too much sense to believe in it himself, and we really wonder that for once he did not vindicate his independence and refuse to obey the mandate which made it the fate of a Minister for Agriculture to bear the unmeasured ridicule inseparable from such an absurdity. It would be every whit as reasonable for a bill to be brought in by Mr W. P. Reeves making the owning and workiug of 200 acres of land a minimum qualification for entitling the possessor to vote at the election of a City Trades and Labour Council. Nobody, of course, can conceive Mr W. P. Reeves doing anything of that kind, for reasons which the character of that gentleman's political career supplies in abundance ; and if it were not that long habit of self-subjection to the least responsible of their supporters has corrupted the independence of Ministers, it would be equally impossible that the House should be asked to destroy in this summary fashion the last hope of the farmers of ever getting farming questions dealt' with by persons having some training in the question. We cannot help thinking that this measure is deliberately aimed at the Farmers' and Country Settlers' League as a punishment for having recently dared to send a petition to the .House in which the anti-farming legislation of the Government was vigorously con- ! deraned. It has become the fashion under the present Administration to use every power of Govvnment to punish people who speak their minds — except-, of course, they belong to the privileged " colour," and the fanners and oountry settlers, owing to their protett againßtthe means which are being rapid : y pressed on to make them powerless in the State, have now come under the ban in tbeir turn. We are glad to see that several of the supporters of the Government spoke with contempt of the principle of electing by manhood suffrage those who have to deal with the difficult special questions which weekly come before our land boards. The principle of election under proper electoral provisions might be workable—it might certainly be far better than the nominee plan as it has lately been worked in Southland and elsewhere. But if the present bill Le passed, there is no earthly reason why the county council of every district should not be elected by the manhood (and womanhood) suffrage vote of every elector in the province, with unlimited powers over the ratepayers' pockets. The discussion in the Legislative Council on the Bible in Schools Bill Tho introduced by Mr Downie Education Stewart, is interesting as Act. showing the hopelessness of saying anything new on either tide of this much-discussed question, Mr Stewart makes the usual appeal to 6ta«

tislics to support his argument that since the Education Act came into force crime has increased ; but nobody knows better than an astute lawyer like Mr Stewart that statistics can be made to range themselves in furtherance of the views of almost any section cf the disputants in this matter. More especially do statistics lend themselves to sectarian purposes in connection with the discussion. In other words, it is easier to prove by the statistics Mr Stewart refers to that one sect is better than another than that an unsectarian educational system is either the best or the worst of all We think that earnest students of the question must long ago have satisfied themselves that the relations between education and crime are as yet too complicated to admit of being demonstrated on a blackboard by a few extracts from the Registrar-general's Bluebooks ; and that this would still be the case even if the confusing element of sectarian strife could be altogether eliminated from the discussion.

There may be a sense in which it is true that, as Mr Stewart says, " the Bible in England is recognised as the true Magna Charta of the libeities of the nation," but the statement is surely too vague and trite to stand as argument against the powerful majority which, with no hostility to the Bible, reluctantly recognises that, in the interests of free and compulsory education, every trace of sectarianism must disappear from the curriculum, and religion be taught ia the home and in the Sunday school. No one knows belter than Mr Stewart that James I, under whose auspices the Bible compilers acknowledge themselves to have pursued- their labours, would be a peculiarly odd person to be credited with a Magna Chartn, or selected as a champion of " the liberties of the English nation." Such arguments, like the weak contention based upon the perfunctory use of the outsides of Bibles in witness-boxes, are quite unworthy of Mr Stewart's undoubtedly acute and practical mind.

Mr Oliver's remarks were aUo altogether outside the question. He epoke of the value of the Bible as literature, and of the disastrous effects of " depriving children of the pleasure of reading the Bible" from that point of view. Setting aside the fact that this is itself a strictly sectarian expression of opinion — inasmuch as one powerful religious body, at least, does in any case deprive chifdren of that pleasure in the avowed interest of religion itself — it is to be noted that few, if any, of the non-Catholic opponents of Bible-reading in schools desire that children should be strangers to the Bible. On the contrary, one widespread ground of opposition is that reverence would be lost by the Bible- reading method proposed— that children would ere long (and do, where the system is in force) come to regard their Bibles with no more special regard than their geographies or spelling books.

We think that it is to meeting considerations such as these, as well as the unquestionable fact that the Catholic and other denominational claims would become irresistible were Bible-reading restored, that advocates of the proposed change should address themselves if they desire to be taken seriously. The question has advanced far beyond the stage when the old MagnaOharta and beautiful-literature arguments have the slightest chance of making a single convert from the overwhelming majority on the other side.