THE WEEK,

Otago Witness, Issue 2051, 15 June 1893, Page 27

THE WEEK,

" Hangman sllnfl natura, aliuS *apiontla dlxit."— Juvbeas, " Goodnature and good »en«o mnitievarjein."— Popa.

The mosb bigoted worshipper at the altar of Sham must admit that Bogus the extraordinary disclosures Settlement, made by the Hon. G. F.

Richardsou at his recent meetings down south require a full and decided answer. Either Mr Richardson is making in the clearest and most definite terms charges marked by unparalleled recklessness, or there has been an amount of humbug and deceit about the administration of the Land department which is really appalling— little short, indeed, of absolutely disgraceful. Remembering the exposure ot pretences made after the Bruce election in the notorious matter of the " 1700 " alleged new settlers and other similar incidents, there must remain a pretty strong suspicion as to where the truth lies. Assuredly, however, Mr Richard3on will either have to make his fact 3 good by the evidence of a Parliamentary return or suffer in his own reputation a greater injury than his allegations have yet inflicted on tho other side. Mr Richardson, whose knowledge of his sabject both a3 an ex-Minister for Lands and as a professional surveyor is exceptionally good, declares " of his own knowledge" that in one locality up noith half the " settlers !> have immediately sold the sections they drew at premiums of from 20s to 30s an acre— that is to say, they simply pocketed that hugo premium for doing nothing more than dipping their hands into a lucky bag. Their names were secured as " members " of a " special settlement association," and did duty on Ministerial platforms and in audacious returns; but in realty they were simply gamblers — "city spielers" Mr Richardson calls them — who netted these spoils out of the public purse in return for nothing more than the loan of their surnames for swelling the rolls of the Land department.

This was not the only instance, it appears. Out of the 96 original members of the* Wellington Special Settlement Association, just seven are left in actual occupation of their sections ; out of 46 at Woodville only one is now residing ; out of the Masterton-Hawera Association of 32, three are left. Np less than 349 " transfers " for valuable consideration are actually recorded on the books of a department which, we were told, was never going to sully itself by dealings with dummies for ever I Dummying on this outrageous scale by special official license is a thing that in the worst days never was heard of. If what Mr Richardson says is correct, Mr John M'Kenzie has hunted out three or four dummies in two or three years, and in the same time has lent the direct assistance of his office to the manufacture of three or four hundred. Besides all this, it would appear that hundreds of applicants were mere speculators, whose idea of drawing a section and extracting a fee for abandoning it came to grief through bad luck at the ballot — f or Mr Richardson says that throughout the whole colony 700 of the original 900 names have already proved to be bogus.

Unless tfce acute remark made by the member for Mataura at one of his meetings is true — namely, that the public apply a lower standard of morality in judging the present Ministry than wa3 insisted upon with their predecessors — we shall surely have a strong demand from the Liberal party that the Land department shall either disprove its alleged direct encouragement of unblushing and wholesale dummyism, or shall forthwith purge its entire methods in the direction so vigorously demanded by the Hon. Mr Richardson.

The two bye-elections at Inangahua 'and Wanganui leave parties as Two they were before, and about Byes. neither can any real doubt

: have been felt from the first ': by any political party. We have no knowledge • of the gentleman who opposed Sir Robert Stout at Inangahua, bus he must have J recognised that he was tremendously haadi- ! capped by the candid ature of an ex-Premier. 1 The probability v thai; he was misled as to the strength of the denominational , vote, upon which he principal^ relied, whereas the unflinching manner in 1 which Sir Robert stands by the cause 1 of national education on all occasions , must have added largely to the support : which ha was accorded oa the coast as the ' due guerdon of distinguished public servica. ' Both candidates were Government men, the Opposition apparently deeming it hopeless to start a candidate for a West Coast con- ' stituency so soon after that part of the colony ' had been called upon to express its delight ! at possessing a Premier of its very own.

At Wanganui the curious and probably unprecedented spectacle was presented of an attempt by a colonist, temporarily resident in England, to wrest from the opposing party, by the agency of an accredited lieutenant, the very electorate from which that party was governed up to within a few week ago. Surely a more forlorn enterprise never was undertaken in the annals of electioneering oddities. It was foredoomed to failure under any circumstances ; but in the faca of the close personal association of the late Premier with the constituency, and of the feeling that must have more or less influenced hundreds against so recording their votes as to take political advantage, so to speak, ot bis de-

cease, the wonder is that Mr Oarson got anything like so many votes as he did. It cannot but be remembered that even Sir Robert Stout failed to make sure of his election as an absentee from the electorate he contested, and had to proceed hastily to the scene of cor.flicb and throw all his energy into the battle in order to arrest a tendency which was undoubtedly growing very serious for him. Aud Sir Eoberfc Stout, unlike Mr Oarson, was not an absentee from the colony, but only a resident of the opposite coast of the same island; while hs had his distinguished name and record to the fore, together with the gracious approval of the Hon. Mr Seddon, and the eager advocacy of the displaced member, as against Mr Carson's absolute inexperience in public affairs and his pronounced Opposition tendencies. We should say that, independently of party leaniDgs, there mu&t be. a i general sense that Wanganui has done the right thing, and could hardly have done less.

Sir Robert Stout is member for Inangahua, and has our congratulations The on his successful campaign Crisis. in the Wild West. What

more he may be, or hope 3to be, or is going to be permitted to be, remains as open a question as it was at the moment when the Hon. Richard Seddon returned in the fall splendour of evening dref s from that memorable trip to Government House. Plenty of people profess to be in the counsels of the Ministry, on the point. A not inconsiderable section claims to have been favoured with the secret confidences of Sir Robert himself; while a few who are envious of the temporary importance acquired by the other alleged possessors of State secrets throw out mysterious hints that they know what "the party" is going to do about the matter. That makes three distinct sets of people who go about with the gratifying consciousness of knowing more than anybody else on the subject of tne hour. We don't belong to any of these sets, and for a very good reason— namely, that we hold the firm opinion that neither the Ministry nor the member for Inangahua, nor " the party," has yet been able to form any distinct idea of what is going to happen, and consequently that there is nothing whatever at the bottom of the almoEt transcendental knowledge it is just now fashionable to profess.

Forced Currency.

We do not deny, of course— far from it— that the Hon. Mr Seddon probably has his own little programme pretty clearly mapped oat ; nor that Sir Robert Stout has a tolerably pronounced idea as to how he intends things to go; nor even that the party — including a section of the Ministry— may indulge in anticipations of a character incompatible with both. But that is not knowledge— as is clearly evidenced by the fact that all these programmes cannot be carried out. Some of them, for sufficient reasons, must — perhaps all of them will — come to the ground. For choice, we should prefer Sir Robert Stout's opinion as an index of the situation, and perhaps he will give it when he is interviewed on his return. It may not be in itself a correct forecast, but it may be such as to enable other people to prophesy accurately. Meantime we remain of opinion that nobody knows — not even the distinguished representative of Inangahua— how the present odd complication will turn out. Sir Robert has won his seat—" What will he do with it 1 " Mr Seddon has won the Premiership — " Will he do without it 1 " The acuteness of the financial crisis in Australia as affecting currentaccount holders, and through them the ordinary daily business of the country, was Ptrikingly shown by Sir George Dibbs in his speech to the New South Wales Parliament when introducing the new Bankiag Bill. The Premier said that there were 60,000 persons in that colony who at the time of speaking could pay neither their rent nor their tradespeople. "The active force3_o£ the community," to use the expressive language of the Argu?, " have been frozen into stiffness, and there is a general demand for a thaw." In one Mnk alone, Sir George Dibbs said, there were 20,000 depositors holding less than £50 each. The word "depositors," by the way, is loosely used throughout a good deal of the profuse financial comment that is goicg on, to mean interchangeably the holders of fixed deposit receipts and the owners of mere current credit balances. Someone ought to invent a convenient term applicable exclusively to the latter class ; meantime it must be understood that the Government relief scheme applies to these current-account " depositors " only. The New South Wales scheme, which is already law, is to issue Treasury notes to the current-account holders to the value of half their bank balance; the Treasurer holding the certificate of the liquidator of the Expended bank, stating the full amount of that balance as a kiad of security for ultimate repayment. The issue of Treasury notes is limited to £2,000,000, it beirg calculated that the amounts locked up on current accounts total up to about £3,800,000. The currency of the note 3is limited to five years, and during that time they are made legal tender. In other words, everyone must take them at their face value in gold, a provision which will probably cause a steady outflow of gold coin from the colony, in accordance with well-known economic laws, unl-ass the adjacent colonigg adopt a similar course. Thus there will, for tbe first lime in this quarter of the globe, be in circulation a form of paper carrency which is cot exchangeable for coin at the will of the holder as our bank notes ate, but which is given the statu3 of coin by the printing press as formally as is a button of gold or silver by the stamp of the mint. la Queensland the proposal is that the Treasury notes should be interest-heaiing — a very impoitant innovation upon the New South Wales plan, inasmuch as it is hoped that by ihis addition to the face value of the note the public will accord to it by will, independently of legal compulsioe, au equivalent gold value. It is certain that, beyond relieving an unexampled financial strain, the currency devices of our distressed neighbours will for years to come provide economic studies of the most unique importance for those interested in such things,

We recently commented upon the decision of the Victorian AttorneyThe Victorian general not to proceed with Wrangle. the prosecution of Sir Matthew Davies and Mr Milledgs, and expressed the opinion that in view of the breakdown of the principal allegation for the Crown, aud after the Learly unanimous verdict of the bench of magistrates, the decision was probably right. At the same time we were obliged to add that the accused 'must congratulate themselves on having had a very narrow shave. A perusal of the full text of Sir Bryan O'Loghleu's memorandum on the matter, however, throws an anything but favourable light upon his action, and we must frankly own that it has considerably modified our view. The Attorney-general appears throughout his discussion of the case to be hunting up every possible reason for stopping it, rather than satisfying himself or enlightening others as to whether a yrvma facie case has or has not been made out. He disposes very briefly of the conspiracy charge by saying that " in his opinion " there is no direct evidence, while the inferential evidence, " in his judgment," disappears on the farther facts elicited. He then discusses at much greater length the question as to whether he should make a presentment on charges of fraudulent misrepresentation, and pronounces as follows :—": — " In my opinion the evidence is uofc such as should induce me to make a presentment. There is not evidence to satisfy my mind as to ths falsity as alleged of the entries in reference to the £100,000," and ro on — as though the function of a public prosecutor were to block all prosecutions unless there should be evidence to " satisfy his mind " that a crime had been committed. The language used, indeed, if hardly that of a counsel for the defence, is at least that of a judge summing up evidence favourably to the accused. The memorandum is of considerable length, but we should hardly do Sir Bryan O'Loughlen injustice by describing it as in general fairly represented by the extracts we have quoted. It is no wonder that, under all the circumstances, it should have failed to convince the Victorian people that the hands of justice were being left unshackled. Whether Mr Isaacs, the Solicitor-general, resisted his colleague's decision for popularity's sake (as some cynical people say) or from honest conviction, as we believe, it is quite claar that the very fact of tlierebeicganessentialdifference on such a point between the two highest legal authorities in the colony ought to have been sufficient to have relegated the case in dispute to the Supreme Court for trial. For the guilt or innocence of the accused could not, of course, be determined by either party, but only whether they should be accused at all. The unopposed return of Mr Isaacs to Parliament after his resignation, and the general censure upon the Government, sufficiently show that the absolute necessity of a trial after euch a wrangle is completely recognised. The disadvantages of a polidcal Attorneygeneral are conspicuously shown by the affair, and incidentally so all the advantage of the grand- jury system. The moral of recent " trust-the-people " dogmas is that a politician when once in office must necessarily be above suspicion, inasmuch as the people have pub him there. But though a grand jury is neither elected by one-man-one-vote nor nominated by powerful politicians out of office, we believe " the people " will on the whole prefer our present system to giving the uncontrolled personal manipulation of the course of justice to a party politician possassing even those highly fashionable passports to respectability. The constitutional question at issue in the matter — namely, whether the powers of the Attorneygeneral and of the Solicitorgeneral are really co-equal in the way of filing presentments, as Mr Isaacs claimed— is of course of more interest to Victorians than to ourselve?, as it is a matter of Victorian Statute law. The words of section 388 of the Crimes Act in that colony are that " subject to the provisions hereinbefore contained, it shall be lawful for her Majesty's Attorney-general or Solicitor-general ior Victoria, or for any prosecutor for the Queen in the name of a law officer, to make presentment at the Supreme Court," &3. Mr Isaacs says he was entitled under this clause to come to an independent determination of his own. Toe Premier, on the contrary, professes to interpret it as giving the Solicitor - general discretion only in the absence of his superior colleague in the Law department. The Cabinet, supporting the Premier's contention, passed the following resolution :— " That, in the opinion of this Cabinet, it is unconstitutional for it, or any member of it, to interfere with the Attorneygeneral in the discharge of his functions a3 a grand jury, eith&r directly or indirectly," and it U sufficiently clear, contrary to what might have been expected, that the question of the Mercantile Bank prosecutions was never really deals with in Cabinet at all. The Premier, Mr Patterson, emphatically declares that " tho question of placing Sir Matthew Davies and Me Millitlge on their trial never came before the Cabinet, and I had no knowledge of what the Attorneygeneral intended doing until I read the statement of Sir Bryan O'Loghlen in the Argus last week. ... It would be an unfortunate day for the community when matters affecting the liberty of the subject came to be doait with at secret Cabinet meeting?, and depended upon the political I influences of that character." This latter declaration seems to us very like nonsense. If it means anything ifc means that political influences affect a Cabinet, but have no tendency whatever to band the judgment of an individual Minister. Common sense indicates the exact reverse as the greater probability; but as a matter of fact political influences largely control both, only that obviously the dacger is less where many minds have to be brought to the one goal. The introduction of the word " secret " is purely misleading ; a Minister deciding a case in his room is more "secret" than any Cabinet meeting. The Premier, indeed, gave himself away at the same interview by the significant admission that " the question whether the law does not place too much power in the hands of one man and should be amended is one of principle that might at any time occupy the attention of a Cabinet." Sir Bryan

O'Loghlen's decision was emphatically a oneman decision, and the Cabinet is, cr profess to be, hostile to it, while feeliDg bound to support its Attorney-general's action. The Crown prosecutors were also hostile to it ; the Solicitor-general was hostile ; the public were unquestionably hostile ; and even Sir Matthew Davies and Mr Millidge, sva si bona norint, ought to have been hostile. A curious instance, verily, whereon to attempt to found a defence of one-man rale as against Cabinet responsibility. Mr Patterson had much better have left it alone. Indeed, a perusal of the statements and correspondence in the matter generally leaves us with a considerably lower opinion of the capacity and steadiness of the Victorian Promitr tban we had hiterto entertained. In this colony, our Attorney-general is political, and our Solicitor-general nonpolitical. A similar conflict here between the Jaw officers would therefore possess an interest of a wholly different kind to the Victorian wrangle. Can anyone authoritatively state whether such a dispute is possible under our laws ?