THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2085, 8 February 1894, Page 27

THE WEEK.

" Hnnmwn allnd natua, aUnd saplantla dUlt."— Jtnrxiu*. 11 Qoo&nataro and ftod nsh mart erer Join."— Fora,

We wish to give every credit that is due to the present administration of Land the Lands department, and Administra* a good deal undoubtedly tion. is due. Tbe Minister himself, while continuing what may be politely called his selective method of distribution of departmental favours and disfavours, shows .a great and steady improvement upon his original "form." He has, for one thing, become more accustomed te being a Minister, and has ceased to regard as an infallible axiom the assumption that the universe revolves round bis official inkbottle. Probably he has recognised, none the less effectively because a little late, the crudities of his first year or two cf office, and has taken to heart the punishment with which they were occasionally visited. He has also learnt — not quite so thoroughly as might be wished, however — that even civil servants, vastly as they may be beneath a Minister in importance, occasionally know their business; and that the new-broom affectation of absolute autocracy in which I persons new to office so commonly indulge is very apt to break down and end in the calling in of the despised civil servants aftei all. Tne Lands department is less a one-man affair than it was, and is proportionately increased in efficiency and smoothness of working. In the matter of what we have called selective distribution, however, there is still rather too much personal government.

On the whole, despite the admitted blots, there is much to admire and approve in the present land policy and~administration, and there is also much encouragement in the present very marked demand for land for settlement. Sir Robert Stout's pronounced dislike for the "eternal" lease has not prevented that form of tenure from earning the strong and general favour which we predicted for it from its first announcement. It is Mr M'Kenzie's pet invention, and it has " ckught on " with unmistakable force. Some cf these days there will be a provision quietly passed into law by which the lessees can at their option exchange their leases for freeholds ; but that day has not arrived yet — nor will it till perpetual lessees are numerous enough to exercise political power of their own — and taking the system as it now is, it is probably the most popular, as it is certainly the most theoretically faulty, Bystem of land distribution ever devised.

The eternal and other leasing systems are meantime, there is every Counting reason to believe, beirjg put Unhatched to a use probably noi inChickens. tended at the time the present act was passed. In a manner not really open to any specific objection — for the country has approved these leasiDg systems, and there can therefore be no lack of justification for applying them in any case whatever — they are in effect being so used as to envelope in confusion and uncertainty such important issues as those of the financial outcome of the Cheviot*, Poinahaka, and other purchases. The plan upon which the Government evidently intends to proceed in such cases is Bimple. They buy the estate at a certain figure— in the case of the two estates we have named, the figure was considerably in excess of what the owners would have taken if there had been more wide-awakeness and less slapdash and display on the Government side (with perhaps less astuteness on the owners') ; but we may hope that there will be an improvement in this respect in future. The cost of the

estate, including interest, cost of surveys, roading, &c, is subsequently made up ; a simple calculation then easily shows how much the new settlers must pay if loss is to be avoided ; and on that figure, so calculated, the rents of the eternal leases and occupation licenses are based. Thus if the department has blundered tbe settlers have to make up the difference, and the Government, according to the scheme, scores a success.

Persons who have not watched recent administrative methods will say that there is an obvious fallacy here. If, they will argue, the settleis — who surely should be good judges — do of their free will offer the prices arrived at as we have described, that is sufficient proof that the land is worth tbe money that was paid for it. As a matter of fact, however, the fallacy lies in this argument itself. The cash price of a freehold is a true test. Once paid, the transaction is done with, and the figure is a record. - If the resale were also for cash, the test would be complete. Bat a rent is a thing that, like unsuitable political convictions, " kin be altered." And altered in a good many cases, at Cheviot at any rate, it certainly will be ; still more certainly at Pomabaka, if the rents now fixed are ever really offered. We all know the process ; and certainly favours which common experience tells us are so lavishly bestowed already will not be denied to the settlers on the purchased estate, who are in a sense tbe special pets of the Government. The effect of tbe whole business is that on certain " promises to pay " a rent which in many cases cannot and in many others will not be paid for more than a very short term, a delusive balance sheet can easily be made out; the principle being virtually no less unsound tban that upon which the " profits " of land companies were demonstrated in Melbourne duriDg the boom. In fact, it is the same principle, only much less viciously and extravagantly cairied out.

Much has been made of a single case at Cheviot in which improved terms have already been refused. This case, however, is without significance. The Land department would hardly be so infatuated as to begin tampering with the Contracts while the ink upon them was hardly dry. But none the less we think the conviction is very firm among the best judges that neither at Cheviot nor at Pomahaka can the rentals nominally exacted and nominally promised ever be paid. Reduction or eviction will be the alternatives ; and all recent experience goes to show which will be chosen.

Precisely similar financial figment?, we may add, have long gone on in the matter of small grazing runs. Some very recent instances are sufficiently notorious. The results of ballot day, having served their purpose of glorifying the administration, are quietly wiped out behind the scenes afterwards; the rentals being substantially reduced, and the runs re-grouped into larger areas nnder the same lessees, who duly figure as " new settlers " in the next returns.

Lest it might be supposed in some aggressively receptive quarters that A a new mine of medical wealth " New Book." has been discovered — super*

sed in g Milner Stephen, deceased, and Mattei, very much alive — it may be as well to mention that the Rev Mr Chodowski's enthusiasm carried him rather far in the matter of his descriptions of the Talmud. The language of exaggeration is somewhat commonly used in reference to the bearing of ancient canonical writings upon modern science. Quite a number of good people have persuaded themselves, and are ready to persuade others, that the Book of Leviticus, "properly understood," contains all that Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson can teach us about hygiene. As everybody has access to Leviticus, whereas very few people outside the Jewish n-ce have any bat the vaguest notion what the Talmud is, and fewer still could read it if they bad, Mr Chodowski's praise may, possibly precipitate a rush for Talmudic prescriptions, just as other " unsolicited testimonials " are found by experience to do when the thing testimonialised is surrounded with sufficient mystery. It requires perhaps an unusual gift of creduloueness to completely absorb the statement, for instance, that the Talmudic treatment of hydrophobia is approximately that of M. Pasteur ; but then experience shows that unusual gifts of credulousness are not wanting hereabouts. Possibly, however, the remark that the benefits of M. Pasteur's treatment are themselves still highly debatable may somewhat discount the resultant exaltation of " the doctors of the Talmud," even among the credulou'.

The Talmud, as the Rev. Mr Chodowski very truly claims, is a compilation of almost unique interest ; and he has very properly concluded that more ought to be known about it. It is more intrinsically interesting than the fragmentary codifications of Jewish law which form the bulk of some of tbe Old Testament books ; but the best authorities agree in describing the Talmud as terribly discursive, notwithstanding that the version referred to by Mr Chodowski — that which was finished in 500 a.d. — represents a revised and severely condensed edition. The history of its compilation has been recently supplied by Dr Emmanuel Deutech and the Rev. J. Milne, who make it clear that, while it is " undeniably the most trustworthy receptacle of the traditional Jewish law," it has been doctored by countless hands for hundreds of years to bring it to its present shape, while " there has never been anything approaching to a canonicity of the code, or to a reception of it as a binding law book by the whole nation." The Talmud, in ehort, is simply interesting as an abstruse and diffuse repository of come of the best ancient wisdom. Mr Chodowski is right in insisting upon its extreme interest, but hardly sound in seeking to base that interest upon the kind of up-to-dateness at which his lecture hints.

There has remained but one thing, in this age of scepticism and advance, Impeached, against which the tongue of the scoffer has never blasphemed. The Bank of England has looked down upon the busineES world of the nineteenth century with the majestic dignity of the Sphinx gazing out upon the ages from tie shadow of the Pyramids. It is just about two hundred years old to-day ; for its birthday was July 27, 1694, and it was born

therefore while William and Mary reigned over England. It is the greatest bank, and in many respects the greatest institution of any kind, in the whole world. It is a mistake to say that its finger is on the financial pulse of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia ; rather, it is the central organ that sends the lifeblood of, commerce coursing through them all.

Its immunity from the rough handling that has befallen its pigmy competitors seems, however, to have come to a sudden close. Our cablegrams tell us that its directors have been arraigned by a section of the financial press for "unpardonable negligence " and for having, as it is alleged, " become speculators on the Stock Exchange and promoters of doubtful companies." This is the beginning of the end for the unquestioned mastery of the Bank of Ungland ; for ever since the resignation a few months ago of Ohief Cashier May it has been well understood that smouldering fires were at work that must sooner or later burst forth, and mall proba* bility consume much of the traditional glory of the great bank before their extinction oould be effected. Although there will be nc serious scandal in the matter, there will be a repetition in the departments of finance of that great and permanent humiliation which, occurring in the department of journalism, brought down The Times to the level of an ordinary daily, and wrecked a " mana" half as old as that of the bank itself, a very few years ago.

On the principle that a stricken lion may be safely kicked, we shall probably see raked up certain passages in the life-history of the bank tending to show that it has after all more than once been on the eve of what we should nowadays call " resonstruction," and has only been rescued by the money-creating powers of a royal decree ; and the bank will be unable to deny it. "So passeth a glory that is of the world."

Mr Gladstone, Prime Minister of the British Empire, takes a leading posiftf tion in this week's news. Gladstone, l^oc one thing, he has been journalistically proved to be a Scotchman, the process being recorded in a paragraph elsewhere in this issue. 1c seems rather odd that the genealogy of the great statesman should apparently only have been fixed when he is much too old to care whether he ever hai a genealogy at all. However, such as it is, it demonstrates that he belongs equally to the Highlands and tbe Lowlands, so that the gratification of the local Gaels need not be alloyed by tbe usual uncomfortable distinctions. Like all Scotchmen and Irishmen, he has a king or two at the other end of his ancestry, and, in short, fulfils in bis person all those somewhat curious genealogical qualifications which tend to establish the modern' Scot in the charmed circle of Burns associations and the like.

A much more interesting piece of news, however, is the positive statement of the Pall Mall GaKetce that the Premier's retirement is virtually decided on. It is not much that the Pall Mall should have said it — that paper is what Americans call " a little previous " occasionally, and wants badly to recover its old prestige by a big stroke of some kind — but It is a good deal that Mr Gladstone should have denied it, in the thoroughly typical Gladstonese of which he has made use. As usual, the Gladstonian press makes one thing out of his announcement, and the Conservative press thei exact opposite ; which is probably just what Mr Gladstone, as on so many former occasions, meant to effect. Under these circumstances we may as well make our own prediction, which is thatintbis instance a New Zealand precedent will be more or less closely followed. Those amiable but surprising persons who really believe that the inhabitants of the British Islands arc settling down open-mouthed to tbe practice of taking the time of day from tbe New Zealand Radicals will perhaps be chagrined to learn that we mean an Atkinsonian precedent — a Government whose chief no longer appears in Parliament, but is nominally the chief all the same. Something of that kind will be desperately striven for by those of Mr Gladstone's colleagues who are smart enough to suspect that it is not for their sake that the Liberal-Irish party votes a solid, stolid majority of 40.

The principal topic of Imperial interest during the last two or three A weeks has been the delintiravc quency of a youth named Imperial Peel, who wrote a scathing Crisis. diatribe on Australian bank-

ing methods, and dated it from the Treasury, London. The production in question, having been torn out of the young gentleman's copybook by his admiring relatives and taken to the nearest printer's for immortalisation, found its way (probably through the same agency) to the Australian colonies. The heading acquired for it the status of an important Imperial document, and on its gettiDg into the hands of the Premier of New South Wales, .-:ir George Dibbs simply eat up and howled. Tbe celebrated "Damn Chicago" which was cabled all over the world when he was wearing his new Michael and George about the States took quite a pale, sickly hue in view of the New-South- Welsh that echoed through the halls of state in Macquarie street. Telegrams in indignant language flew to the neighbouring Premiers ; tbe cable was set to work, and all AgeDt-Generaldom hummed like a beehive invaded by the pernicious and insolent wasp. What did Mr Gladstone and tbe other Lords of the Treasury mean by daring to issue State papers libelling Australian banking of all things in the world — that tried and trusted model of everything that banking ought to be 1 That was the awful demand that the British Oabinet had to answer; and there in the anteroom were Sir Sau), and Sir Andrew, and Sir Charles, and all the rest of them, sitting grincly upright in a row waiting to hear what the Imperial culprits had to say for themselves. (There ought to be a State picture of the scene hung in Windsor Castle.) Meantime everybody from Black Rod downwards was rushing about tryirjg for dear life to find out who on earth Peel could be, and what for goodneas sake he had written and where and why he had written it. When at last tbe author was run to earth in a remote cabin of the junior

clerk's department, possibly composing another and more blood-curdling " theme " for his examiners in the lunch hour, with a pen in one band and a stick of barley-sugar in the other, the unique situation required all the powers of diplomacy to deal with. The thing after all was only a competitive essay, and the British Government is not run by its office-boys ; but how to pacify Agent-Generaldom arrayed in all its stars and crosses with a mere bald assurance of that kind ? Lord Rosebery, however, came to the rescue with the diplomatic resources of the Foreign Office, and his visitors filed back to Victoria Btreet mollified but not pleased. The person who came worst ont of the fuss wns the unfortunate Sir George Dibbs, who had meanwhile composed a detailed and crushing reply to the youthful Feel and published it aerially in the Argus newspaper with every indication of complete self-satisfaction.