The Otago Witness WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1898.) THE WEEK

Otago Witness, Issue 2298, 17 March 1898, Page 29

The Otago Witness WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1898.) THE WEEK

" Nunauam aliud natura, aiiud sapientia di.tit." — Juvenal. "Good nature and good sense must erer join."' — Pope. The smashing blow dealt by the Wellington electorate at corruption, Waterloo. deceit, and sel£-sesking in jioblio life was delivered after fhe Witness was out of the printer's bands last wetk. Ordinarily, a bye-election would have been half forgotten by this time, and hardly worth commenting upon. But the Wellington election of March 1898 will not be forgotten for a very long time, and many a noteworthy incident in public affairs will date directly from ifc. The Premier, the trail of whose record in what we may for the purpose call his Hcbart and Jubilee year has been over all his later history, and whose self-surrender to the Anglo-German gyndicate has been felt by crowds of his former supporters to be well-nigh intolerable, must have early determined to throw all dignity and political decency to the winds and make a frantic and desperate fight for what he holds dearest in the world. A recent German declaration is to some such effecb as that whatever a German once sticks his ' talons into he holds on to while life is in him — like, it might have been added, a dog to his bone. Mr Seddon's paid aervica under a syndicate parbly " made in Germany " seams to have taught him (if he required any teaching) the same admirable principles. Hence the amazing and humiliating spectacles that for three weeks scandalised the people of Wellington. — the scenes at street corner?, at places of resort, on wharves, and at the tops of c^rts and lorries ; the scraeching, the tub-thumping, and the appeals to all the lowest passions of human nature against the threatened return to Parliament of one single fearless and incorrup- j tible representative. Panic of tha wildest kind seems to have seized Mr Ssddon at the bare notion of a man who knows something of him, and whom he cannot bay, being j summoned by the people to the tribune. It would be a merciful view on the part pf those who have been spectators of the unhappy Premier's delirium of abject fear to try to believe that his extremity bad for tha time actually overclouded his senses. In his ! smaller, but we must add hia much more respectable, way the Minister for Lands, ! too, has been exhibiting bis terror at the approach of political retribution — for he, too, has his own political syndicatial hire to j guard ; that hire which he, like bis coli league and leader, only consents to take la j I UW eur# iote^ts Qi " $je c&u^e;' of, d.jm.o-

I cracy. We must confess, however, that the ' maudlin tone of some of hia appeals, pitiful as It may have been, was infinitely preferable to the brazen notes of the Premier imploring aid throughout the purlieus of the city, with Mr George Fisher, but lately his most uncompromising enemy, trotting hnmbly in his train. The spectacle, on the whole, presented by the two leaders o£ the Ministry would have been utterly deplorable had they won the contest, Having, after all, besu ignominiously rcuted in tha fight, they are probably for the time — at least we should j bopa so — as much and as heartily ashamed of themselves as it is in their nature to be. That Mr Duthie's return is of the first political significance is not What doubtful at all, and, indeed, Wellington j$ not seriously denied even ! Means, by the few papers which still i profess a balief in Mr Seddon j and his methods. The Ministerial journal, in the course of a sickly attempt to curry favour with the new member for Wellington, admi's tbat no recognisable Government policy exists, and suggcsta that it ia desirable for somebody to think of one. The fallacy here is that it was not questions of policy, but, of honesty, that were on trial at the Wellington election. Neither Mr Kirk (this, we may mention for the benefit of those who have not noticed or hare forgotten it, was the name of the gentleman of whom Mr Seddon happened to make use in the affair) nor Mr Dathie promulgated a j policy; nor was ar.jthir.g of the kind re- j I quired. The former repeated dutifully, but, ; it seems, not over-attractively, all the various shibboleths expected of those who are privileged to be stamped with the New Zealand Tammany hall-maik. The latter ssid simply, " I am willißg that you should send me to Parliament to strive with all my might for the reatoraI tion of honesty and political purity in the I government; oi this colony." If Mr Kirk ' had put forward a perfected policy posses- j ing ali the virtues, and Mr Du'chie had pro- j po&ed to place the country under a Dicta- ! ■ torsbip, or to block up Wellington Harbour, J [ the result of the pollitg would have been | very little affijcted. There is something ' comical about the ministerial organ 1 finding nettling better to say on the morning ! after such an event than that somebody or • other should forthwith invent a brand-new j Government policy. The suggestion that j the Wellington people returned Mr Dathie ! and not Mr Kirk becauee those for whom Mr S j Kirk stood as figurehead had failed to supply \ j them with a sufficiency of bills is I | delicioue. It &eems that not even yet lis the " Liberal " belief quite dead ! that the wages, the comfort, and the facility of employment of the working classes are all to be enhanced at will by avalanches of bills ; or rather the hope ia not yet given up that by sufficient craft and canning the working classes may be still cajoled into believipg ! so. The conn try too thoroughly recognises the real meaning of the Dunedin and Wellington bye-electiona to pay attention to any j Bach feeble suggestions as to their cause. Messrs Seddon and M'Kenzie have received a slap in the faca which this time their own voies and those they could beg or command could not mitigato. Their humiliation is deep in proportion to tha depths to which they descended to avert the blow, and they will have little sympathy in the efforts they must now make to bear it. In giving judgment upon the Invercargill petition for the prosecution The of the Hon. J. G. Ward and IVnrd Petition. Mr John Fisber on charges I of fraud smd falsification of books, and of issuing false and fraudulent balance sheets, Mr Justice Wiliiams made it abundantly clear that so far at least as the demand was for a prosecution at the cost of the estate it must necessarily fail. On the eecoudary question as to whether, without; ) any such provisions »3 to costs, an order for prosecution should be made by the court, hia Honor* argument was almost equally convincing in the, negative, although the judge himself expressed a desire that the principle involved in the demand should be definitely settled by the Court of Appeal. On the first pomn — namely, whether the court should not order a prosecution afc the j expense of the estate itself : that i?, virtually, at the expense of the already drained creditors of the Ward Association — the judge pub the case in a nutshell when he declared that "it is quite unreasonable that a debtor should ask that his servants [ should be prosecuted at the expense of bis creditors for offences committed during the term' of such service." The | petitioners were shareholders in the Ward j Association, which is bankrupt-, and they are j therefore correctly described as " debtors " | for the purposes of thoir petition. " First," | as hia Honor paraphrased the contention of iMr Cook, who represented the outside | creditors of the coaeerc, " the debtors do not i pay us ; and, secondly, we are to bear the I expense of prosecuting o\ir debtor's servants." | In the present case ib wa3 even doubtful whether any fund existed — any " free assets" i — at all for division among creditors :aot I definitely secured upon property of the I association ; and therefore, if the judge had i been willing on general grounds to order a i prosecution at the creditors' expense (which I he was not), the order would probably have come to nothing from the lack of funds to carry ifc out. The matter therefore was really confined to the second pomt — namely, | whether it was the business or the court to | order the prosecutiou of these persons should I a sufficient guaiantee of the coots be first tendered by those who ask for the prosecu- | tion. Here, as his Honor pointed out, the judge wao practically asked to becoms public prosej cutor in a case over the heating of which it would be his duty to pre&ide — a position which colornal judges must especially avoid if | practicable, there being here no such t division of judicial functions as there is in 1 England. Judge Williams explained, for j [ instance, that judgesj udges here never exercise, for [ this reason, their power of ordering a proseI cution for perjury. Moreover, tha direction j of the court was here not neceesary, ii once i it were decided not to make the estate liable j for the costs. It is open to anyone, his i Honor pointed out, to take the course indicated without any judicial direction at all. I Counsel for the petitioners plaintively drew $9 tk.9 {?ojnewh.at obvious feet that ■

politico-legal circumstanoea of a pecnliar kind discounted any probability of a prosecution by" the Grown under present circumstances unlegs his Honor ordered it. That this fact lays no obligation upon his Honor to make any such order is, however, plain ; and we -have no doubt whatever that the Court of Appeal would emphatically support the very judicial and clearly-expressed view laid down by Mr Justice Williams in response to the pstition. I Mr Tc-getraeier, the newly-arrived general manager of the Bank of New A Curious Zealand, seems to entertain "Mistake." the notions of colonial intelligence and perspicacity which are common among superior Londoners. There seems to be actually reason to believe that when he' wrote the day bsfore the election to say that the Bank of New Zea- { land had had no connection with the floating i of a company to which one Minister is a paid i adviser, and the day after the election that ho had looked up bis notes and found tbat it had had a very distinct connection, he imagined that readers would be perfectly satisfied to accept hia remarkable interference as a natural incident. Events will show whether this innocent expectation is justified or not. For cur own part, without at preEesst naming ibe chief culprit — who may not ba Mr Tegetmdsr— we have little hesitation in pronouncing this siugularly-timfd exhibition of crafty shilly-shallying as one of the most discreditable devices adopted by the losing side throughout the I campaign. It is the pecnliar meanness of | ifc, as much as its obvious incredibility, that | will irritate Ibe public, and tbat mustrendsr a strict inquiry into the circumstances under which the Minister far L-inds obtained his appointment one of the first duties of Parliaj meat. We cannot congratulate tbat gentleman upon the means by which, for the purposes of the election, the truth was somahow suppressed and a direct misr-tateraont substituted, to foe followed by a erudelyj executed process of "hedgiug" as soon as i the polling was over and the object, so far as was practicable, attained. Tber&aEceime I may have been craftily conceived, but it . was very clumsily executed; and it is by | their noatness of execution that feata of ; jugglery earn the applause of the multitude, i At present, however, the fact of prime Smpor- | fcance is the interference of the Bank of New ! Zsaland in the election at all. We do not j pretend to be astonished at it, or to be uni aware that it was certainly not the first of ! such interferences. Bat there appaar3 to be ■ something so peculiarly Jnsulting to the Intel- . ligence of the public in the pretence made of ' good faith in this last inbtance, that a very righteous response would be a demand for the exposure of the whole truth, no matter whose reputation m'ght be wrecked in tbe process of laying bare the elaborate trick from beginning to end. The country seems to be perpetually undergoing tbehntoiliafcion } of finding its interests sacrificed and itself ■ deceived and cajoled for the preservation o? one or other of these miserable peiquisites which certain Ministers have managed to j secure in addition to their salaries and allowances. Thfi rabbit question haa been very prominent of late. Tbe Minister for The Lands (of "whom unkind Omnipresent neighbours say that his own Babbit. and his family's properties in Shag Valley are not among the shining examples of effectual rabbit destruction) has developed quite a aenaational ferocity about the duties which appertain in that respect to other people. We are inclined to conclude from Mr i M'Kenzle's very earnest and determined tone in this matter tbafc he is sincerely convinced of tbe baleful influence of factories, and that his determination to discourage them by insisting on the poisoning of rabbits, while they are at work is due to a belief that this will be the most effectual method of coping ) with the pest.. The fact remains that this Fame method has been in operation under the eyes of the Minister's own officers for many years, and that the rabbit nuisance remains very much where it was. Alter all, factories are not only an sfiair of recent introduction, but they are still unknown in 19 infested districts out of 20; while we have yet to learn on any reliable authority that j districts where there are factories compare unfavourably as regards infestment with those where the carcases of rabbits are left to rot where they are found. Considering the very large amount of labour required for the maintenance of these factories, their peremptory j suppression is a serious undertaking, and one aot to be lightly contemplated. They have been established in accordance with law, and they now supply the livelihood of many hundreds of working men, womea, and children, who hear nothing of the wrangles that centre round the question and only know that they were offered work in a lime of much anxiety and stress, atd thankfully took it. If the factories are to be suppressed their suppression should be announced as a measure of Ministerial policy and deliberately submitted to Parliament as such. There is a decided element of cowardice in the present attitude of the department. They are apparently afraid of the political consequences of destroying at a stroke the livelihood of a large army of uuoffaading workers, and yet they ase determined that the enterprises upon which that livelihood depends shall be undermined and destroyed. It is not too much for the public to expect that the Minister and bis advisers ehould have the ■ courage of their opinions. Instead of j metaphorically digging a pit about the I factories under pretence of diligent attention to their ordinary functions, they should (if their convictions really lie that way) boldly declare that there shall be no more export of. rabbit meat from New Zealand, and tbat the necessary com- ; pensation for thosa who may suffer by the new law will be duly forthcoming. For our ! own part, we certainly do Kob consider the | factory controversy as settled yet. We fail i to see that there is necessarily any convme- ; ing force in the official view that landowners, I who after all are the persons principally in- | terested, will deliberately sacrifice their own i best interests to gratify a preference for I trapping over better, even if more expensive, i methods of destruction. Taking human I mature in the laige this would be the excep- [ tional and not the general attitude ; and we [ suppose that human nature is much the same ' bersabouts aj It is anywhere else. It would

I be as reasonable to say that farmers, left id j themselves, habitually thresh out of the etook, because, though probably delai terioua, it is cheaper; or that they prefer bad horses to good ones . for j reasons of economy ; or that they leave their j stacks un thatched to save the coat of the operation. There are instances of the kind, 1 no doubt ; but on the whole the agricultural ; mind ia not built that way, and (while by no means infatuated with the factory plan ourselves) we are not at all convinced that it is j either as blind or as stupid as the Minister ■ for Lands supposes in regard fco the most ! successful methods of rabbit destruction. j Two cases of considerable local interest have j been finally decided by the j The Privy Council this week, on i Privy Council reference from the New ZeaSpcafcs. land Court of Appeal. One of them, known as the Frsez- ; ing case, aUractei widespread attention as ' the first definite introduction of the .public \ behind tho scenes of certain notable business , j proceedings in and about Lavercargill. It was also remarkable for the heavy damages } awarded by a Ducedin jary against Messrs ' Nelson Bros., for alleged breach of the ! agreement between themselves and the I Southland Frcz»n Meat Company. The Court of Appeal put a different face on matters by allowing Nelson Bros.' appeal, with costs ; | and no? 7 , between two and three years after ! the first trial, and when the case has been - | nearly forgotten by all but tho participants, ! the final arbitrament has been made, conj firming the judgment of the Court of Appeal, and throwing all the penalties of failure upon the Southland Company. The delays i and expenses of the law may seem to be | richly illustrated by the coarse of this famous j action ; but compared with the history of • the second casa just alluded to, the records j of the Southland Frozen Aleat Co. v. Nelson Bros, seem like the lightning judgments of jan Eastern cadi This second case, which was part of the voluminous series of actions | known to lawyers as Isaao v. Mills, origi- , I nated neail; 30 years ago in an involuntary I breach of contract committed by some agent ', ! or employee of Mr John Jones, who himself : i dlfid about the same time. One of Mr | Jones's numerous estates had been leased to ' : a tenant, subject to an obligation by the , ; lessor to lay down a portion of it jn good . i English grass. Somethiog went wrong wltb ' » the agricultural methods, which resulted ia .| a partial failure of tho grass ; and the tenant t I notified the landlord of this, and of bis inI tention to claim compensation. Before ', \ matters eventuated in that direction Mr \ ; Jones died, and the tenant proceeded against , ( his executors, who eventually bad to pay . \ some £2000 or £3000 for the failure of the ' \ grass. The particular eatate in question f (Meadowbank) was left; to a daughter in \ trust for her children, the only survivor cf i whom has since parted with her rights to it ; f but the amount of the " Bell award " above s j mentioned was not paid out of the funds of ' t the estate where the pasturage failure | occurred, but out of, Mr .Jones's residuary ! estate, in which other legatees were interested. A quarter of a ceatnry' afterwards one of these legatee* raised the qnes- ; tlon wbsther the Meadowbank estate should • not have separately borne the whole cost of [ the " Bell award " ; and atter protracted [ proceedings Mr Justice Williams decided i ; that to be so. An interesting point in the - ' trial was as to whether the failure of graß9 • ' occurred before or after Mr Jones's death . f (which took place a few months after the l I necessary agricultural operations had begun). Exactly when in it» history a worthless crop '. '- may be said to have failed is not a point , ; which usually troubles a farmer much, the i ! ultimate fact' being of itself sufficient for his ; • contemplation. Here, however, we have a , i case iv which the question is as vitally im- , | portant as the famous one as to which cf | | two persons, drowned in the aame shipwreck, '. | died first. For if the "failure" occurred ; | before Mr Jonea ilied his estate was liable, . i and if after the Meadowback estate (acccrd- . I ing to Judge Williams) must pay the penalty. s ( The Court of Appeal Held with Mr Justice Williams, and directed the unfortunate owners of Meadowbank to refund the moneys , paid out from the residuary estate in this . • forgotten claim of 30 years back. Tke j Privy Council reverses this decision, and ; thus the long story comes to an end, with, I as usual, much advantage to the lawyer^, ; but absolutely no other result in any direction whatever upon things aa they we're. The American bluster against Spain appear* to outsiders to be of a Three peculiarly wrong-headed kind Nations. if i fc is genuine, and peculiarly msan and unworthy if it is not. We incline to the opinion that it is not genuine at si', and that the Americans are no more desirous than they are ready to \ back up their big words by acion. Spain, 1 with all her overwhelming troubles, gives the : impression of being far more seriously bent ' opon an energetic defence of: her lights, i Assuming that the present international > exchange of snarls goes no farther than that, j the controversy is interesting as proving how ! impossible it is becoming for a f^reat and I wealthy powflr Hke the United States to I maintain the traditional policy of rjonj interference in the affairs oC the old world. ! America has no army, but is doing her best j to get an effective navy together — nob, so | far, with entirely brilliant result?, but her navy methods aie constantly improving. j There ia no reason why tho almost i limitless possibilities of American naval { production should not be exhibited Sto the world with little delay, an<? the navy of the United Sates in 20 years become one of the most powerful in ihe world. At present an American alliance is less worth inviting than one with the Japanese ; but the time is coming when the reverse will be the caee, and the Spanish complications will decidedly hasten it. The i (States have already established a " corner " [in unappropriated warships lying in j builders' yards, ar.d the country, with its boundless wtsalth and resources, might, under argent circumstances, buy up whole navies and hardly feel the strain. It 1b a matter of profound regret under such circumstances that many of the American newspapers, and some American states- ! men a3 well, should delight in devocI iner thamselves to holding up England 1 to scorn and derision, and to presuming upon Qnr patience to such an exteat th&t cc«a>

We are glai3 Tfeo Cfl?o of Kiss Baiter.

glona% the atiaia has appeared almost too isnse to fee rasuntaJrsed. England is the natural ally oi America, and has always been willing snd eager to enter into closer rela-" tlons for purposes of ciutxxal advancement. But ib o&rtainiy seams Like going a little too jfar in that direction when a British MinJslyr \n Washington voluntarily offers fco thy American President " the sympathy of Britain in the event of complications." It teould sarely bs time ecoagh to offer snch encouragements when war Is actually tJeclared. Why should we offend Spain by fcbia unnecessarily precipitate declaration of jbnr non-neutrality pf thought and feeling ? "The Americans," the cable tells ns, "are pleased with Britain's assurances of. moral B^pporfc." Tbe corresponding cablegram from Madrid has not yet been published. to observe that we rightly gauged the temper oi tbe people of Auckland in the remarks we felt it our duty to make npon tba issue of the skin - grafting case. The opinion we expressed in conclusion, to tbe effect that Dr Purchas certainly could not leaya the matter where it then was, was written before we were awars of the fact that that gentleman had departed for Eogland Immediately upon the conclusion of the case. The fact wiil hardly tend to increase admiration for the doctor's methods throughcut his connection with this sicgular case, and we cannot bat stil] entertain a lingering hope that before leaving ho may have authorised & discreet friend to make such arrangements in ths interests of the unfortunate young iady upon whom he operated as may satisfy the public sense of what is becoming under the circumstances. Whether this should turn out to be the case or toot, we trust there will bo no hesitation in Auckland in practically supplementing the universal expressions of sympathy of which Miss Baker has already baso made the recipient. Here we hays ho question of notoriety - hunting, nor any complication arising from any possible suspiciou as to motive. It is abundantly evident that the very last, thing this poor gir! fchoaght of when, in a spirit of simple selfsacrifice and kindness, afae offered her body to the knife to cave her friend was to make beratlf theraby the central figure of a popular demoissrraticn. Quite probably ehe has suffered as much agony of mind through the notoriety attending the case sb if it were something that reflected actual discredit apon her, instead of earning for her the respectful appreciation and adumatica of ail who read her sample and absolutely uacontradleted efcory. There are such things a& " moral victories." They aie tbe eabject of many gibse, and they are apt to be terribly bard experiences for those tvho win Ihetn ; bub they have their real ■yaluz, and it tells in the cad. We trust sincerely- that it may be so in Misa Baker's case. Tha difficulties ia tbe way of exactly ineeting the circumstances in which the j defeated plaintiff finds herself are obvious, I but ws tru%t not inaupeiabla. Too ona raao j cf whom it might, afc least hava been ex- j peclsd tbat he woxsld show the way to smooth ] theta o?er has found a more congenial occu- ■ patioc in a prompt trip to the other" side of ; tbe world. •

visited Pomani&a, rriro?. to- the Minister fov Lands : *' Am surpii^sd to find such good crops at Pomahaka. Ths turnips on ground ploughed by Forester are very good indeed, and the settlers must have threshed 50 bushels of rytj^rass per acre."