THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Volume 30, Issue 2353, 30 March 1899, Page 33

THE WEEK.

" Sunquam »lla4 Datura, allud laoientia dlxll."— JuTiSiL, "flood nature a&d jood leusa mu«i ei«r;oin.*'— Port.

Mr C Wilson, member for Wellington Suburbs, has evidently let "Doubling" the sun go down upon his . His Part. . wrath. It will be remem-

, ' "' bered that he introduced a deputation to Ministeis the other day, at which Mr T. Thompson. Minister for Justice, was •present, and that he was. ordered out of the room and generally bounced and blustered at by that Minister in a style more congenial to the free atmosphere of a betting club than to that of a Government establishment. We must freely confess that we read that telegram' with an irresistible sense somehow of mci eased appreciation of the Minister for Justice. The unredeemed rudeness of his conduct could not, of course, be condoned ; but there was an indefinite sense of not unpleasing astonishment at the discovery that Mr Thompson had enough fibre in him somewhere, after all, (o make a stand about something and face somebody, even though he w.is grossly in the wrong. It is -his first offence— of that kind. Mr Wilson, who probably vent straight home from hi.s disastrous expedition and wrote out advertisements of his meeting for the newspapers and the first notes of his speech, now says that if he set a crap in Queen street, Auckland. 20 smarter men than MiThompson would walk into it any day of the week. We hope, for the credit of Auckland, that this is true ; but nevertheless, coming from Mr Wilson, the apparent epigram neans very little moie than that he is smarting under the backhander administered by one of the very men who-e praises he has spent his brief polifc il life in trumpeting. It is too late in the day, however, for Mr Wilson to successfully pretend to ignorance of Mi fseddon's deliberate plan in selecting subordinate Ministers like Mr Hall-Jones. Mr Thompson, etc. He knows as well as we can tell him that the fii\->t qualifications, of a Minister after the Premier's own heart is th',l ho should be able to draw hi-; salary, loi.k wise, sign wheie iusuucl>--d, and give no boL.er in Cabinet. He aUo knows that the Minister whom, speaking as one of the uriholders of Secldom'sm. ho. mlccls for

attack is as a matter of fact quite an ideal Minister according to the Seddon code ; and he has known it all ,tne time that- he has been voting for the Ministry generally. The accuracy of the conclusions he now tardily announces may be admitted ; but the obvious intent to get even with the Minister for a personal affront deprives them of all credit of sp6ntaneity or timely force. We are relegated, there--fore, to admiration — of a sort — of Mr Wilson's ingenious " doubling " of the parts of the hare and the hound. He wreaks his resentment, by chevying Mr Thompson, but at the same time is careful to. save his political skin by " cuddling " Mr Seddon closer than ever. which we should judge that a man-trap set at Petone might easily fail to catch any smarter person than Mr Wilson in those parts.

The Marine Scandal.

The wires, the Premier, and all the other active and secret agencies, of Ministerial craft are evidently engaged for all they are worth in a desperate scheme to hush np the departmental scandal in which the Minister for Marine is so deeply involved. The hope of defeating the plan lies, unfortunately, in that very element of the case which is on other grounds principally disquieting — namely, that the total bulk of honesty among the several people engaged in the recent conspiracy is obviously insufficient to go round. Either, therefore, some person or persons iv the ring are urb provided with a share of that commodity altogether, or there is a generally distributed deficiency ; and unuer these circumstances there is always the chance of an honest community coming by its own. The colony wants to know a "good deal more than the mere history of Captain Jones's certificate and the extent to whicfi Hie benevolent interference of his Ministerial friend was available in procuring it for him. Tt wants to know how long the, rascally system of licensing marine officers by favour instead of by virtue of competency has been going on, and how many Captain Joneses, so to speak, are in consequence navigating the New Zealand coast to-day. This is a question in which the marine profession itself has a vital interest, for ifc very uncomfortably touches the matter of the" value of New Zealand certificates. If the Officers' Association, or Shipmasters' Association, of which we used to hear something at the time of the maritime strike, has survived the subsequent long interval of peace, it might do worse than petition Parliament with the view of defeating the crafty design to hush up the scandal at all costs. An injury to Mr HallJones's reputation would not be in the nature of a political cataclysm exactly, whatever that Minister — who quite takes himself seriously, we have observed — may think ; and the danger to marjne officers ,01 unchallengeable competency is a very real one. As to the other dangers of a, political passing system, it seems almost unnecessary to elaborat^ the subject — "they are too unpleasantly ofrvioustoa constantly sea-voyaging, people like ours. A Another unpleasant reflection is that if Examinees for marine certificates are kindly allowed to see the questions put to them before the day of trial, possibly the same friendly spirit is extended (with due regard to colour, of course) to employees on the railway trains. If erratic courses are encouraged in one there seems no logical reason why the steering of the other should be deemed above suspicion.

A Split King.

The latest act in- the sordid ylotr to which Mr C. H. Mills, member of Parliament and Government whip, has not been ashamed to join himself as a leading participant,, was played out before Mr Justice Denniston. tlie other day. We hope the " partners," us the judge called them, including the precious " representative of the people " and magnate of the great " Liberal' party we have named, enjoyed the scathing terms in v which his Honor expressed himself concerning the whole transaction as revealed by these latest proceedings. The story of the .suing of the Otago Daily Times and the Christchurch Press for inserting an alleged " libel " which they did not originate, but merely copied, is now fully beiore the public, and we are entitled to wish the Seddonites joy of their whip. Mr Mills and two solicitors, as we knew all along, and as the judge ha's now declared — and it is not the first declaration ,to the ?ame effect in the Supreme Court — entered into a commercial speculation with the view of looting two Opposition newspapers under the existing law of libel, and sharing in the booty on specified terms. The business, owing to the unsympathetic perversity of juries — and notwithstanding the use by Mr Mills of his influence with Mr Seddon to facilitate matters in one of the little offshoots of the plot — lii not prospei financially ; and, as always happens in these little affairs, the three worthies who had got it up began to wrangle and call each other names under the influence of their chagrin and disappointed greed. Cross actions followed, ,-md tin- lesult, us our readeis were told some time ago, was the naked exposure of the whole sordid business in the open court. Mr Mills did not retire from public life, howevei — he still apparently clung to the hope that the verdict in the cioss actions might in some way be twisted to his rehabilitation. It whs with interpreting these verdicts that Judge Denniston virtually h.id to do on Friday ; and the decision may be told in the judge's own language. The transaction disclosed, said his Honor, " was in eftect a proposal for a partnership, by which -in intending litigant and two solicitor*-- arranged to exploit ,vi appare'Ulv profitable field for litigation. The plaintiff [Mr C. H. Mills, M.H.R.] found the i<iw material, a cause or cau«es of <><;iiuu ; the defendants weie to find the law and the expenses. His Honor felt satisfied that th: knowledge that the agreement was not enforceable in law (if/ indeed, the plaintiff was ignorant of the fact) would not have prevented him from entering into it. It was cleai that he did not contemplate failure as a le.-ull." As regards costs, his Honor would give none — to the solicitors, because of the mean defence they filed ; to the "Libexal" whiD, because he This Honor]

" could not ignore the fact that the plaintiff was a party to this discreditable bargain .which the court had been dealing with." We do not for an instant make the hopeless attempt to increase the crushing severity of these scathing sentences. We simply express the hope that Mr C. H. Mills, M.H.R., will see the necessity of forthwith resigning his membership of the House, and trust the Law Society will do its duty with .regard to the other parties to "this discreditable bargain." We cannot doubt that in' this we shall be backed up alike by respectable " Liberals " and by respectable members of the legal profession.

The Kakala Inquest.

We have the utmost desire not to unfairly represent the condition of things revealed by the Rakaia inquest as existent, if not prevalent, in the everyday management of trains. No doubt a sweeping generalisation based upon these disquieting discoveries might be unjust to a service which, on the whole, can point to an honourable record of comparative immunity from serious accident. The process of induction, or reasoning from known facts to , principles occurs, however, even more" automatically in the human mind than the correlative process of avguing from known causes to their consequences ; and we feel very certain that no one can have read the evidence given at Rakaia without an instinctive perception that there was a decided element of looseness and happy-go-lucicy in the excursion arrangements on the fatal 11th of March. The engine-driver who, in the opinion of the coroner's jury, contributed principally to the collision is, of course, immune for" the present from any comments of ours, for he has already been indicted for his neglect ; but though on the facts so far disclosed we commend the jury's conclusions in that respect, it is not tor Driver. Carter's share that our foregoing remarks are intended to apply. It is rather to the evident contributory negligence from other sources, very properly pointed out by the jury, that the reader's attention is drawn as tending to induce some uncomfortable reflections as to the normal alertness of men upon whose alertness many lives daily depend. Nobody in office seems to have been particularly * put about when it became known that a crowded special excursion train had. started off, on a darkening night, in rain, and 20 minutes late, without its guard. The " assistant guard " who was on board (and who was a porter, and knew little or nothing about brakes) did not know of his superior's absence ; the Ashburton station master knew, but did not care ; and the belated guard himself took the affair with unruffled optimism. The only person, in fact, who seems to. have been, really concerned, and active in such remedial steps hs were possible, was the secretary of the ill-fated picnic party. So off went the train, so provided. " at un-. .usual speed " into the. gathering darknes*.

A Chain* of Breakdowns.

There were still, however, several means, (in theory — we should hitherlo have thought, inreality) of preventing the mischief which .these untoward circumstance's seemed to indicate as possible. The Ashburton station master did not take the most obvious, but there were other ways. One was to })roceed cautiously. But the train, as already mentioned, was late in starting ; the driver understood that he must at least partially make up time ; anyhow, the speed was mci eased, and even appears from the | evidence to • have been extraordinarily . in-, creased ; and (this being done by the driver in ignorance of the guard's absence) the second available means of telling him about it totally failed. Signals made from the guard's box, apparenty in the regular way, were never seen ; and on plunged the train towards Rakaia. Meanwhile, another train due at Rakaia, coming from the opposite direction, was so late that things were getting into confusion there too. The third obvious way of stopping the approaching train from Ashburton now failed. There were at Rakaia station — an important place, where five (rains met at that very time — no means of distant signalling, or. indeed, of efficient signalling, at night at all. So a fourth' expedient, of the many that are supposed to guard our lives, was tried ; pnd that, too, brake down. " The light seat .some huudrQds.of yards alone; the line was .either, never seen or not heeded by those on ,the engine. . There -pemained the fifth chance — that under- .such circumstances of time, speed, and weather the engine-driver himself "would, independently 'of any signal, slow down his- train at a sufficient distance from the station. And that proved just as unreliable as all the rest. So thai, partly from unavoidable mischance, partly from the absence of proper railway appliances, partly from the cheerful optimism of certain officials, parti v from the inefficiency of certain recogui.sed expedients upon which our railway authorities apparently rely, and partly, no doubt, from other things upon which we are at present precluded from commenting — nil lhc c e occurring on a dark and rainy night. — resulted in a lamentable martyrdom which we all feel and know was eminently preventable. But it is not likely that &11H1 a combination of unfortunate circumstances existed- only for that night, and fov that «eelion of railway alone. We decline, as> we have said, to make unfair generalisations-, but the multiplicity cf causes of uneasiness as revealed -at Rakaia cannot possibly be ignored, Must we conclude that there must be a periodical sacrifice of victims in such "accidents" to bring home to ofiicial minds the necessary habit of regarding every train as an object of due and unremitting care?

Bank Clerkships.

A week or two ago we gave expression to the regret so generally felt at the enforced dismissal of some 50 or 60 old employees of the Bank of New Zealand, from no fault of their own but owing to the exigencies of bank management. The bank, as was inevitable, is experiencing much difficulty in living up to the onerous requirements which the present management has inherited as the result of historical events ; and the Government, anxious to incut Parliament in some soothing way, Fet the direct ois the tahk of a £10.000 reduction in annual exuenses. The lesult was tl-c di.s-

missals in question. We have no mere »H» H say upon that distressful matter, but we art inclined to hope that, taken in conjunction; with other current events, it will have somq effect upon the curiously widespread desira on the part of parents to get their sons into banks. We speak especially to our country readers, who, from such information aa we can gather, seen to be most generally affected with this peculiar aspiration. Itf appears that nowadays all banks have lists; of applicants for admission as long as those which record the names of young ladies desirous of passing ttoeir days with a telephone tied to each ear — these latter documents being, as everyone knows, of most portentous length. No doubt it is not al r ways easj 1 - to see what we are to do with our boys, and a bank clerkship (beginning at £30 a year and tending to climb very slowly from that) is better than some other things even yet. It is, however, as well that everyone should know how poor are fche chances of prizes in the banking profession as things go now, &nd how very long it takes to get near the fop, such as the top is. The Argus in Melbourne hfci : been revealing a good deal about baafe clerkships over there — which seem, by the way. to be even worse than our own ;-.— but there is one phase of the matter wioh which our contemporary does. not seem tc - have dealt — possibly because Victoria, has' iri that particular aspect the- advantage of New Zealand.* We allude rj> the maximum salaries when "the top" (as ordinarily accessible — we do not mean first class inspectorships or general managers' positions) is reached. Bankers of the old regime in New Zealand are beginning to be quite startled at the extraordinarily low term? upon which the highest local managements here are beginning to be offered, and taken. We should be within the mark, in some cases, if we put the remuneration proposed'at half the quite recent standard. L'his is a serious additional reason against Ihe constant bent of the country mind towards bank clerkships for the boys. We indicate the facts, though we can hardly say that there is, or ought to be,- any remedy for them. The difficulties of. profitable banking are always on the increase, as current dividends continually show ; and while banks have plenty of eager competitors for all vacancies almost regardless of terms, it is natural that they should make the mo.st of their chance of training up a cheap service. The only thing really necessary is that the public should know these tilings. .'The starting of a youngster in life should at least be done with oper> eyes.

The north express did not" anne at th« Upper Port Chalmers station until' fiv« ie mutes' to 9 o'clock on Monday ni<jht. Notwithstanding this, ■it reached the Dtinedin station at seven minutes past 9, thus doing th« distance in 12 minutes, or at the rate of About 45 miles jper hour. The. passengers' did net like the experience

At the social . given in his .honour at PaV. ii.erston on Tuesday evening the Hon. $. JVL'Kenzie, announced tthat if he returned to the. colony in good health- from his trip to the Home country ho. would- contest ao o£her constituency but Waihemo. 'There were 200 persons prfsent at 'the 'social, including »■ number of Indies. Our'repo.rt is unavoidably held over until next week. * ' •

The libel suit Fraser v. Isaac and another was concluded on Tuesday afternoon, and resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff; the statements in each separate count being found by the jury to be untrue, published with malioo and libellous. A verdict for £300 damages was Riven against William Isaac find nominal damages (Is) sijjainrft tho printer of the pamphlet, 8. Lister, who <vaa fouild to have printed and published the libel without malice. An injunction against the publication of the libel was granted by the court.

A meeting was held at the Kantuno Publio Hall on Saturday evening, to consider a proposal to form a District Improvement Society for the Maori reserve and the township and the reerention reserve at the mouth of the Waikouaiti River. Mr T. Pratt, M.H.R., occupied the chair, and more than 30 persons, including Europeans, two Maori residents, and vinitors, were present. Mr Blathwayt wai appointed necrotary. The meeting was addressed by the Chairman, Dr Truby King, Messrs F. R. Chapman, Jan. Richardson. Wilson, and J. Matthews, the latter speaking in Maori. The meeting wae unanimous in its desire to plant and improve Che roads' and other spots in tho- district, and the Maoris in particular expressed their anxiety to see thii done, and their willingness to aEsfct, especially if native plants were included. A strongcorn mittee was formed,, including property ownevt of both races, and members of, the County Council, to whom will be added tho Mayor c' Hawksbury Borough. Mr Pratt, M.H.ti... and Mr E. G. Allen, M.H.R,,.were placed c ■.-. the committee, aa well aa several habitual visitors to the district. A nursery for plant! wto be formed at once. It was pointed oui that the peninsula at the mouth of the rives is one of the most famous sites in Maori history, and that remains of tho great Te We'-'-pa are still to bo seen there.

Mr Thomas Brydone. general manager ». the N.Z. and A. Land Company, returned i\ Dnnedin on Tuesday, via Melbourne, after a-i absence from the colony of nearly twelve month-.

At a meeting of the Gore Farmers' Club strong complaints were made regarding lln< manner ill which the rabbit inspectors wer* harassing farmers. It was resolved — "Thut the secretary write to the Minister for Agiiculture and kindly request him to give instrur:tions to cease poisoning and the prosecuiion of farmers while trapping is proving ao effective and beneficial to all parties interested. The- extension asked for is from date to end of September."

A sad fatal accident occurred at Rough Ridge Mill, about two miles from Blackstone Hill. John O'Brien, an old resident, A-ho was a baker, was returning home on Saturday evening after distributing bread to his various customers when it is supposed that he fell out of his cart and was killed. His dead body was found on the mornin^ of the 26tb lying on the road, and a few hundred yards further on his horse, with the trap capsized and a shaft broken, was found. O'Brien apparently hid not moved after the accident. There was a small wound immediately abo\e the nt'ht eye. and the f.ice was veiy much discoloured. 'I he body was brought' into Mr (Jeoiye Main's hotel. Hhick^lone Hill, wl.eiii an inquc-t was held by Mr WiUiair M'Connocliie, e.cting-coro-ner. <md a nay of sii. — Messrs M, Gordo;

.{foreman), S^ Holding. „Jonn _ Gallagher, Wm. Hickie, P. M'Devitt, and Thomas Cbthane. A verdict was returned that the deceased was accidentally killed by falling out of bis trap on the 25th inst.