Hounders.

Southland Times, Issue 15184, 14 March 1902, Page 2

Hounders.

Heine has somewhere said in his cynical fashion that when a woman writes a letter she keeps one eye on the page and the other on some man ; that in all his experience he had known only one woman who waa an exception to the rule— namely, the Countess Hahn Hahn— and she had the mi-fortune to be the possessor of only one eye, to which circumstance doubtless her special virtue was due. The colonial politician is very like Heine 'a typical woman. He may keep one eye on the public good, and that usually means the procuring of some sop to his constituency ; but the other, and always the stronger —ye, He keeps on sel£-in-eresfc. JN or can we blame him much. A constituency has no conscience to admit of qualms. It will send itß representative to the rightabout without the least compunction. ■ He is the wise man, therefore, from the worldly — and that is nowadays the political — point of view', who does what he can for himself while he has the opportunity. lf he does not take advantage of the tide, his abstention will be put down to lack of ability or lack of energy ; he will not get credit for moral rectitude. There have been cases where men have sacrificed their self-interest, for the sake of principle. Their reward has almost invariably been ejection from place and power. The annals of Southland, for example, record the incident of a legislator refusing to take the honorarium awarded by Parliament as acknowledgment of legislative labours. What was the result of the refusal ? His constituency, seeing in such action folly crass beyond comprehension, promptly turned him out in 'favour of a wooer who would not be troubled with such scrupulosity. The man who goes in for political life in this colony, equally with him whc does so in the land of our American cousins, must not cultivate nicety of moral perception ; it will prove a stumbling block at nearly step ho takes. Tbe politician who succeds best is he who is not too fond of tho right to adopt the expedient. An oration by Mr Seddon on the necessity of expediency in all things political should prove uniquely interesting. Tlie history of the railway workshops in Invei-cargill illustrates to some extent the principle enunciated in the foregoing. Therts can be no doubt that at a railway centre* such as Invercargill has become, and indeed has been for quite a number of years, there should be facilities for doing every kind oi repair and construction that lines and rotting stock need to keep the system in effective condition. No one knew that better Lhan the Minister who thought fit to have the shops removed. It was expedient, however, that by such removal he should ingratiate himself with his own constituency., and accordingly the work, were taken away.. Some plea had to be put forward and that of ecouomy served as well as any other. It was no more genuine than is the society lad-, 's plea of indisposition for not calling upon one whom she, has determined to "cut." Now we are to have the works reinstated. The act is such as may be approved on the strong grounds of equity and justice ; but that is not at all why the Governmen 1 * is taking action. It is not the question ol: equity or justice that constitutes the lead ing motive, 'he Government finds that if support is to be continued to it in the* Invercargill constituency, these railway workshops raust be restored. The law of expediency has begun to operate, and under that law justice ia at last to be done. It .must be noted, though, that expediency has also suggested delay. The shops might have been erected long ago, so far as the wants of the community and the resDurces of the Railway Department are concerned. But that has been only a minor consideration. The success of the next election he.s been the leading thought. It is a well known maxim that gratitude is mostly a Sense of favours to come, especially in the ethics of politicians. If, then, though the workshops were reinstated at once, there would, it is thought, be danger of the constituency deserting the hand that had fed it but from which nothing more was to lie expected. Sir Joseph recognises this and Mr Hanan is not insensible of the fact. Enough has been done to make electors feel that the workshops are really to be re-established. Sites have been secured and some persons mads happy by getting in return ior said sites more cash than, but for the proposed schema, they could possibly have anticipated. This, however, is by the way. VVhen a man is forcibly made to break up his home he should receive a substantial solatium. I simply regret in common with other unphilosophic people that I was not the owner of one or several of the sections thus secured by the Railway Department. It is not the policy of the Minister to hurry on the buildings. He wishes to keep the prospeot of them dangling before the nose of the constituency, so that, donkey-like, it may be induced to keep along the right track till the next election has been held. It would bo wiser, however, both for the sake of Sir Joseph and of Mr Hanan to arrange that at least an instalment of tlie works should be completed before the time arrives for the casting of votes. Tbe preaent policy of using the workshops ia the bunch* of-carrot3 fashion is becoming obvious cv .a to the most obtuse. Scandals aro the rule rather than the exception in the conduct of wars. The circumstances that bring into prominence some of the brightest phases of humanity also give opportunity for the display of the meanest attributes. War has always been a harvest for the unscrupulous jobber ; and time has been when men of highest rank and position did not hesitate to swell their private exchequer, mth the funds voted by the nation for the prosecution of hostilities. Even royalty has descended to the ignoble practice. At least one of the Stu _rts spent in low immoralities large sums provided for , the maintenance of the array arad navy, and the great Duke of Marlborough enriched himself with such illgotten spoil/ As an example of the Duke's mode of procedure one may cite his acceptance of an annual bribe of £6000 from a Jew who had the contract for supplying bread to the army. We do not suspect our present army leaders of emulating his Grace of Marlborough ; but we would not be surprised to learn that tae heads of departments have been over-reached by designing aud intriguing speculators and dealers. Over and over again the soldier's health and strength have suffered from told or insufficient food and clothing when ample money had been paid to secure the best quality of both ; and it is notorious that too often he has lost his life through bis weapons aud ammunition proving to _c utterly unreliable. The contractor has fattened at the expense of the widow and the orphan. The Crimean War afforded mauy illustrations of the sordidness in question. It will not be matter for great wonder if enquiry into the contracts connected with the South African war should reveal a state of things similar to what has been experienced in most campaigns. It seems impossible to safeguard the national purse whatever may be the case wuh the national honour. The pity is that these vampires so easily evade punishment. The cases are fen in wbich, even when the rascality has been brought home, they have been made to disgorge their dishonorable gains, let alone to suffer castigation or imprisonment. Of course modern methods differ from those of days gone by; but the Jew of the twentieth century manages shady business transactions with even more profit to himself than did his congener in the time of Blenheim and Malplaquet; and the Jew is not a whit more unscrupulous than many who call themselves Britons and shout loud at patriotic meetings, but think it no dishonour to "do" the Army Department in a deal for horses, or forage, or food, or clothing, or transport, or, indeed, anything in whioh a deal seem- likely to be remunerative beyond what would be practicable in ordinary business. To be an army contractor used to be considered the highway to wealth, co extravagant were the profits. Apparently it is a highway still that many are eager enough to tread, and that ta the favoured ones of the military authorities proves a veritable road to fortune.

"The love of money is tbe root of all evil." That old saying, expressed in LatiD, was one of the first moral precepts students of Valpy's Delectus used to learn socio fifty years ago, when Valpy was an author much in vogue in grammar schools. It is a precept much misinterpreted, since the majority of read.rs regard money as the root instead of considering that not the,' pelf itself but the love of it works the mischief. In order to gratify tbis love men and women have had recourse to an endless variety of schemes more or less honest or dishonest. The latest is tlie "combine" or " trust." This is not-pr--cisely a new scheme, but modern methods of communication have given it a potency th_,t in earlier times was not possible. The first objoct of every " truss " is to increase the wealth of the members, and this object haa heen achieved with notable success where population is large, and tariffs are high on the co_*moditi_s traded in. In the Unitisd States, where these conditions prevail!, trusts have produced the createßt crop of millionaires that the world has geeci j

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and it is no exaggeration to say that these millionaires have got their wealth by legal robbery of their fellowmen. A trust has two ways in particular of securing large profit. By its wealth it is able to use maohinery to the utmost extent and thus cheapen the production ; and by its monopoly of the commodities traded in, it can raise the prices to as high a pitch as the patience of the community will permit. To the flrst method of increasing profit one can offer no objection, but the second method cannot be too strongly reprobated, and the best men and thinkers in every land have given it their heartiest condemnation. It required a revolution to do away with the monopolies of the old French seigneurs. It will require a big convulsion of the masses in the United States to sweep aside the manifold and gigantic monopolies— albeit of a different kind— that have obtained a footing there. We do not want the evil to establish itself in New Zealand, and legislation may be required to provide the means of keeping it out. At any rate some beginnings have Deen made, enough to show that the evil threatens. A paternal Government might very well interfere and secure that the people should not be compelled to pay more for the necessaries of fife than natural oircumstances demand. Such action would be but a proper sequence to the legislation already effected, by which the hours of labour have been lessened and the remuneration as far as possible has been maintained. Morever, it would be a first step towards the prevention of the abominable system of monopoly and corruption that has become the scandal of the United States. Bat.