POLICE SURVEILLANCE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 4012, 10 April 1882, Page 2

POLICE SURVEILLANCE.

TO TIIE EDITOR. Sir, — The most extraordinary procedure that I can remember I believe was enacted in this place on Friday last, by the conservators of the l:iw, in coercing Her Majesty's loyal subjeots for pursuing, on that particular day in the calendar, their bread-win-ning avocations ! Coercing people for not conforming, willy nilly, to the observance of rites belonging to certain religious sects ! When first I heard of it my mind began to conjure up the prime mover of the affair as another Rip Van Winkle, who had been a myrmidon of the law perhaps in the enlightened time of the Stuarts, and, whilst hectoring some nonconformist into compliance, had dozed off, only to awake again at this distant time and place to carry out his undertakings of two hundred years hack. Nipw, need it at all bo a mutter of further surprise for any other copy from old, musty archives to come into force ? I trust, however, they will never bring that statute into force of William the Conqueror's, when, at the mandate of an old rusty bell-clapper, we would have every night to " douce our glimmer." But really, putting jesting aside, I have too much confidence in the practical common sense of the force to entertain for a moment that they ever did such a thing but in the light of a joke, carrying it perhaps a little bit too far ; and what will bear mo out in this deduction is, that they never went nei\v anyone whom they thought would he likely to question their proceedings. I have reason to be thankful that on that daj' the cooking of my dinner went on uninterruptedly. On tho other hand I regret that the joke must have affected the lamplighter, as, save where the flickering rays of a pub's lamp were shed, that night the streets were in Cimmerian gloom. But, when all things come to be considered, even that was of very little consequonce, as the motor of unsteady locomotion was throughout this notable day all but hermetically closed. — I am, &c, A. Hood. New Plymouth, April 9, 1882.