What the Papers Say

Observer, Volume XXVII, Issue 35, 18 May 1907, Page 3

What the Papers Say

HAPPILY for all concerned, the soil and atmosphere of this

Colony are not congenial to that very undesirable person — the paid agitator. Specimens of the class, when they do pay these shores a visit, soon outstay their welcome, and fulminate to more willing listeners elsewhere. — Dunedin Star.

If a man wants to purchase land for cafeh, or adopt any of the forma of lease, he should be afforded the opportunity to do so. There must be no locking up of lands and calling them endowments in order to gratify land faddists. — Hamilton Argus.

The New Zealand Government, though professing to lie desirous of building up trade with Canada, has in the past been very parsimonious in its encouragement to the Vancouver service, in spite of the fact that steamers owned in this colony and manned with colonials were employed in the trade. — Gisborne Herald.

Mr McNab's leasing proposals have not, and never will be, accepted by his Party, nor do we believe any serious attempt will be made to put them on the Statute Book. Even Mr Massey does not believe there is any likelihood of the Bill being brought forward. — New Plymouth News. • * ■

For the past few decades, the fight which the Northern settler has carried on, insisting on the proper recognition of his part of the colony and its wealth producing assets, was practically fruitless, but the growth of population and settlement has become so marked that in future North Auckland is an- area which every (jJovernment will have to treat with studied respect. — Dargaville Times.

So surely as light follows the darkness, if the United Kingdom persists in refusing to consider preference to her colonies, the latter will enter into reciprocal arrangements with foreign Powers, with discrimination against the Mother Country. — Wanganui Herald.

Ministers are stumping the country, at the public expense, in support of a Bill which is not demanded by the people, and the passing of which, in its present or any slightly amended condition, can only be consonant with a need for saving the face of Mr McNab. — Blenheim Express.

Money spent in properly railing the country is a good investment, for the railways up tp now have returned good interest, and are one of the finest assets the colony possesses, saying nothing of the benefits conferred upon settlers by the service. — Waihi Telegraph.

Who of us, when piling another shovelful of coal on the fire, stops to think of the man who makes it possible, the grimy hewer who daily takes his life in his hand, and who often enough never returns to the wife and family he may have left above ground ? We are all too prone to accept the ordinary things of life as if they grew in a coal bucket or fell from the sky. — New Plymouth News.

The prominent figures of the past half-year were not the men who devoted their leisure day after day to the consideration of means and methods for carrying on the Exhibition. It is a little pathetic to reflect how completely the teal workers dropped out of sight with the opening of the portals, and how completely the limelight has been monopolised by men who came on the scene .when the hardest toil was at an end. — Christchurch Times.

It is quite probable that the efieol of cheaper rates between the colonies and the Old Country would improve considerably the trade relations between the various parts of the Empire and effect an important preference in aid of the Britisher against his foreign competitor. — Napier Herald.

It is the duty of intelligent people to hammer into the brains of their more obtuse fellow- men the fact that no treatment at all is preferable to quack treatment, and that only the spread of intelligence can expel a peat that battens on ignorance. — Wellington Free Lance.

No matter what the openly stated intentions may be, it is evident that such men as the member for Lyttelton and otlhers who are with him in their land nationalisation and Socialistic policy are a danger to the community. —Stratford Post.

If a legislature passes enactments of an economic character which make for the betterment of the people's living conditions, it can only hope that, having improved the people's surroundings, it will follow that there will be a corresponding improvement in their moral behaviour. . — Greytown Standard.

There is no effective way of compelling natives to keep their land free from noxious weeds, and the result has been that Maori property is usually a disseminating centre for all the vegetable pests in the country. — Palmerston Standard.

Though technically the Conciliation Board may not be a court of justice, it is equally bound by those supreme principles of natural justice which alone preserve our courts from becoming pedantic servants of the letter of the law and wholesale dispensers of wrong. — Wellington Post.

In these days when the State interferes with every action of our lives, from the cradle to the tomb, it is the manifest duty of every man and woman to record their, votes. If they are too lazy or too indifferent to carry out this almost sacred public duty, then they should be compelled to do so. — Cambridge Independent.

The School Journal is certainly not at all the sort of journal that we anticipated it would be, and we have very serious doubts a 9 to its usefulness. A school journal should surely be something more than an ordinary " reader." — Masterton Age.

A navy of our very own will be beyond the compass of our desires or resources for years to come, and to own two or three ships as a squadron of the proposed Commonwealth navy while in its experimental stage would be a hundredfold less to our liking than the present arrangement. — Whangarei Advocate.

To extract nearly three-quarters of a million of money over and above actual requirements from a small community like ours is much too heavy a draw, and it is time that the recognised principle that a large surplus should mean reduced taxation were given effect to. — Carterton News.

Labour organisations made a serious error in their estimate of the character of the new Minister of Labour when they thought they would receive concessions at his hands because of his well-known leanings to trade unionism. They had a rude awakening. — Thames Star.

It does appear to us that the State might start a kind ot insurance against crime, so that the man who was injured by the act of some criminal — one perhaps that the State should hare permanently secluded from the community — might be able to secure compensation for his loss. This seems to be more important than that special provisions should be made for the rare eases in which a man has been wrongfully sentenced after trial by jury. — Napier Herald.