Taupeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS AND ADVERTISER. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 1892. "MEASURES, NOT MEN." NOTES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1877, 9 March 1892, Page 2

Taupeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS AND ADVERTISER. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 1892. "MEASURES, NOT MEN." NOTES.

A good " cry " is the life of a government. At the close of the Vogelian regime, the standing cry for some years used to be economy, cessation of borrowing, and reform in the administrative departments of the colony. As this harmonised so fully with the popular detestation of Yogel and all his works and, at the same time, furnished the means for destroying the unrestrained spirit of extravagance that then dominated public life and drove the country almost to the verge of ruin, it found vehement utterance, and was only dropped when it was supposed to have accomplished its purpose. Its distinctively saving feature was that it was a national rather than a party cry. Since then, many strange things have happened; and now, instead of the spectacle of a people demanding with one voice the things that are for the common good, we see them sundered bj T dissension, occupying two different camps, with scarcely a single sentiment in common between them. This, by the politicians, is regarded as evidence of a high degree of political intelligence, as one of the most advanced stages of party government in the path of political and national progress. Can we wonder if the "cry" under such circumstances is one highly calculated to satisfy the progressive though, perhaps, somewhat peculiar aspirations of the hour ? It is now down with the monopolists, down with the capitalists, and, of course, long live the people. This, as nearly as possible, is the cry whicb the members of the Government and their followers in the House have succeeded in putting into the mouths of the people, and though it has often been given tongue to before, many times in the long past, long before cither Mr Ballance or Sir Robert Stout made their bow to the world, and has never yet succeeded in changing what, broadly speaking, appears to be the destined order of things, yet it is taken up all around as if it were something that had been bat yesterday forged for the first time on the Socialistic anvM. It has served the purpose of the political agitators and office-seekers to perfection ; but so far, no unprejudiced man will deny that, not capital but its aggressors have received most of the punishment. But this has always been the case in such conflicts, and, in the present instance, history is merely repeating itself.

The Chinese colony in Sydney appears to be giving the authorities trouble.* The operations of a Chinese secret society which has just been discovered, are serious enough to cause grave apprehensions, and the police are actively engaged preventing an outbreak of outrage and murder. The Chinamen who compose these secret societies are said to come from the most ferocious districts in China, and the plots are exclusively intended for the destruction of obnoxious Chinamen. Like the members of the Italian murder clubs, they pay big prices for the destruction of their victims, in one instance, so the cable says, as much as £200 has been offered for the killing of one Mongolian ; and with such a sum on his head, there must be lively competition among the hordes of Chinese cut-throats and gamblers who infest Sydney. China itself is honeycombed with such societies ; they it was who attempted the late abortive rebellion, and committed the atrocities on the European missionaries. It can hardly be that those imported abominations will be allowed to flourish on colonial soil; but they furnish another strong argument in favour of the rigorous exclusion of the race from European communities.