The Western Star. (PUBLISHED BI-WEEKLY.) WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1880.

Western Star, Issue 374, 25 August 1880, Page 2

The Western Star. (PUBLISHED 81-WEEKLY.) WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1880.

"Wrm much indignation the question bus been apked latrlr, if we are henceforth to be governed by Commissions, and thus allow our Ministries in this colony to divest themselves of responsibility with regard to the most important party measures. Well, for our own part w* 1 may as well confess at one* 1 t l .at the colony might do worse. To the demastosic mind there is somet'ing particularly obJ3ctionable in reports of commissions. Just when the popular windbag has "indited n good matter," as the Psalmist ban it, in other words, composed Fome brilliant flourishes of rbetoiie, be pinned down to definitely ascertained facts given in evidence before an impartial Commission, is to the last degree annoying. There are but few politicians in the British colonies who believe in Schiller's maxim, " The full mind is ntwive the clfar, And. truth dwells in the depth f r ever." On the contrary they hold the doctrine that "The shallow mind isalore thecleer, And truth dwells on the surface forever." And yet a reference of a disputed subject to a Commission has its points. At the meetings of most of our local public bodies, when a difficult question embracing many details crops up, nothing in more common than to refer it to a Committee to report upon. And so also in our Law Courts disputed accounts involving numerous items are usually referred by the Court compulsorily to arbitration. This is just the course which has been taken by the prt-senb Ministry in the appointment of those Commissions, which have called forth so much eomment in and the Press lately. The result, if carefully examined, can scarcely be called unsatisfactory in any one case. Tf the Commissions not culled all the possible information fit forgatheringjthey have procured for the public a good and if they have not always brought an unnerring judgment to bear in drawing inferences from their facts, their general conclusions have by no means been set aside by the thinking portion of the community. Let us take the first and last of these Commissions' reports as instances the report of the Civil Service Commission and the report of the Commission on Local Industries. Before the first was presented it was generally anticipated that it would have been of a most commonplace humdrum character, not proposing much good or much harm, probably containing a suggestion that no radical chang9 was possible, but that a small cheese-paring economy might be practised by reducing the least paid officials in salary to the extent of say ten per cent, and allowing everything else to remain as it was. On the contrary, the actual report presented has been of such a sensational character that it haß occupied public attention ever since. It strikes at the highest branches of the tree as well as the lowest, and starts off by suggesting that the two Commissioners of Kailways should be dismissed for incompetence. It also deals in the most trenchant mauner with a variety of great abuses, which might possibly have been known to one or two of the officials of the special departments concerned, but certainly were not to anyone else. If the public thought

this report a useless one, would they , not long since have relegated it to oblivion. So with reference to the report of the Commission on the Encouragement of Local Industries. It has not done what some foolish people exneeted, and suggested that we should follow the sister colony, Victoria, in that foolish policy, which has long since hoen denounced hv every English writer of any account, and which in Victoria has reduced one of the most highly endowed districts on the face of the earth, into a settled abode of poverty and pauperism. Onr Commissioners vpry prudently kept clear of the sivire into which it was hoped they would be entrapped, but at the same time recommended the giving of bonuses to those who actually introduced new industries of such a kind as could stand alone without government support, and suggested a number of articles in which the colony was, or might be made rich, and indicated the ways to turn them to practical account. This unobtrusive report, for the details of which we must refer our readers to the published statement, is indeed one of the most instructive and practical that has been brought, before the Parliament of New Zealand for years. "We have no cause, therefore, to regret that some three or four very important questions of State policy have been referred to Commissions to report upon. On the contrary, the innovation, if innovation it be, in the appointment of these commissions, is one which might a?ain and again be tried. "Windbags whose minds get only confused by fresh information, object to it; thoughtful men very desirous of knowing the facts of the case before they legislated, will not.