Notes and Notions.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XVIII, 6 May 1899, Page 608

Notes and Notions.

How it is that in this colony, where progress at any price is the leading characteristic of our legislature, we should so long have entirely neglected improvement in our methods of dealing with juvenile criminals, is strikingly peculiar, and whatever excuses we may make, does us little credit. Thanks mainly to some remarks made by Mr Justice Pennefather on his retirement from the high position he so worthily tilled, and from their amplification in a subsequent interview, the matter is now in the way of being thoroughly ventilated.

It is. indeed, the question of the day, and no doubt every parliamentary candidate ’and political adventurer will exploit the subject for all it is worth in the coining campaign speeches. Over the fact that the majority of those who will enthuse over reform, and denounce past heedlessness, will be utterly unworthy to handle so noble a subject, ami will merely use. it as a means for the manufacture of political capital and self advancement, we need not worry ourselves. The fact that it will be brought prominently before Parliament and the country is cause for congratulation, even if some would-be legislators use it merely as a ladder whereby they may' climb into Parliament. + + +

On such a question there can and will be no difference of opinion. It may be taken as a certainty now that within a very limited time we shall see the establishment of one or more reformatory establishments in New Zealand, and judges will be able to endeavour to check juvenile crime, being relieved from the painful alternative of letting young offenders go to the bad for lack of correction, or accelerating their decadence by herding them with habitual and hardened criminals. This column is not, perhaps, the place for the discussion of so wide and important a matter, which is of a character to demand editorial weight and position. But having seen something of reformatories in the Old Country, and having read not a little on the treatment of juvenile offenders, I feel constrained to plead the special advantages of the reformatory 7 training ship. Of these ships there are several in English ports, and of all the many reformatory institutions extant, the results achieved by the training ship are the best. They are the best results because they are the most permanent, from the’ cause that the man or lad is protected from himself after he has been liberated.

The position of a youth liberated from a reformatory is an exceedingly critical one. It depends almost entirely into whose hands or what class of society he falls what becomes of him. If he can be placed straight away 7 in a position where, while free, he is still to some extent under a discipline, milder but yet not dissimilar from that under which he has lived for some years, he is very much more likely to keep straight than if suddenly relieved from all restraint, rule and authority. The demand for thoroughly trained seamen is, or might easily be made, almost unlimited. Again, if the transfer from the reformatory was in the first instance made direct, without allowing the enfranchised lad any opportunity for a relapse before his first voyage, he would pass the first few months of his liberty free from those temptations whose attacks we know are the n most serious and most likely' to prove fatal to him. It may, 1 think, be taken as an axiom that if the first six months or year are successfully negotiated reform may be confidently expected to be permanent. ♦ + +

In last week’s ‘Graphic’ 1 gave an instance of the fact that the Maori belief in witchcraft was as strong as ever, and the well-known, healthy native dying solely because he believed he bad been bewitched. The Bay of Plenty ‘Times’ this week furnishes an interesting specimen of another old-

time custom not yet dead, apparently. This is the “taua,* and it was practised just the other day in the Maketu district, a European being the victimiser and afterwards the victim. He had espoused a Maori wife who, during a visit to relatives, was accused of allowing too marked, addresses to be paid to her by a young chief. A taua was at once held, and, the charge being considered to be proved, the young chief’s people were called upon for utu, in the form of a large assignnient of horses, cattle, guns, mats, etc. 1 his compensation was paid in due course, but subsequent revelations completely exonerated the accused party, and the return of the utu was demanded, with interest, from the European husband, who, in the meantime, had shared the spoils with the native relatives of his wrongly accused wife. Native custom had to be complied with, and the European and his Maori relatives have had to make restitution in full of the distrained properties and pay heavily for their mistake into the bargain.

Moreover, the extinction of the British (merchant) sailor is a subject for very real alarm. On the Hawkes’ Bay, recently in New Zealand, there were only two English A.B.’s amongst the entire crew. The rest were mainly Swedes, and most of them utterly ignorant of English. The same estate of affairs prevails to a greater or less extent on every boat running into these and other ports from England. The British trader nowadays is entirely manned by ‘Dutchmen,’ as sailors call all foreigners. Into the many disadvantages and dangers of such a state of affairs I have no time 1° S°, but would mention the most obvious, that the mercantile marine is no longer a reserve from which in time of trouble the navy can draw supplies. Training ships—reformatory (and otherwise) —would help to rectify this.

Although too much space has already been absorbed by this somewhat heavy subject in a portion of the paper meant for lighter matters, I canuot refrain from referring to two further advantages of the training ship reformatory over similar institutions ashore. The first is that the discipline of board ship life would come more naturally to a mind unused to restraint than that of the reformatory ashore. On shore the necessarily severe, or at all events strict, discipline adopted must often appear to have little meaning, and to smack too much perhaps of the prison. On the training ship it is obvious to the most ignorant mind that it is part of a big intelligible scheme. The stupidest and most obstinate youth sees that the same rules of order, obedience, and respect reign amongst all ranks on board, from the senior officers to the ship’s boys. The second and very important advantage is the almost infinite possibility of proper classification, and to ability to advance hopeful cases. At the shore reformatory it is always a difficult matter to provide proper classification. On a ship advancement by small degrees is easily arranged, and the intelligent and not hopelessly vicious soon improve when they see that substantial rewards in food, comfort, and advanced position follow good behaviour and hard work. I earnestly hope abler pens and earnest speakers will take up this idea and see it carried through.

Some correspondence now proceeding in the Taranaki papers on certain technical details in cheese making gives me an excuse for propounding a problem that has puzzled me ever since my arrival in the colony. How is it that it is so outrageously difficult to get a piece of good locally manufactured cheese in New Zealand or in fact anywhere in Australasia? Is it, as the grocers affirm, that a vitiated public palate positively prefers the green immature, soapy, and tasteless compound usually supplied to a mellow, well kept and deliciously flavoured cheese? Or, is there some defect in our grass or our climate which precludes the manufacture of a Cheddar, a Cheshire, or a Gloucester type cheese equal to those procurable at Home. Personally I favour the theory that the climate is the difficulty. A cheese —even the New Zealand Stilton, which is fair—never seems capable of becoming ‘ripe’ in

our climate; there is no stage between greenness and rottenness. Our N.Z. Stilton doesn’t ‘go’ properly; it decays. The same thing seems to occur with game. An attempt to achieve the true ‘gamey* flavour which proper hanging imparts to a pheasant is nine out of ten times a failure in ‘our glorious climate.’ The bird becomes not slightly high, but putrid, and uneatable. In venison the failure is almost invariable and unavoidable. The meat never mellows as it should; it merely decomposes. Under these circumstances New Zealand pheasants are often most unjustly pronounced inferior to their British brethren. They are, as a matter of fact, infinitely superior in weight and in flavour. Eaten fresh as we usually eat pheasants in New Zealand, an English cock bird would be tasteless as paper. No one can say that of our acclimatised pheasants. They are capital unhung, and if we could get the secret of hanging them, or alter the climatic condition which prevents our doing so no bird in the world would provide so incomparable a dish.

The splendid season enjoyed by farmers, and the rich harvests they have gathered will doubtless encourage our voungsters to think favourably of the dictum, ‘Go on the land, young man.’ Still, even in this ‘ year of plenty ’ there are exceptions. For example: At the Rangiora Pension Court last week a small farmer, with forty acres, applying for his pension, was giving the Court an idea of his position. He said the land was so poor it had not the sense to grow much grass. He had a few good sheep, about twentyfive, but the rest of his flock he was ashamed of. It consisted of seventy sheep, worth 3/6 each, ‘ gummies ’ and ewes without mouths, very old. (Laughter.) His two horses were worth a five pun’ note : were very old. one nineteen years of age this month —(laughter)—and the other a cripple. (Renewed laughter.) A cart he had. which the Magistrate supposed was a dog cart, but which applicant explained was a dung cart. (A laugh.) It had, he said, neither a complete body or wheels. (Laughter.) It was 'so rotten it only held together with wire and tacks. (More laughter.) The cart was seventeen years old when he got it, and it was a very old cart then. (More laughter.) Had he any furniture? Well, no. Yes. on second thoughts. He had two candle boxes to sit on. At this stage the Magistrate thought as age was proved and residence proved, a pension might be granted.

Evidently the virtuous indignation of the Auckland publicans with regard to the allegations of Sunday trading made by Mrs Schnackenberg has not had any very impressive effect ‘ down South.’ The challenge of £lOO is pretty generally laughed at by Southern scribes, who describe it as a very eheap and obvious piece of bluff. The ‘ Oamaru Mail' is particularly scornful. It observes, in a paragraph on the subject:—‘Fifty-one publicans in the city of Auckland offer the President of the National Council of Women to pay .£ 100 to any Auckland charity if she can prove the assertion made in the Council. If the Auckland publicans’ characters ns saints or sinners depends upon this test they are perfectly safe. We would like to see the individual who could prove Sunday trading under the systematic safeguards that are instituted by wily publicans in all large cities, and elsewhere, too—safeguards which must be known to the authorities if they are worth their salt, yet they are ignored. We are writing for a common-sense public, amongst whom there are numbers of persons who know, from personal experience, that the action of the Auckland publicans is all bluff. Those who try to win this prize will probably realise that it hangs over a yawning chasm and that they might fall in. They will not forget the humiliating lampooning of informers and the inevitable verdicts in favour of the defendants, who could not rest in their beds at night if they ever sold a glass of beer out of hours. If the Auckland publicans would only make the amount large enough to excite the. cupidity of one of their own number there would be no difficulty in proving the truth of the statement made by the National Council of Women.’

In Christchurch there is some discussion going on over a nuisance

which ever and anon springs up in all large cities, through the over-enthusi-asm of street preachers, out-door orators. and open-air temperance fanatics. It would appear, from letters in tlie local papers, that an effortis to be made to confine these well-mean-ing people in a certain restricted area of the Hagley Park, so that, their bawled exhortations and their declamatory denunciations shall not annoy those who patronise the park for a quiet Sunday afternoon stroll. Naturally, perhaps, there is much indignation amongst the people whom it is proposed to ‘ move on.' I. quote the letter of one of these gentlemen, because I want to point out just where he and all his party are in the wrong. He says: ‘ I hold that neither the Domain Board nor any one else has the right or absurdly partisan power to say that hundreds of young girls and boys can amuse themselves as they please around Victoria Lake, and at the same time say to a number of respectable city preachers or reformers, you can go to an obscure corner over yonder. It’s a public park for the benefit of all. — Yours, etc.. WATCH TOWER.’ + + +

Now I would just point out that it is the last perfectly true sentence of his own letter which puts all these too enthusiastic preachers, reformers, etc., out of court, so to say. The park is, emphatically, ‘ for the benefit of all.’ It is for rest and recreation, and not as a place where one’s ears may be tortured, and one’s common-sense outraged by loud-mouthed evangelists, who preaeh. or rather bawl, the exextreme ‘ hell fire and damnation ’ doctrine, which gravely asks us to love, revere, and worship a Deity who could condemn to eternal torture the frail and fallible beings of His own creation for falling into temptations and committing sins of omission and commission, which even humans can forgive when committed against themselves. A man has a perfect right to preach this doctrine if he believes in it, but he has no right to make himself a nuisance by insisting that we others cannot walk out on a Sunday without being annoyed with it. Nor have the temperance orators or the socialistic reformers any right to make the most beautiful spots in the parks their stumping ground. A certain part of the domain and parks should be allotted them, and there let them do and say to the utmost their convictions prompt. It would be unjust to prevent their speaking at all. but their exclusion from the most popular parts is perfectly right and equitable. A small minority must ever give way to the comfort and convenience of an overwhelming majority.