THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 1905. THE PLEBISCITE BILL

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 34, 24 August 1905, Page 17

THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 1905. THE PLEBISCITE BILL

CCORDIN'G to Sydney Smith, the Troglodytes bore with their old people till these ffl&VA* began to bore their auditors with long and uninteresting tales. Then the weary tribesQftTx^y"*) men of the cave arose, strangled the garrur^jss? lous ancients with stnainded cow-t/ail, and J^Sfk^f? planted the corpses where the lilies blow, ir The people of New Zealand have long borne with patience the dreary loquacity of a group of clerics whose zeal for uh'o souls of children— 'if it ever existed — 'has fallen into senile and inglorious decay. ' There never has been,' says our local evening contemporary, ' a public question in which so little interest is shown, or in which so little popular feeling is eunced, as in that of the Bible-in-schools.' Even Mr. Sidey's Bible Lessons in Public Schools Plebiscite Bill failed) to give the ancients of the League a grip upon the lobe of. the public ear. A wearied House choked the measure off last week, and in all probability it will (in the opinion of oair secular contemporaries)' be allowed to lie embalmed for the present session of Parliament and for the year of grace 1905.

This was the foreseen fate of a Bill that aroused so miuch opposition both in Parliament and in the country. Even if the Bill had been committed, the chances of its ever passing were (says the 'Otago Daily Times') ' more than doubtful. The chances of the enactment of a private Member's Bill upon a controveisial subject always are exceedingly slight. Private Members' days are few , the opportunities which a private Member has for securing discussion of his Bill are limited, and frequently he is indebted to sheer good fortune rather than to anything else for them when they do 6<_'cur , and the opportunities which opponents of the Bill, and those who arc afraid to record an opinion regarding it, have for burking discussion arc many and A'arious ' Mr. Sidey's Bill was blocked by unappreciath o Members till the fatal hour struck after which the Standing Orders of the House) made it impossible to take fresh business. A modern Parliament's polite substitute for the stranded cow-tail had done its work, and strangled a Bill that was intended to affirm for New Zealand the evil principle of old-time persecution that questions of conscience and religious liberty should be settled by a count of noses.

Our local morning contemporary has pointed out that, with many Members, the opposition to Mr. Sidcy's Bill arose ' not from the existence of objections to the principle of the referendum so much as from the existence of an uncertainty respecting what lies behind the referendum.' We ha\e full many a time set forth the tangle of ircompatible schemes that are favored by various sections of the movement for introducing 'an emasculated caricature ' of the Protestant version of the Bible, at the public expense, into our State schools. Mr. Sidey's Bill provided for ' lessons from the Bible '— an olnious misdoscription. ' Giving Bible lessons,' 'teaching Bible lessons '—these are some of the various pro-

posals that rend ' the marvellous unity 'of the sectarianising party. One of the block-lights of the League, Mr. Flux, *■ described the present agitation in effect,' says the '• Ofcago Daily Times,' >' as one for securing ane-toalf of a loaf of which the whole was ultimately ftesired. The famous text-book,' adds our contemporary, ' was rather severely ignored by the speakers (at the recent Wellington meeting), 'but Dr. Giblb, clinging to it, said the League would be delijghted to have the plebiscite taken upon it.' It was not so much as hinted at in Mr. Si'dey's Plebiscite Bill a We hold, with the Dunedin ' Times,' that ' it does seem desira-l^e that the ground on which the League stands should be cleared of some of the present obstacles to the possession by the public of a precise knowledge of the eventual aims of its leaders.'