Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 37, 14 September 1905, Page 17

Notes

White Gloves

Tiheret <was no criiminal business at Gisfoorne, when the half-yearly sessions of the Supreme Court were opened there last week. This is a rather rare event in Newt Zealand, frut it is (as our news columns in part show) a sitro«g{ 'feature of judicial life in Ireland, where (as ai Member oi Parliament once said with pardonable hypjerbole) ' white globes fall like snowflakes at every quarter sessions.' And yet, in the very areas where the glove-flakes fall, the legalised repression of Coercion now holds sway in that most crimeless of Englishspeaking I"amds. Over great areas of the country the ri^hti of free speech and public meeting is abolished ; M'Qiribtera of Parliament dare not attempt to address their constituents — unless they are satisfied to have their faces broken by 'bliid'geon-men in the uniform of the Crown ; and. tihe liberties of the subject are at the mercy of packed juries, of judges who are appointed chiefly for their political leanings, of •' removable ' magistrates who hold office during ' good behavior,' and of a force of miHit|a,ry polioe over whom the people, who pay thiem, 'ha\a no manner of direct or indirect control* If some freak of lunatic circumstance imposed such a ragime as this upon New Zealand, the flag of a new republic would be floating in the southern bredze within four-andr-twenty 'hours.