The Dominion. MONDAY, JULY 25, 1910. LIBERTY IN SPENDING.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 877, 25 July 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, JULY 25, 1910. LIBERTY IN SPENDING.

It is not the smallest of the statesman's worries- that in his political capacity he must propose or support enactments to which he privately objects very strongly. In New Zealand especially there is a fund of amusement for light-hearted observers in this constant dilemma of the Cabinet Minister. The members of the Government have as a rule achieved some skill in concealing their 'personal views, hut occasionally they give us a glimpse of their personal dissent from the only policy that they can, as a Government, lay claim to. That policy is, of course, State Socialism, or evolutionary Socialism, or whatever term best defines the policy of extending the functions of the State and dwarfing individual effort.' Two interesting cases of the kind occurred last week. Mr. Massey had pointed out that the work of designing the Government Buildings in ' Christchurch was given to an architect who had invested £1000 in a local Government newspaper, and the Prime Minister took it upon himself to defend the employment of this gentleman. Mr. Massey observed that the shares in the newspaper company were worth only a certain sum, and the Prime Minister replied: "It does not matter if they arc only- worth twopence; a man has a right to invest his money as he thinks fit." Only a- day or two earlier Mr. Millar, in announcing his determination to bet as much as he pleased, declared that he had a right to spend his money as ho thought best. Now, we do not quarrel with either, of these statements; indeed, we think that .most people will agree that the more freedom a man has in tho disposition of hip means the bcttei - .

But it is certainly very odd to find the Prime Minister and the Minister for Hallways laying down that doctrine the denial of which is the essence of "Liberal" policy. If there is one thing more than another upon which the Government's policy has insisted, it is that you must not spend your money as you plensethat it is the business of the State to take a hand both in the earning and the spending of it, and that ultimately your whole personal econorri;, will be directed by the law. Dit. Findlay's lecture- on "Legal Liberty" was from beginning fri end a pica on behalf of a great tightening of the State's fjrip upon the liberty of man in earning and spending his income. Discussing,-' in his' wellknown paper 011 "The Now Toryism," the growth of taxation in Great Britain, Herbert Spencei;

showed that each act of taxation "involves a further coercion—restricts still more the freedom oi tlio citizen": '

For the implied address accompanying every additional oxactiou is—"Hitherto you have been free to spend this portion of your earnings in any way which ple;i;rd you; hereafter you snail not be free so to spend it, but we will spend it for the {general benefit." Thus, either directly or indirectly, and in most cases both at once, thu cilir.en is, at each furfliei- stage in the growth of this compulsory legislation, deprived of some liberty which ho previously had. Such, then, are the doings of the party which claims the name of Liberal; anil which calls itself Liberal as being the advocate of extended freedom.

Wo are not going here into the whole question of the bc-tv.ec-ii ihu two Ministers' private creed and their public performance —an inconsistency which, as we have noted before, Hut Joseph Ward di». played in a still more striking way when in his Winton speech he proclaimed, in excellent language, his belief in that very principle of free exchange which it' has been the aim of his party to oppose in every possible manner. All we want to note here is this; that both Sir Joseph and his colleague, in plumping out th'iir personal notions "oneeruing freedom to spend, expressed the universal instinct of everyone who has a penny to disburse. Apd it is, of course, not only a right instinct, but an instinct necessary to the pvoper development of a sound and free society. Unhappily, the Wakd and Sbddon Governments have made a speciality of shutting up the old avenues of freedom and of creating many new avenues into which men must direct part of their uxpeiKlitare whether they like it or not. In conclusion, we may quote, for the Done-fit of Silt Joseph and Mit. Millar, Spencer's definition of liberty in the cssav referred to. We do not know how-if will strike them as politicians, but they have shown themselves so human in their personal conception of the rights of private finance that we are sure that as men •they will enjoy it:

The liberty which a citizen enjoys is to be measured, not by the nature of the governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but' by the relative paucity of the restraints it imposes on him; and whether this machinery is or is not ono that lie has shared in making, its actions are not ■' I the kind proper to. Liberalism i£ they increase such restraints beyond those which are needful for preventing him from directly or indirectly aggressing on his fellows—needful, that is, for maintaining the liberties of Ms fellows against his invasions of them: restraints which are, therefore, to be distinguished as uegativtly coercive, not positively coercive.