The Dominion. FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 1910. MR. HINE'S CHARGES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 893, 12 August 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 1910. MR. HINE'S CHARGES.

It was hoped that the Prime Minister would yesterday make an announcement regarding Mr. Hike's challenge to tho Government to set up a Commission of Inquiry into the charges he has made in respect of commissions paid to members of Parliament. The disputation which has taken place regarding the extent to which Mr. Hine should disclose his hand argues very little for the respect which members have for the honour of Parliament. The member for Stratford states specifically that he is in possession of information which goes to show that in four separate cases commissions were paid to M.P.'s in connection with the sale of land to the Government. He sets out his cases as follow:

No I—An'M.P. acted as agent for the vendor of an estate, and received a commission. No. 2—ln the purchase of an estate two M.P.'s acted in collusion, and received a commission.

No. 3.—An M.P. divided a.commission with a land agent.

No. 4.—An M.P. received a huge commission, running to four figures, for acting as agent. ■ •

Tho circumstances surrounding these transactions are such that, in the opinion of Mr. Hine, it-is desirable that they' should be publicly inquired into; and he has undertaken to place the information at his disposal before any satisfactory tribunal set up to investigate them. Wo can quite believe that the Prime Minister, would bo desirous of having the, full facts at his disposal before considering the question oi the Commission, but he is quite wrong if he' imagines that the refusal of Mr. Hine to supply him with names, at the present stage of affairs acquits tho Government of the necessity for, granting the inquiry asked for. Mr. Hine s charges are quite specific enough to call urgently for an investigation which'will disclose the full facts-of tho transactions referred to, and which will assure the public that they know the best or the worst of a very serious and' decidedly unpleasant matter. : is perhaps desirable that something should Be said as, to the attitude taken up by Mr. Hine m refusing to at once lay all the information. at'his disposal before Parliament. It is an unfortunate fact .iiat recent experiences have not increased confidence in the Government's methods .of* conducting inquiries or of dealing with, complaints relating to-j administrative acts. If Mr. Hine were to give all tho details of his charges without securing beforehand a guarantee ,aat they would the subject oi an honest and itiaependent investigation all sorts 6f 1 things might nappen. ■ "His .imjiiiry might .never bo given; the longer it was delayed the more difficult it would be to produce evidence; documents might disappear as they have done on past occasions. All these' are risks which any member making charges of the nature under review has to face, and they are risks which are doubly great where all concerned in the transactions complained of are desirous of keeping them secret; One has only to recall tho conduct of , the Government in connection with the affair in the Land and Income Tax Department to realise the hopelessness of expecting fair and open dealing in any matter that involves the testing of the way in which the Liberal Administration, possessed for twenty years of the keys of office, carry out that large amount of business > which is not exposed to the public eye or to the eye of Parliament. Even now there are Ministerialist journals which are utterly unsatisfied with the Government's treatment of that affair. It was only under extreme pressure . that tho Government acted at all,, and even then its action was so obviously tho result of selection and suppression that there are probably more people in the Dominion to-day who are uneasy or suspicious than there were before the inquiry was held. Or let anyone think of the grazing runs episode referred to by Mr. Buchanan the other night. For months Mr. Black found the whole force of Ministerial secrecy and suppression arrayed against him in his endeavour to show that a prominent Government supporter and a close, friend of a Minister bad been granted peculiarly favourable treatment in circumstances exactly similar to those in which Mr. Black was treated with harshness. A press campaign, which we are-glad .to say was led by Tim Dominion, so succeeded in exposing the insincerity and injustice of this treatment-that the Prime Minister and his colleagues were at last glad to remedy Mr. Black's grievance in order to silonce further criticism. It was months before the Government consented to tell the public anything aDout the "E. A. Smith" case, and when he did issue a statement the Prime Minister made certain assertions that were flatly contradicted and shown to be quite inaccurate by Mr. Reeves. Our readers will remember that certain documents which went astray were a feature of tljis incident.' The public also can hardly have forgotten bho tactics pursued at the time of the naval scare, when an attempt was made to impress tho press and public by hints of specially alarming private information, which turned out, on inquiry, to be nothing at all. How, in the face of incidents like these, and their lesson, can Mr. Hine be expected to present the Government with a means of burking inquiry into his charges? He would be failing in his duty- to the country if ho did so. If the Government has nothing to fear from the investigation, and if it has any real desire' to have these charges thoroughly probed, it should not hesitate for a moment to give an undertaking to set up a Royal Commission.