NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1082, 22 March 1911, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

Our readers, wo arc sure, will be interested in tho budget of press opinions, published elsewhere; culled from such of our exchanges as have commented on the' action which the Chief Justice has considered it necessary to shroud in such secrecy. Since the matter was first taken up by The Dominion, _ and the strange secrecy observed in this case exposed to the public here and in' other parts of the country, there has developed a strong and increasing volume of protest. We have purposely refrained from imputing motives or suggesting reasons for the course pursued; our objections have been raised on the grounds of principle, and because we regard the principle involved as one of the gravest possible concern to the whole community. It will be seen that practically the whole of those newspapers which, to our knowledge, have commented on the matter, take this same serious view of secret sittings of our Courts of Justice. The practice is condemned in the strongest possible torms, and we have not the slightest doubt that the views expressed by ourselves and our contemporaries voice the feelings of tho public. Yesterday the Court again . sat in camera. It so happens that wo are fully aware of what transpired at that secrot sitting. The public will be interested to learn that unless something unexpected happens there is every probability now that tho action must shortly come into open court. The nature of the case should then be fully disclosed, and tho public will probably ,be very greatly astonished that the Court should go to such extreme lengths, and adopt a course so calculated to shake confidence in' the even-handed administration of justice, in such a cause.

A cable message printed on Saturday reported Mr. Hughes, the Federal Attorney-General, as having made a strong plea for the referenda in order that the Government may deal with Trusts. The Government, he said, wanted the power to hit Trusts wherever it saw them., It is obvious that what the Government wants is, not merely power to deal with any specific evil or difficulty, but power to nationalise anything that it may think of and to place the whole continent firmly under'tradeunion rule. Their professed horror of Trusts is a little curious. The Coal Vend is an admitted combine, yet Mr. J. C. Watson said of it in the House of Representatives: I am quite with hon. members that we should take care that nothing is done to prevent such legitimate combination among coal mine owners as may be found necessary to enable them to get a fair profit on their capital invested and to ensure fair wages to their employees. Mr. Hughes himself referred in the House in 1906 to the shipping combines in these terms: The shipping monopoly, I repeat, is not a destructive monopoly at all. On the contrary it is a very good monopoly, and one which is for the benefit of the people of Australia. The Federal Government's present proposal makes no ' distinction between one monopoly and another. It provides for the nationalisation of everything that Parliament, or, in other words, the Labour caucus, may declare to be a monopoly. Here is another extract from the speech of Mr. Hughes from which we have quoted: It is a good thing there should be uniformity in many cases. What does die' Standard Oil monopoly say? It says that its existence is a good thing, because it regulates rates without levying excessive charges. The evidence given bciove the Tobacco Committee was to the same offeet, namely, that it did not increase the price of tobacco, and that the only benefit conferred was to be found in the lesser number of persons who are employed by the combine in the manufacture and distribution of the article, Mn, iTvbtxce Htooise is regarded as the bright star of Labour's hojjeß,

Unionists cheer when they hear his name. Yet he is a shareholder in the Colonial jjugar Company, which Labour declares is a wicked Trust. 'What value is there to he attached to such talk as that uf Mr. Hughes? One cannot help preferring the outspokenness of some of his colleagues: of Senator Pearce, who says "Individualism is doomed and Socialism must take its place," or of Mr. Thomas, Postmaster-General, who said at Broken Hill: "This, then, is what the Labour movement means. In one precise, pregnant word it means Socialism."