NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1172, 6 July 1911, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

« —: —■ We understand that a good many people who have been visited this week by the enrolment officer arc a little concerned about the effect and the intention of the electoral census. It seems that they are not few who view the whole business with deep suspicion and are afraid that they may find themselves disfranchised. There is a distinct obligation upon everybody to fill in the forms left at their houses, and it will be at the risk of a fine that anyone leaves the form unfilled. Hut those who distrust the new arrangement have in their own hands the means of safeguarding their electoral rights. They may—and wc strongly advise that they should—rely as heretofore upon themselves and attend personally to their enrolment. It is by no means unnatural that this expensive, and wholly unnecessary census should be scrutinised very carefully. Our own opinion of it is that it makes it more important than-ever that those who desire a change of Government should pursue the old method of becoming enrolled. In any case' no person who values his vote should assume that the filling-in of the electoral census paper necessarily ensures enrolment. All sensible people will take as much care as ever to inspect the rolls when they are issued.

Thf. policy speech which will be delivered by Mr. Massey at the Town Hall to-night is, we need hardly say, an event of much, importance just now, and the public will not require much exhortation to induce it to attend in great numbers. Mr. Massey has this enormous advantage over the Government, that he is able to deliver a policy speech—the one thing that not a single Minister can do, or even can pretend to do, for where thero is no policy, as is the case, with .the Government,-there can be no policy speech. The general lines of the' Opposition's jioliey are, of course, well knofrn. The articles of its political faith arc real': they mean something. And they mean something that tho_ public, chiefly through the lachcs 'of the Government, has been led to approve ever more strongly. The purpose of tonight's meeting is merely a recognition of the duty of stating the policy formally in a way that will make it a clear code for the practical purposes of the. general elector. Ministers and the' Ministerialist papers know just as well as everybody else the character and direction of the Reform programme, and they really dcceive nobody by professing that they have any doubts about it. Their idle abuse of the lie form party is tactical, and'of course it is based on a delusion. The heavy work of prcsessional education has been practically concluded by the Opposition, and the summary is to be delivered to-night. The public, we are confident, will welcome this important and interesting change from the hollowness and dreariness of Ministerialist rhetoric.

In the hope, no doubt, of intimidating the Peers, Reynolds's Newspaper recently printed a list of more than three hundred gentlemen who arc "on the list" that the Government has prepared in anticipation of a wholesale creation of Peers. All of them, according to Reynolds's, arc willing to wear coronets. It is in many' respects an amusing list. Some of the most notable of the candidates are:

Jlr. J. M. Barrie, Mr. Thomas Eur! JI.P., Sir i-h'nest Cassel, Mr. Carnegie, Sir Samuel Evans (President of the Probate and Divorce Division), Mr. Justice Eve, Sir John Gorst, Sir 1\ Carruthers Gould, Mr. W. JJ. Gladstone, Lord Justice Cozens-Hardy, Mr. Justice florridge, Sir Victor lioi'Mov, Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, Mr. liohhouse, M.P. (Secretary to the Treasury), Sir Francis ilopwood, Mr. Lewis Harcoiut'. M.P. (Colonial Secretary),' Sir Harry H. Johnston, Lord Justice Kennedy, Sir Thomas Liptou, Sir Oliver Lodge, Mr. Frank Lloyd, Sir George Lewis, Sir Henry Lucy, Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton, Sir Francis Mowatt, Sir W. Robertson Nicol, Lord Chief Harron Palles, Mr. J. A. Pease, JI.P. (Chancellor of t'he Duchy), Sir Robert Perks, Sir West Ridgway, Sir Edward Russell, Sir A. R. Rollit, Sir George Riddoll, Mr. T. W. Russell, Admiral Percy Scott, Sir Ernest Soares, Sir T. Vezey Strong (Lord .Mayor of London), Sir Edgar Speyer, Jlr. Justice Scrutton, Sir Edward Strachey, M.P., Colonel Seely, M.P., Sir George Trevclyan, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Sir Algernon West, and Sir 'Samuel Walker (Lord Chancellor of Ireland).

One result of the elevation of the men on the list given by Reynolds's Newspaper, it has been pointed out, would be that about . seventy byelections would become necessary, that number of the Peers in posse being members of the House of Commons. The majority of the remainder arc ex-members and defeated Liberal candidates.' It would be very funny if a scries of Unionist wins at the by-clections were to cut the Government's composite majority in the Commons down to onehalf. Fifty Unionist wins would almost wipe out the majority; sixty would completely wipe it out. But no .doubt the Liberal members chosen for ennoblement would be those who held safe Liberal seats.

Thkue was a discussion on land tenure in the New South Wales Parliament which has some interest for people in this country. The Minister for Lands was asked whether it was possible to select land on a freehold basis in New South Wales at the present time, and the Minister gave the House to understand that while a theoretical "yes" could be returned to the question, yet as a matter of fact the practical answer was "no." A .little fusillade of questions left the Minister in 'much the same position as our own Government has been since the calamity of Mr. K. M'Nab's elevation

to Ministerial rank. He declined to make any definite statement of policy, and he shirked even an attempt to explain away the fact, presented to him as a reason for deliiiitoness, that hundreds of settlers and sons of settlers, owing to the uncertainty as to the Government's policy, arc leaving the North Coast district and going to Queensland. The Sijilneij Marnitir/ Herald, which is strongly Liberal in its opinions, and which is keen upon extended settlement, had some useful comments upon the discussion :

There is fit is said) no Retting away from the fact that (he small holder' hankers after freehold, and there is no reason to refuse to accept the assertion of Mr. Lee and others, that large numbers of people are leaving the State for Queensland and elscwhero precisely on this account'. The Minister for Lands obliged to admit that practically it was not possible under present conditions_ to select land on a freehold basis ill New South Wales, and that the consequences of this are likely t'o 1)0 most serious to the rural industries of the State no one can deny. We must say that the Government. policy in this respect is hopelessly out of date. Moreover, there is very lit tie cxcusb for a purely doctrinaire devotion to leasehold tenure, inasmuch as we now have the experience of other countries to go upon. Nothing is more significant, for instance, than the history of opinion upon this point in New Zealand. There, as here, the wholesale appropriation of Crown land became a scandal, and there, as here, a strong movement against the alienation of land developed. But what was the result? Various leasehold tenures were introduced, and for a time all went well. But as closer settlement' progressed, and the tendency was towards intensive agriculture and a decrease in tin size of holdings, everyone began to cry out for freehold tenure; and to that clamour Parliament has been obliged more 'or loss to give way.

"More or less," perhaps. A little real earnestness at the polls will force the_ Government to choose between, going the whole distance or getting out.