NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1368, 20 February 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

A word of praise seems to be duu to Mb. Kiddell, S.M., for his decision as to costs in the unsuccessful police prosecution of a citizen charged with being drunk and disorderly. The accused proved very abundantly that the charge against him could not be sustained; and the police officers concerned made a very poor showing, having to admit under examination facts that disproved their charge and that showed a most disturbing tendency on the part of some police officers to play rather fast and loose with their responsibilities. Upon consideration, Ml:. Riddell decided to take the unusual step of granting costs against tho Crown. That he was quite right can hardly be doubted. One does not wish to embarrass the police, but it is certainly a very good thing to have them reminded sometimes that it is to their own interest, hardly less than to the interest of the public, to treat their responsibilities quite as seriously as their duties.

We arc given to-day tho contributions of two Judges to the question of crime. Shocked by the length of the criminal list in Auckland, Mh. Justice Edwards has revived the idea that crime varies as the temperature, or, at any rate, as the climate; the lower the temperature, or the worse the climate, the fewer the criminal cases. Nobody with a sense of responsibility .would care to dogmatise on that point; but one may be permitted to suggest that crime is a thing largely independent of climate. In Wauganui the Chief Justice made a statement that is plainly absurd. He was confronted by a pleasantly small crime-list, and he therefore "hoped that this comparative absence of crime was an indication that the present humanitarian system of dealing with criminals was having a due effect." He also "hoped that the present state of affairs was an augury for a marked and permanent decrease in the number and gravity of offences against the law." What he will make of the Auckland list we cannot even conjecture. It is a little disturbing to find so high an official as the Chief Justice ready to declare, on the strength of one crime-list in ■ small place, that a system of criminal treatment that nobody who burgles knows_ anything about, that has only been in operation for a few minutes, as it were—it is a little disturbing, we say, to find a Chief Justice building so wide a conclusion from such a slender basis. It argues an irresponsibility and skekness of thought greater than can be permitted even in a judicial obiter dictum.

Perhaps it is unnecessary at this time of day, when even the "Liberal" newspapers are unable to refrain from rebelling against the last desperate throw of "Liberalism," to pursue our emphasis of the large decline of "Liberalism" from Liberal principles. But the public may perhaps like to an exccllent'statement by him whom Mk. Asquitii has called the most notable political figure of the timo—Mb. Ralfour— unon the deterioration of Liberalism. It was his first speech since he became a private member (at Haddington on January 6); and he discussed the want of relation, so fnr as modern Radicalism is concerned, between ''the ancient name" and "the anc ; ent_ thing.' , "There was n. time," he said, "when certain great governing principles of jjolicy were the common property and inheritance of both great parties in the State"; but that time, so far as the Radicals were concerned, was nast:

"Take economy, public econmnv. T suppose that fifty yenrs as;o the, Sadic.nl party prided themselves as being in some sjpecml and peculiar sense the snajUians nf tVifi public. p'tr*e. They «e.rc tho party who were never tod of saying on public

pint forms Ilinl. llli , money of llw laiuntry ivii-, l/'-i wcmiicd in Irilelil'viiif,', «•< they called il. in llm pockets ill' llii' people, not bc'ing c>;tr,iclid liy the UiN-gallicicr. and .■dummy wax pm.chnl uiw.ii cu-iy Itadiciil plniform Ilinl was the staple (if every liiiiliciil discourse. Anil, unless my ini-iK.Tv culiri-lv deceives mi', MX yniiv ago, \vlicii the'general election (if I'Mi placed Hie iii-i-tiil. (ioverniiienf in pwcr, «'(iii(imy again assumed mi their platforms il« nld' importance, mil no clmrge was moro I'reiiucntly made against h> tliii.ii tliiil we have been poor caivtakers nl' llm> public inirsf. In the six was that have elapsed since Him. w« have all learned for the fin', time what extravagance can become in I he hands of a reckless Gnvcrninoiir. Never, in the wholo coiw.-e of our history in a time of mace, has the burden of taxation mounted by leans and bnumls —to use a i)hni.«e whieb Mr. Glads-tone once applied, not to public exnenditurc, but- to"the imblio revnmie—and just as they have betrayed their own ancient creed with regard to economy, so tlx-y have betrayed it in connection with the multiplication of public office'. T do not deny that, as civilisation becomes more complicated, as new duties are from (lav to day thrown nuoii local authorities and noon' the central authority, the number of public offices must increase; but that they should increase in the manner they have increased under the piwpnt Government, that (hoy should \x added to in three few years, not bv tens ov hundreds, but by thouramls, that, surely is a phenomenon which might to disquiet not merely the official critics of the nre«ent Government, but tlios? Radical thinkei-s who hitherto have e-incoived that their views were, r-nlly expressed by the present holders of office."

The spendthrift "Liberal" party _ in New Zealand has. of course, received notice to quit. But it is alwavrt timelv to pillory the sins of any docaved Government,

The mail brings us the text of that outburst of pessimism regarding New Zealand which, as the cable agent briefly told us, Mb. E. G. Jellicoe had communicated to the London Standard. Mb. Jellicoe unfortunately allowed himself to be carried away by his forensic, and used some extreme and indefensible language. It is absurd, for example, to suggest that New Zealand has been brought by bad government "almost to the brink of financial and industrial ruin." The injury inflicted upon New Zealand by "Liberalism" is so enormous as not to require the use of extreme terms. The strongest point in Mn. Jellicoe's argument was his insistence upon the fact that the net result of "Liberalism" has been to frighten capital from enterprise. We are not going to explain here the simple cnoujrh reason why the encouragement of industrial investment is a good thing. Everybody who can add one and one together and make two knows that something is wrong when industrial capital begins to avoid any particular coimtry. Even Sik W. Hall-Joxes knows that, and so, being quite unable to refute the fact that "Liberalism" has almost checked the inflow of voluntary capital, and even the investment of local capital (a point established over and over again in the addresses of the Chairman of the Bank of New Zealand), lapsed into irrelevance in his "reply" to Mr. Jellicoe. According to tho London correspondent of a southern Wardisfc journal he "replied" by "pointing out" that "there is no country in the world which exports so much per head of population as New Zealand." Which, of course, is no reply at all to the statement, which can K . made without reserve, that if the "Liberals" had not rendered capital, both foreign and local, very shy, New Zealand would even now be economically healthy and happy. The "Liberal" apologists have a hopeless case to plead. Snt W. Hall-Joxes showed how hopeless it is in some other parts of his reply. This is how he defended the Arbitration Act:

The question is whether chat Act has not been tho means of saving tens, aye, even hundreds of thousands of pounds, in the settlement of differences between employers and employees.

Everybody, fortunately, knows now that the Act has been an imposture from first to last—that it docs no good to society or to industry, that it prevents nothing but the sound expansion of industry. Even the "Liberals" on their death-bed are inclined to give it up.