NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1387, 13 March 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

A southern Ministerialist journal publishes a Wellington telegram giving a damaging account of the reception accorded by the Civil Servants to tho new classification scheme. "Dissatisfaction with the proposed classification," it is said, "is almost universal," and the members of the Service aTc described as saying that Civil Service Board control would be an improvement upon the present conditions. In its editorial columns the newspaper publishing the message expresses some disbelief in its correspondent, and concludes with some significant admissions. It will not, of course, _ admit frankly that Ministerial, which is_ political, control is a bad thing; indeed, it tries to make the Departmental heads the scapegoats of the politicians. But there is significance in its final passage : Wo can see no reason why this liberty ["to recognise ability and industry and tho special qualifications that are required for particular ]>ositioiis"] should not lie exercised by the Minister at the head of each State Department, subject to revision by a properly constituted board of review. But if wc had to choose between a system of -hard and fast classification and automatic promotion and a system of control by independent experts we should bo inclined to accept the latter as the iess unsatisfactory concession to the unworthy suspicion that the people's representatives cannot be trusted to manage the peoplo's affairs. It is not so long since the journal quoted was as ardent as any Ministerialist journal or politician in denouncing the mere suggestion of "a properly constituted board of review" and in repudiating the very possibility of considering, even for purposes of argument, "a system uf control by independent experts." Events arc moving.

good to turn hack to the authentic guardians of truly Liberal principles. The London S/nrUilnr lias been recalling, by way of a corrective to ill.; finance and the policy of the pre-sent-day British radicals, some of the speeches of Mit. Gladstone. It quotes, for example, the following passage, from his Budget speech of 135:1, a;: showing "how little be believed ir the specious rhetoric of to-day upon earned and unearned incomes" : Some persons would place industrious incomes on the one side and lazy incomes on (he other. Xow, in my opinion, a great deal may bo said in favour of that doctrine] but observe (lie effect it iniisl have with regard to the public creditor. The landholder must exert himself with respect to his land, lite householder as to his house, and (he mortffiiiff" must cither look out himself, or pay his lawyer for looking out, to ascertain the safety of the investment proposed for his money; mid T de not: believe there is any income winch is perfectly ami entirely a lazy income, except the income of tho f unitholder. . . . 1 frankly own my total inability to nicer the feeling which has been excited upon (lie subject of the income-tax by any attempt to vary the rate of the tax according to the source of the income; nay, more, I think I should be guilty of a high political offence if I attempted it. This is a high hurdle for the presentday "Liberals" to get over. And what, we wonder, will they say, who chafe under our complaints of the increase of public expenditure, to this statement by Gladstone in 18G3 1— Tt must always be borne, in mind that when we speak of the expenditure of the Government we speak of that which is taken in a great measure out of the earnings of the people, and which forms in no small degree a deduction from a scanty store. In the year before he said, with the lucidity peculiar to his statements of high political truths: In years of peace . . . yon expert to have, and if finance is prudently conducted you will usually have, n considerable surplus of revenue available for the reduction of public debt and lending to a diminution of taxation. We may return to the general question of true and false Liberalism, but in the meantime how sharply Gladstonian principles censure the principles of vircscnt-day "Liberalism," hove and in other lands!

Is its letter to the Ministir tor Labour (printed in another part of this issue) protesting against the Government's paltering with recent breaches of the Arbitration Act, the Employers' Federation is voicing the undeniable feeling of most people in this country. There is no need for the Advisory Board of the Federation to feel any regret that it should be necessary for it to enter a protest against the attitude of the Government in respect of the Auckland drainage works and Wellington tramways strikes. The matter is very proper for the attention of the Federation, and if the Government will not look carefully after the law, somebody must say something. Wc do not think, however, that anybody earnestly desires the most rigorous possible application of the Act against individual strikers. All that is wanted is that the Act shall be treated as something better than a private weapon of the Government, to be used when it suits, and laid aside when that suits. The only rational alternative to the , enforcement of the Act is its repeal; and there is growing everywhere a sound intolerance of tho idea that the enforcement of any law, and in particular this unfair and one-sided law, should be subject to the discretion of anybody. It is really time that the Minister _ stated plainly what are tho intentions of the authorities.

Mr. George Bernard Shaw is known to the world as a brilliant playwright, an ardent Socialist, a mordant satirist, and so forth, but "Frederick Dousbery, 27, described as a labourer," appears to have regarded him as a sort of indirect employment agency. Dousbery appeared at Bow Street the other day self-accused of "stealing from 10 Adclphi Terrace, a door-mat, the property of Mr._ George Bernard Shaw." Tho prisoner had been getting into the habit of stealing Mr. Shaw's mat whenever he was out of work. He had been bound over for the same offence -once before. He had then gone to Portsmouth and obtained a job at the docks. When the work was over, he walked back to London. He thought it better (so he told the magistrate) to "make av effort" than to beg. The "effort" took the old form of removing the Shavian _ door-mat. "Ho stole the mat," said the detective, "in order •to get Mr. Shaw to prosecute him. He seems to think that if he can get Mr. Shaw to prosecute, someone will employ him.' _ The newspaper reports do not indicate that the "effort" had the result which the prisoner desired. To purloin the doormats of the great is probably not rroad to fortune, and perhaps the experiment was not worth making. There is little need for comment upon the speeches of Ministers just now, since of the political situation we can say for the present solvitur ambulando; but there is a serious inaccuracy that it is just as well to correct. In a speech at Middlemarch the Hon. T. Mackenzie repeated the fiction that the country was with the "Liberals," so far as the electoral statistics indicated. This fiction was employed by nearly every Ministerialist who spoke during the recent session, and the Reform party dichiot trouble to refute it. The real position is, we believe, thoroughly well understood by most electors, but it is just as well to have the facts of the voting restated now and then. The facts are as wo stated on December 16 last: Owing to the fact that in a few of the contests there were no Government nominees, and in a large number no Reform candidates, the only possiblo analysis of tho voting at tho elections must be based on a consideration of thoso contests in which at tho first ballot or the second ballot tho final result found Government and Opposition candidates opposed to each other. There were 51' such 1 contests, and tho votes cast make theso totals:— '< Opposition 165,883 Government 1-17,810 On the basis of comparing the actual - cases in which the two parties met, ; therefore, the parties stood in tho country in tho above ratio. From tho Opposition we have excluded the votes cost for the various candidates who, though not officially Members of the Reform party, are pledged to vote against the 1 Government. Really the attempt to persuade the electors that they did not give a dear verdict- against the Government is a piece of qnito idle bluff.