AN ANTI-REFORM MARE'S NEST

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1668, 7 February 1913, Page 4

AN ANTI-REFORM MARE'S NEST

When some legislative or administrative default on the part of the old Spoils Party was made the subject of public comment, the newspapers of the following day were usually swollen by a very wordy speech or statement by or on behalf .of the leader of the Spoils Party, There was ho delay, no hesitation: the Departments concerned were telegraphically whipped into a fever of activity. And, always, a very little time elapsed before the public could not help realizing that the old party was after ail guilty. The anti-Reformers of tho present day are suffering from 1 their failure to remember this' interesting fact. They have assumed that Mr. Massey, being Prime Minister, must be as' were other Prime Ministers. If, on a charge being brought against him in ■his capacity as the administrative and legislative head of the Governi ment, he did not instantly upset the telegraphic service with enormously long and uncandidly evasive statements,; it must bo ,(so these peoplei imagined) because he had not a word to say, or a, leg to stand upon. Tho noise which the anti-Reform newspapers have made over a certain lease-in-pcrpetuity holding in Southland illustrates all this very well. They alleged that last year's Land Act. enabled a Mr. Brighton, an'l.i.p. tenant, to buy for £48 odd a property worth anything • from £20,000 to £36,000, which Mr: Brighton sold, so they say, to a syndicate for £500. Because the Pi rime Minister did not instantly' set all the Departmental offioials busy with long, and confusing statements, the 1 anti-Reformers, .forgetting ,'that the present Prime 'Minister_ does not follow the old methods, decided that he was "an easy subject," &nd cast all prudence to the winds in the vehemence of their assaults upon him. Their vehemence increased with each day. The Government, they said, was warned that this would be a re-' suit of last,year's.Land Act:-Mn. Hanan had given the Warning. (Nobody .!, else. mentioned, the matter, and we cannot find that Mr. Hanan himself said anything on the subject in ,Committee or on the third reading.). The first sign of a little,doubt, on the part of these hasty, critics appeared in a southern newspaper on Wednesday, which modified. its vdry positive shouts of "Robbery!" to an annoyed hope that Mr. 1 Massey might be "premature" in saying that the State would not be "robbed" at all. . ■',■ i. : :;>

To-day we print the. •substance, of the report by the Crown Law Office to the Prime Minister upon the Southland lease. The point, involved is a legal point upon which no lay person or newsoaper with a grainof scrise would deliver, a strong opinion —exactly tho sort of point, that is to say,_ upon which; the Opposition press, in;its political penury, would deliver a very loud and very positive opinion. The Crown Law Office declares that Mr. ■ '.Brighton (the Southland l.i.p. tenant in the ense) is entitle? to. buy only.the-, surfaco .vnlueTof'his' holding,.and. is "nbt.eh.-; titlpd 'to, purchase the minerals.'', 'We were'hold'that Mr. Brighton is a Socialist, 1 / and that' he sold his rights tf) ; a for £500. We wore asked'to congratulate Mr, Hanan ! on his accidental "cleverness", and to _ sympathise with , tho State as a victim of Mr. Massey's bad. legislation. It appears that,: if congralulatioris i are due they are due to the Socialist lessee, "and,' if symnathy: is due, it is duo to the syndicate (if there is any syndicate at all),.''and tq'the foolish anti-Re-formers who made as loud a, noise over, this marc's. nest as' over the other mare's nest they thought they had found in Mr. Atakn's repetition in London of his local references 'to a New Zealand 'expeditionary, force. .Perhaps, too, sotr.o symnathv is due to poor Mr, Hanan for tho failure of his friends to score anything for him.