NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1716, 5 April 1913, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

A year ago it might havo been safe to say that most people would have strongly resented the infliction upon any British Suffragist of a'sentence of three years' imprisonment. Today it is just- as safe to say that a vast majority of the public everywhere will agree that Mrs. Pankhukst thot'oughly earned. her punishment. Bho intends, of course, to secure release by refusing to take food, and so to demonstrate onco morn the inadequacy of the law and of the theory of administering it, There are people, no doubt, who.regard Mtts. Paj-'Khi.uwt's behaviour as u- form of insanity—a form of

insanity involving danger to others, for which many people are at present properly confined in mental hospitals—and this, indeed, can only bo denied by her fellow-Suf-ragists on the ground that a person in full possession of his or her senses may openly advocate attacks which threaten life and property, and advocate them, not merely academically, or rhetorically, but in grim earnest, as a promoter of them. The Government should dccide to treat those Suffragist criminals who refuse to eat precisely as would be treated a violent inmate of a mental hospital who refused food. Nobody would dream of setting such a lunatic at large to become a menace to public safety. One thing is certain, that unless' the Government finds some line of action which will not be reduced to futility by "hunger-strik-ing," the . Suffragist outrages will grow and extend, and develop towards a horrible climax. It is intolerable that the resources of civilisation should be made to appear inadequate to protect society "from the wicked- violence of any section of the community. Tiiis week's Gazette contains the monthly digest' of the finances of 'the Working Railways Department; bringing the figures down to March 1, on which dato 48 weeks (or all but four) of the financial year had elapsed. The following table compares the totals for that period with the totals for the 48 weeks of the financial year 1911-12:— 1 Increase or 191142. 1912-13. decrease. Keceipts 3,306,827 3,609,511 242,717 inc. Expenditure 2,232,156 2,181,780 249,321 inc. Net balance 1,134,371 1,127,761 6,607 dec. As the final four weeks included another Easter's traffic, it is possible that the year may end with a smaller shrinkage than £8607 in the net revenue. It is manifest, however, that the railways have, not done at all well, and that there will, as usual, bo a substantial real deficit. The net return from the lines in this island is, as usual, much, greater than that from the southern lines, although the expenditure on the northern lines has grown out of all reason. When the new manager arrives, we expect he will find little difficulty in getting at the root of the causes for the recurring deficits in a system that plainly has so much in favour of its being a paying concern. The enemies of the Government will blame Mr. Herries, of course, • for the unsatisfactory showing, but as they began to blame the Government within a week of its taking office for not at once undoing the mismanagement of twenty years of so-called "Liberal" rule, their criticisms will not greatly matter, for their unfairness will bo apparent to everyone. Somo of our Opposition contemporaries have been surprised that The Dominion has continued to keep tho railways finances under criticism. They only began to criticise the railways whtjn the old Government went out of office; but for our part we believe that criticism in the public interest, to be effective, must be honest, and to be honest, it must be independent of tho party in'power. .

The City Council 'did itself no credit by its handling of the question whether tlio petition in favour of a poll as to the half-holiday was valid, and in due form. It had before it an opinion by tlio City Solicitor casting some serious doubts upon the validity of the petition, but concluding with the observation that at all events "the presumption of the law is that all things are done in the correct way"; "but," he added, "this is the only ground on which the validity of the petition as a petition can be justified." This was enough, for. some of the councillors to claim that the town clerk should proceed as if the petition were valid. That what (with the Mayor's casting vote) "turned out to be a majority of tho council were anxious iio have tho poll by hook or by crook is obvious from the very extraordinary reasons they advanced in support of their attitude, and especially against the very sensible proposal that the council should obtain a declaratory judgment. The Mayor's theory, for instance, that the council _was bound to act on the City Solicitors opinion, was invented for the occasion. Are there no occasions conceivable when the council should not resort to the Supreme Court, or even call in a consulting opinion? Even the Mayor will hardly say there are not. And this was. obviously one of them. Still more curious was Councillor Atkinson's position. Tho council, he said, ought to "sit down while the litigants fired over its head." He would have been consistent if he had opposed! the motion to accept the Solicitor's opinion, as well as the motion to seek a declaratory judgment. But as the council had begun to oonsider tho validity of the petition, it had abandoned a sitting posture. It is quite a new idea, to us, at any rate, that a responsible body like the council should deliberately prefer to risk approving an unsound procedure rather than take steps to ayert such a risk. It is the council's duty, and not the duty of any private citizen who may choose to do so, to see that the administration of the city's government is correct and lawful.