NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2313, 21 November 1914, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

The speech delivered by Mb. 'A'. H. Hindmarsh at Newtown the other owning was in one respect illuminating, for it cast amusing light upon the nature and 6pirit of the campaign which ia being conducted against the Government. In the simple creed which Me. Hindmaesh set himself to expound, the Government can do no right, and if by chance it docs something that is of benefit to the peoplo then it must have intended to do something quite different. In mentioning, for example, that some useful improvements had been effected by the Government, .at his instance, in the law relating to distress, imprisonment for debt, and other matters, he retained his congratulations for himself, and found no reason to modify his loud denunciation of the Government as the enemy of the working man. Me. Hindmarsh, according to his own etory ; tried for years to obtain recognition for these reforms prior to the advent of the Reform Government, but evidently it did not occur to this amusing logician that any credit was due to flie Government which took them up and placed them on tho Statute Book. The oredit presumably belongs to Me. Hindmarsh and to the Continuous Ministry which did not take them up. Ia a similarly just and logical spirit Me. Hindmaesh declared that when the Government secured the passage of legislation empowering the Arbitration Court to grant hotel employees a weekly day of rest it hoped thaj> the Court would not grant it. The fact that the legislation waa passed and the holiday granted was, of course, a mere side-issue. One remark which fell from Me. Hindmaesh waß eminently just. He said, in effect, that it did not matter very much what a candidate said j the thing that counted was what his party said. Me. Hindmaesh, for instance, is a humble unit of the Wardist-Labour-Socialist alliance, and the substance of his plea for that remarkable political creation appears to be that-it deserves the consideration of the' electors because its principal partner did not carry but rorms which have since been carried out by the present Government. Yet there are people who profess to take the' member for Wellington South seriously, on .political- .questions. ■■''.•■ ' ' ' How the electore of Wellington Central who know anything at all of political matters must enjoy the "howlers" of the Wardist candidate for the seat! His latest,: as recorded in a contemporary, is as follows:—

The question of the settlement of land was tho most, important in any country, declared Mr. Fletcher last evening. When they came to recognise the large tvacte held in. eome provinces in the country they would, he w&s sure, recognise that it was a, monstrous thing thai tho land question had not been settled. They could not, however, expect any satisfactory solution of the question while Itho present Government was in power, because, he said, the bit; landowners were at the back of the Maesey Administration. Indeed, it is a monstrous thing that these huge estates have been allowed to exist for so long. But w.ho permitted it? For twenty-one years the Continuous Ministry which Mn. Fletcher supported was in office backed by a- huge majority, and it 'allowed this "monstrous thing" to go on to the detriment of the whole country. Unhappy Me. Fletcher! He seeks to throw the blame for this on the Massey Government;, which has not yet been in office three years, ignoring the twenty-one years in which his own party neglected to do what bo in his simple innocence asks tho electors to now return them to office to do. It is very sttfpid of Mr. Fletcher's friends who supply ,him\ with political material not to warn him against dealing with things he knows nothing about; but then there are bo many things political that Mb. Fletchee seems to be ignorant of. It may enlighten him and prevent him repeating his amusing indiscretion concerning tho breaking up of large estates if we republish once more for his benefit the figures showing how much faster the purchase and subdivision of large estates has proceeded under the Massey. Government than it did under' the Wakd Government. Here they are,, it being borne in mind that $ib Joseph Wahd went out of office in March, 1912: Aiea acquired; Price, (acres). £ 1909-10 42,805 260,793 1910-11 14,399 158,796 '' 1911-12 ....44,447 381,483 1912-13 52,098 428,044 1913-14 141,062 560,708