Old Grumble on Legislation

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 20, 28 July 1885, Page 2

Old Grumble on Legislation

The New Zealander makes it his proud boast that of all free countries New Zealand is the most free, and fully impressed with the blessings liberty bestows, he jealously guards against and instantly reseats any infringement of his rights. You may load him with debt, tax the food he eats and the clothes he wears ; you may fetter his hands on the Sabbath and. command that he shall deport himself at a nigger entertainment with the same degree of. solemnity as at a funeral; you may forbid him to touch the intoxicating bowl, and punish him if he indulges in any gaming propensities ; you may drag him before a magistrate for entering a houseof questionable repute, and put such a curb upon his tongue that iris speech shall be that of the puritan's; in fact you may enforce him into becoming a paragon of godliness by the terrors of the Police Offenceo Act, and he will not utter a complaint. But you must not tamper with bis freedom ; let him still boast that he is the freeest of the free, though his freedom be that of the African's and his liberty the liberty of the slave. Mrs G. here asks, "With all these restrictions upon them, where does their freedom exist?" At first Grumble himself is at a loss to see where it does, but his great genius enables him at length to discover it, and he explains to her that: the statesman uses it to bring obnoxious bills into the House, and the members use theirs to bully him for bringing them in, and throw them out again. Some honorable member shows his to interfere with the liberty of the subject, and it becomes penal to bet afavtbing cake upon a race while thousands may be risked on "Change," and while lotteries are forbidden it is made a Brown's study by some other one to induce the people to take Government tickets on the chance of getting ingots of gold for them, but with the greater probability of being done brown. Then each successive Parliament uses their freedom to borrow, all they can, and use their freedomagainto squander what they have borrowed; lastly the subject displays his freedom by "fearlessly denouncing the way the national business is being carried on, and boldly declares it to be "all rot." Grumble now exercises his privilege of criticism. He observes that whenever a legislator discovers he is mentally unfitted to deal with the weightier mattorsof state he becomesexceedingly virtuous. " E'en his failings lean to virtue's side," but legislators, like Portugese devils, when they are good are too goDd. They would starve women into morality and coerce .men into righteousness if they had their ■way. They are really too good, but the good die early, so Grumble expects them. soon to take their departure, making the beatific expression as they go—" Well I'm blessed;" but if they do not the people no doubt will heartily utter it for them. Butifthisbenificent rule should be so perverted that they continue to exist, the terrible result will be that, forced to become good, the people will die instead, and there will be none left for these, viituous M.H.E.'s to legislate upon. Grumble is as anxious that morality, order, and sobriety should prevail as are these the champions, of righteousness, but he would instil it into the people's minds by gentler means than the policeman's hand. He would encourage them to be moral for morality's sake and- their own— not coerce them into thestraigbtway. Librariesarestxonger opponents to vice than police courts, and the society to be found at literary institutes is more elevating than prison companions. " Too much of anything is no good at all" said the sailor, qualifying his statement, however, by saving that too much; rum was just ; enough ; and we have had just enough '- of such stringent laws which this ses- ■ . don has teemed forth, and much that, has been made criminal had better have been left to moral influence to reform. . Old Grumble.