The Globe. MONDAY, MARCH 12, 1876.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 541, 13 March 1876, Page 2

The Globe. MONDAY, MARCH 12, 1876.

In the present year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventysix, we are constantly being told that the spirit of “ toleration” is spreading, that the benign influence of its presence is everywhere felt. We are also told that the march of intellect is making rapid strides, and it is drummed into our ears daily that the system of free and compulsory education is the only.i sure method for the prevention of crime j in fact, if we were to believe

but a small portion of the congratulatory rhodomontadea which issue from the mouths of our popular speakers, and the laudatory effusions which are penned by our authors, we ought to be at least next door to the millennium. We never could discover any truth in these senseless outpourings, and we beg leave to differ from quacks of the platform and copying ink scribes with their universal panaceas. We not only do not believe, but we feel convinced that toleration was never more distant than at the present time. We have but to glance at the every day movements of our own population to discover the prodigious growth of that poisonousfungus ‘class distinction.’ We see an unprecedented increase in the number of sectarian dogmas and the display of fresh banners by small communities, from which arises that pestilential effluvium which makes many good and honest men shrink from the possibility of opprobium incidental to the holding of any public position of prominence. We believe that this is the age wherein the braggadocio has the greatest chance of rising to the surface. That the right men have not been in the right places is evident, as witness the perplexing character of our legislative enactments, the inextricable confusion arising from the opposing decisions of our judicial magnates, the desperate struggle to uphold the dignity of the professions, the inequalities existing in the taxation of the people, and the arrogance of the large landowners and capitalists; contrast with this the bitter hatred engendered and fostered in the hearts of the poor, contemplate the numerous roads we are instructed to follow to arrive at supreme happiness in a future state. Look below the surface and examine into the difference that exists betwixt precept and practice, and see what effect the heart burnings aud disappointments of the ambitious and ignorant have on toleration. We will leave generalising for the present, and instance one trade only, that of the Licensed Victualler; which we can unhesitatingly assert has been subjected to more contradictory legislation, more intolerant abuse and more unjustifiable persecution than has any other. The derogatory position in which the law places the Licensed Victualler is a lasting stigma upon the Legislature, and the very fact that the strolling policeman on his beat has the publican at his mercy, is sufficiently suggestive of intolerance. The repeated attempts to introduce Permissive Bills into the House, is another instance of the principles of toleration. The absurd restrictions and requirements in the Licensing Acts evince the spirit of toleration according with the extent of wisdom usually displayed in the construction of complicated legal machinery. We shall watch with interest the proceedings of the meeting of Delegates from the Licensed Victuallers’. New Zeeland, which is to be held in Wellington at an early dale, for the purpose of framing the draft of a Bill to be prepared for presentation to Parliament next session, meantime we shall have occasion! to refer more fully to the subject in another issue.