THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1879.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1825, 27 December 1879, Page 2

THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1879.

Cheistciiitech is to bo congratulated on the manner in which the course of events ran yesterday afternoon and evening. There is no doubt but that among a number of unthinking people, exasperated by the attack in the morning, there existed a feeling dangerous to the public safety and entirely subversive of all order. In all communities there exist persons who prefer taking the law into their own hands when their sympathies are highly excited, but these people never constitute the higher intelligence of the country. Their feelings are easily worked upon, and they appear unable to wait for the slow but sure grasp that the law lays upon the evil-doer. Peculiar circumstances have of course existed from time to time in various countries which have justified the most law abiding men and the clearest intellects in usurping the functions of the law. The “ vigilance committees” in San Francisco were constituted because the law was found to be practically powerless. In other countries the powers of the law have been seized upon by the best section of the nation, because the springs of justice wore completely tainted and no remedy to evils could bo obtained through its medium. But in a country such as Now Zealand, whore the law is recognized as being paramount, raised to a supremo height by the full force of public opinion and its own innate grandeur, and whore not the slightest doubt as to the purity of its administration or its absolute power exists, it is only tho more unstable

and, we might almost say, childish portion of the community that thinks it necessary to talk of “ taking affairs into its own hands.” Luckily these immature intellects were found yesterday to bo in a minority. The hotter class of citizens rallied round the cause of the law and a fiasco was avoided. The law will know how to deal with the cowardly assailants of yesterday morning, and we trust the last has been hoard of the gentlemen who are anxious to do a little lawlessness on their own account as a set off to that performed by the opposite party. But although affairs have been bad enough in Christchurch, yet in Timaru matters have been infinitely worse, because there was evidently there a somewhat wide-spread intention of creating a disturbance. Had it not boon for the vigorousaction adopted by the local authorities, there is much probabilty that blood would have flowed, and that a great and melancholy scandal would have eventuated. It seems monstrous to a calm observer that under a professed zeal for the religion of Christ such passions should bo raised, and it seems ridiculous that washed out and moth-eaten prejudices should bo capable of being re furbished so as te excite sentiments that should have been buried hard on two centuries ago. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Legislature will have to step in on the earliest opportunity, and see if something cannot bo done in the direction of stopping these medkevaiyivrctfS. If men will not act in a manly manner, but will rave violently when a yellow or green flag is visible, the State must act in loco parentis and see if it cannot do something in the matter. These party fights might might look well if transferred to the hoards of a Hichardsou’s Show, but in real life they are melancholy and •childish.