The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1906. OFFICIAL SYMPATHY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3723, 6 November 1906, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1906. OFFICIAL SYMPATHY.

In Auckland gaol there died the other day, a man. He was a drunkard. Because he resisted, he went to gaol. Because he was a diseased person, a disease never intelligently treated, he died. The gaoler said hd thought it was a wrong thing to send any person to gaol for medical treatment. Every right-thinking person will see that, it is wrong. By treating drunks as human beings, you don’t increase drunkenness and by letting' drunks die in gaol when they might be sav.d in hospital, you. do a greater evil than the drunk does in getting drunk and resisting the police. The holy person who does not get the drink disease is not necessarily a better person than the one who does. The holy person may have no

emptation and if he has thetempatiou, Providence has given him strength of mind enough to resist-

The man who hasn’t been bom with strength of mind is unworthy of sympathy according to modern ethics. Send him to gaol lor the forgetfulness of his Creator. The

oaiicer day in Wellington there ap-jTf-ared before the “Benevolent” 'trustees a blind old , man. With

j ; t'ne natural weakness of old age f* this old man had found the alleged S benevolent home not to his liking. 1 1 He had wandered away and was |; found, feeling his way about the I j streets of the capital and taken I before the Board, which is little J less terrible to many old people j than the Spanish Inquisitors were | to Protestants in the days of burn-

ing at the stake and thumb screws.

j The Chairman of the Board is a j “man of God.” He believes he j follows in the footsteps of the 1 Prince of Philantropists, the healer I of the lame and halt—and blind. I The sightless old man said he would rather die on the streets of the city than go back to the Home. The aforesaid man of God, and chairman of the . “Benevolent” Trustees replied “You can please yourself about that.” Although it was perfectly obvious to any one but a man of God or a “Benevolent” Trustee, ! that such a Home was a horror to a blind, hopeless, friendless, aged beggar, these Inquisitors desired to either send him back to what was lo him a torture-chamber or permit him to “ die in the streets.” Fat ruddy clerics with comfortably .filled waistcoats, a good stipendsome -of them have good stipends and gcod properties—appear, like other authorities to believe that poverty, illness, weak-mindedness and so on are crimes. We do not hesitate to say that many authorities in New Zealand who are guilty <ol (:he punishment and death of’ mentally, morally or physically diseased persons far more deserving of cells and bread and waber than the people they condemn.

IT was shown-in Parliament, during thei late session that it was possible for the authorities, in the shape of a single policeman to get the pension of an old age pensioner stopped for five years. The kind benevolent authorities—who may drink themselves to death in their own homes permit this. Also the kind benevolent authorities know that comparatively wealthy and wholly sober old rascals in this country still draw old age pensions are silent. One old man of intense respectability may rob the country for years. Another old man with no capital and a love for an occasional pint of ceer can be robbed by a policeman at will.

As has lately been shown, it is impossible to raise public subscriptions for the conduct of benevolent enterprises. The St. John’s Ambulance people have lately bazaared largely in the city. Yet the victim of the wayside accident gets his little bill for conveyance to the hospital. All very kind and very benevolent. But it must be remembered that charity and other kinds of .bazaars, give holy folk a brilliarit opportunity to disport themselves in weird and expensive clothes, which, if sold, and if the wearers went in for a little personal sacrifice would raise more money than a whole batch of bran-pies or a wholesale chasing of eligible males to take tickets in raffles. Charity in New Zealand may begin at home, but it doesn’t usually begin at a Home. The alleged “ Benevolent ’ ’ people of whom we have spoken year after year ask the country to admire their cash balances. -

** I * It is presumed that the non-spend-ing of public cash for the purposes lor which it is gathered is an evidence of the ‘ ‘ benevolence ’ ’ of the public’s trustees. The folk who enter “ Homes ” are possibly as ■ important a consideration to their Maker as the parsons who .send them there- When the benevolent parson however has to go the way of all flesh, the public,—the press, mourn the good man. The public and the press are not in the least concerned- about the person who dies in the Home. And in life the human Wreck, blind, poor, suffering, homeless, aged “may please himself whether he dies in the streets or not. “And now abideth, faith, hope, charity, these three, but the. greatest of these is charity.” But does it abide ? Ask the Chairman of the “ Benevolent ” Trustees and the Police.