TOPICS OF TALK.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 267, 18 April 1874, Page 3

TOPICS OF TALK.

Drawing attention, some little time back, in a leading article, to the treat ment any attempt to liberalise our Otago land laws met with at the hands

of the Legislative Council, we traced ■> through a debate on the Southland "Waste Lands Act of 1873, which we assumed to be now law. From particulars published in the 'Southland Times ' we observe that, although law, it is not yet in force. It appears that one of the clauses provides that, before the*price be again reduced from £3 per; acre, the Southland lands shall be classed as agricultural land pastoralthe former to be open for selection at £2, the latter at £l. The Commission appointed for this classification has not yet concluded its labors No doubt, when the land is gazetted as being again open for selection as classified, Very largo purchases will be recorded. We have a very wholesome dread. of Commissioners' reports, having in me-, mory what our Wakatip contemporary calls the Pyke-Thomson classification according to altitude, which was laughed at by everyone; and also that far more injurious report of thetrium-virate-r-Wayne, Cass, and Toung-r anenl?lands in the Ida Valley (a document still to be found in an way corner of some blue-book, and so, to that extent, is not very harmful). But where the damage of these reports lies is in their after effecto. At the time, they are made their inconsistencies and short-comings are at once exposed and counteracted ; but in after ( years, when tho circumstances are forgotten, they form capital vantage grounds to adroit men—such an one, for .instance, as Sir F. Dillon Bell—on, which to attempt to obtain for 10s. an acre land well worth a couple of pounds. The only safe test of cultivable land is a, personal one., The payable nature of any land depends on the expenses which are necessary to work it. With rail communication opened up through the great interior plains, as there will be before many years are over, that man would be bold indeed who undertook to say that any given area of ploughable land is unfit for agricultural settlement.

Mr. Hollow ay gave a very interesting account of the difficulties children born amongst the agricultural communities of England have to contend with. He briefly, sketched his.own career, and then in words which, as we read, we feel must have been burning ones, he related the general condition of the agricultural peasantry. Our schoolmen, if they could enter into this story to arrive at an idea anything like its intense bitterness and truth, might very well recognise the littleness of their disputes as to whether one system of tuition should be followed or another—whether religion and grammar should be taught together or separately. Give a man an intellect sharpened and able to be sharpened by means of the elementary education given in our district schools, that intellect will, from the profusion of nature's gifts on every side visible, the guiding influences of a Christian home, and the faithful ministrations of a Christian ministry, reach, so far as education can enable it, to the'highest realisations of a practical Christian life. Let us see what Mr. Holloway says of his people : I was born in the parish of Wotton, in the county of Oxford, in England, of poor, but honest arid industrious parents, who gave me. what education I have, according to their means, which, I can assure you, were very scanty indeed. I never learnt half a page of grammar in my life, and I had to turn out very early, in life into the fields to work and toil to eke out a scanty subsistence. Thus,l have followed agricultural work until within the last two years. I was brought up as an agricultural laborer, and assisted in garden work occasionally. I followed these pursuits until within the last two years. During the last two years 1 have been connected with the National Laborers' Union in England, an association which has for its object the improving of the position—not merely the raising of the wages—of farm laborers in the United Kingdom. Their position in the past has been most deplorable. Born in the midst of poverty and of distress, poverty's arms have embraced them, poverty's rags have covered them, poverty's shrunken and shrivelled bosom has given them suck; poverty, like a fiend, has pursued them close through every lane of life, and standing over the grave—marring their manhood, and destroying with its foul breath all thoughts f fitted to make life sweet and dear and lovely.—(Applause.) I have been brought un amongst this class of people; I have mixed very freely with them. I have entered their houses'; and, in many cases, I can assure you, they were abodes of misery,;' and privation. Their wages have been ever' low; their food has'been insufficient. They have bad to send their sons but in the field to toil whilst yet they were children. Thus, |<f has been impossible to give them education. It has been impossible to avoid the miseries of debt, or to lay aside anything -whatever for sickness or old age. The result of all this has been that, after years of tod, and, having largely to appeal to the sympathy and charity of the public, they have in too many cases had to end their days in a Union Workhouse, and finally to rest in a pauper's grave.

Mn. Stafford's defeat in the contest for a seat in the Canterbury Provincial Council, and Mi*. "E. B. Cargill's defeat for a similar honor in Otago, are significant of a very strong change of feeling throughout the southern portion of the Colony. In both cases men were returned who, it need be no offence to say,, were immensely inflprioi ae statesmen to those rejected. . All alike are men of recognised integrity honesty of purpose; but what was, fata.l to Messrs. Stafford and Cargill was, no doubt, that they were .-recognised as being types of a party of obsolete Conservatism. They could not. elevate that party to their own liberal < breadth of view, so they have to suffer to bfi allocated to the position that, in a young country, all unjust conservatism of one interest—in this case, that pf. capital—has to submit, to when-it

comes in contact with a loud demand for what, rightly or wrongly, is considered the rights of the people.

Everyone is impressed, more or less, with the necessity of dealing with the question of hab.'tual drunkenness. The difficulty is—How so to deal ? To pamper up men at the expense of the State who have reduced themselves, through their own vice, to a level lower than the beasts, is apparently unjust to the sober. To neglect them altogether throws the ultimate burden of their support upon the charitable, and the hospitals and benevolent institutions supported by the public purse. Then, too, Does not that same public purse derive a considerable fund from licensing houses to.encourage and keep alive this increasing aud deadly element of drunkenness. Might not the drunkard; plead, with some show ,of reason, that the State should contribute a certain portion of the licenses received for the. right of selling intoxicants—say ' one-fourth—towards the mnintenance ;of inebriate asylums. This evil has been attempted to be met in England. A Mr. Dalrymple, since, we believe, dead, introduced a Bill into the ; lmperistl Parliament to deal with the question. This Biil we have not been fortunate ■ enough to obtain. ■We have, however, received a copy of a circular drawn up by, an influential Committee, on. which, we.observe the names of Col. Akroyd, M/P., and Donald Dalrymple, MP. , This circular shows what the Bill is framed to do and what not to do. By-the-bye, 'the bid for' support to the occasional drunkard, by the promise he is not to be interfered with, is rather good. The. digest.might very well form a base upon which a workable Bill might be drawn up to constrain those who are unable to control their own vices, to protect the sober public from unjust exactions, .and to, purge our streets from the disgusting sights seen almost daily Of the drunkard reeling home, or more often fighting against the friendly 1 hand that would guide him therehardening young eyes and ears (which never should see such sights or hear such language) into a belief that drunkenness is only something to raise a passing laugh, instead of being, as it is, a fearful evil, more potent than the sword of the conquering nation slaying and wounding its thousands and tens_ of thousands. We here publish the document we refer to : LICENSING SYSTEM AMENDMENT"

ASSOCIATION. (Habitual Drunkards' Bill.) what the bill proposes to do

t. To save from destruction of body and soul those who are ruining both, by habitual or excessive drinking. 2. To save the wives and families of those who, by habits of intemperance, are dragging them down to poverty and destitution. 3. To save from crime and its consequences the children who, from their parents' vices, have no alternative but to steal or

starve. 4. To save from mental and physical debility the offspring of those who habitually drink to excess. , 5. To help those who cannot help themselves, and to restore their self-control and self-

respect. 6. To diminish the lavish expenditure of the taxpayers' mone/, now wasted in'maintaining an army of paupers, and criminals—the product of drink. 7. To punish the repeated public offender against decency, order, and sobriety. WHAT THE BILL DOES NOT DO: •

1. It does not interfere with the occasional

drunkard. 2. It does not violate the liberty of the subject by any arbitrary or unauthorised . curtailment of his free will and action. 3. It does not enable designing parties to make false accusations against their relations, with a view to obiain control over them. HOW THE BILL DOES ITS WORK:

1. By placing the-habitual drunkard for a sufficient time beyond the reach of temp- • tation. 2. By giving the drunkard occupation, and amendment of body and mind, combined with medical aid and moral enlightenment. 3. By restoring physical and mental power, so as to resume occupation and earn a subsistence. .4. By restoring the power of self-control, self-: . respect, and self-denial. 5. By showing the drunkard that his life has bsen a sin as well as a folly, and that the result thereof is death. 6. By compelling the repeated public offender to earn the cost of his own maintenance, and to contribute to that of his family. This the Habitual Drunkards' Bill can do, and therefore it ought to become law.