EFFECTS OF THE WAR AGAINST CAPITAL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5384, 29 June 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

EFFECTS OF THE WAR AGAINST CAPITAL.

(From tho Melbourne Aryus.) It appears that the exertions of those who arc desirous of embarrassing the Government, by bringing under its august notice the disastrous effects of its revolutionary policy, are by no means confined to “ Oollins-streot.” Not content, according to Mr. Berry, with bribing the metropolitan loafers to besiege the public offices, clamoring for employment and demanding work on the ground that the present collision between the different classes of the community, and the consequent falling-off in the demand for labor, have been caused by the measures of the Ministry, the reactionary “ enemies of the people” are apparently carrying ‘‘their spiteful and revengeful policy” into tho country districts. We read of a meeting having been held at Sandhurst on Wednesday evening, at which 300 men held up their bonds, at the request of one of the speakers, to indicate that they were without the opportunity of earning their living. No doubt there were many more present who are in the same predicament, but who made no sign, partly from a certain proud dislike to parade their misfortunes, and partly from a failure to see what good was likely to result from the proceeding. But, after adding another hundred or two on account of those who held back on the occasion, we should still be far from arriving at a general estimate of tho number of able-bodied men unable to obtain employment in Sandhurst and its immediate neighborhood. We must reckon at least as many again in the total for those who were un* able or unwilling to attend. The number thus arrived at, without taking into consideration the thrifty artisans and laborers, who although not actually in want are slowly consuming the savings of better days, is a tolerably large one for a single district in a young country, which could easily absorb ten times its present population if its natural advantages were not neutralised by the ignorance of the masses and the self-seeking of the people who trade upon their credulity. We heartily commiserate the working classes in the great straits to which they have been reduced. We thoroughly believe iu the existence of very wide-spread distress, because we know that, according to certain fixed social and economic laws, such must inevitably ha the result of what has been going on in this colony for some months past. But just as plainly as we pointed out to the masses some time ago that the wrong-doings of the men who control the Government of the country would lead to the punishment of those who gave them their opportunity of working mischief, so, with equal plainness, we tell them now that their redemption rests in their own hands alone. If they continue to uphold reckless men, whose possession of power is a standing, menace to capital, a hindrance to trade, aud an extinguisher to enterprise, and refuse to admit the existence of those checks aud balances in the machinery of Government which are necessary to inspire confidence in those who have anything to lose, they may rest assured that things will go from bad to worse. If they can support themselves and families on “ liberal ” ideas, and find solace tinder every privation iu the reflection that they have brought about a theoretical equality, well and good. They have only to persevere in the course they have adopted, iu order to have an opportunity of testing the satisfying nature of such food for the soul and body. But if, on the other hand, they want capital to take fresh heart—to flowonoe more in copious streams through the veins of tho body politic, nourishing and refreshing its various organs, from the centre to the extremities—then assuredly they must retrace their footsteps. They must prefer statesmen to stump orators, and justice to class feeling. Merchants, hankers, landowners, and possessors of property generally, have been assured by the journal that claims to represent the views of the people that “ the industrial classes are too good economists, and are too careful of their own welfare, to treat” them “as” enemies, “or to shake” their “ confidence in the commercial or political institutions, of” their “ country.” But these are more words. Is it likely that, in the face of a class land tax, of ministerial threats of farther spoliation, “Black Wednesday,” the suppressed Gazette, and a host of miscellaneous illegalities, mere phrases will reassure wealth ? Before labor in this colony can hope to enjoy again the advantages which spring from the free employment of capital, it must show that it is sensible and honest, and not merely talk about being so. The election of a tolerably decent and disinterested Assembly, and its immediate consequences, the ejection from office of the present Ministry, would do more to provide employment than all the relief works that could be started in a year and all the assurances that could be given in a century.