The Daily News. SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 1905. THE FAILURE OF LAW IN AMERICA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7712, 14 January 1905, Page 2

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 1905. THE FAILURE OF LAW IN AMERICA.

The series of "Impressions of San Francisco," by an ex-New Plymouthite, which have 'been appearing in our columns lately, are of more than passing interest to students of national manners and customs other than our own. Mingled with much shrewd observation and approving comment, our contributor's remarks on the dark side of American life depict a state of affairs whicli is in no way creditable to the administration of the law in the Great 'Republic. In his rehearsal of the facts of municipal and police corruption and open defiance of the law, our townsman abroad agrees with many others from outside who have visited America, and ample confirmation of his statements may be found in almost any issue of the American'newspaper press. It may be accepted as well established fact that many of the great cities of the Union are controlled by corrupt municipalities, and that a kindred corruption extends to many of the State Governments. Americans themselves do not deny these unsavoury facts of their public administration, and though many of them are unsparing in condemnation the vast majority regard them as mere incidents of national development and unavoidable features of the race for riches. Contrasted with American methods of "hustle" and unscrupulousness life in our own colonies is slow and plodding, and without excitement. We have never as a people adopted the principle of "get there anyhow,"- there being among us a respect for honesty, and principle, and good name, which is stronger than love of power or money. Hut in order to trace the genesis of the marked differences between our own communities and the settlements of Western America it is necessary to go back to the early days of each. In America the newer settlements were founded by individual effort and pioneered by adventurous men who cut themselves loose from the protection of 1 law and government and took their lives in their bands. There was thus cultivated among the American people a spirit of self-reliance [jthat as the dangers of wild life passed away often found itself at variance with the usages of regular government and still inclined "to play a lone hand." Jn Australia and New Zealand, though other conditions were much the same, there was never a time when the pioneer found himself beyond the care or the fear of the law. Australia's earliest settlements were equipped with all the machinery of a police and penal system, and when discovery of gold in the early 'fifties brought a rush of men from all the ends of the earth similar to that which about the same tiine was flooding California, there was neve* a day in which the machinery of government and law was not in complete operation. From its earliest days no Australian community has ever known the Indiscriminate use of knife and revolver, or the necessity for a vigilance committer to purge a town of criminals and enforce public order. It was not possible ''hi Australia or New Zealand at any tjmp for private quarrels to be settled by stab, or pistol shot without early legal consuquences. Death under such circumstances was then as now bluntly called murder, and a jury was never wanting to mpte out justice to the law-breaker. Summed up in brief, it may be said that our owp colonies, like every other British settium.ent, have been and are under the control of laws in which and the administration of them the people have always had full confidence. In the United States or many parts of them such is not the case. Most of the legal functionaries are clouted by temporary officers whose chief personal design is to "make hay while the sun shines." In consequence of this defective system there arc- inevitable corruption, neglect of duty, and connivance at wrong-doing, the interference with which would "make trouble" for a 100 zealous ofllcial, Prevention of crime is in many instances regarded as mere muddling in private affairs. A few .years ago the proprietor of a leading San Francisco paper and the Mayor of that city were, to use the local phrase, "laying for each other with guns," and exchanging shots about the street corners and saloons of the city—a feud which resulted eventually in the killing of the said Mayor. But was his murderer hanged as he certainly would have been in any British colony ? Certainly not ; it was merely « personal quarrel, in the like of which any other citizen might ck|na 1 - ly have hat* i.o take a hand, and in America it is easy to wrest the law to meet such cases, 'in tv (natter of municipal and political coiTuptiui) it is the same disrespect for the law and belief in the power of money svhich makes '"Tammany Hall" a power in Xmv York, ami leads to the growth ui truijfs and monopolies gnd millionaires throughout the Union. That our own coloujgt; urn free from any trace of such evils is due most largely to the judicial system which ,'j.K our best inheritance from the Mother Country—a system whose officials are incorruptible, and under which justice if at, times .slow is in the main sure and unswerving.