The Temuka Leader. SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1885. MUDDILNG LEGISLATORS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1364, 11 July 1885, Page 2

The Temuka Leader. SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1885. MUDDILNG LEGISLATORS.

No one who takes an interest in political matters can help feeling extremely uneasy concerning what is going on at present in Parliament. It is well known to the members of Parliament that the colony is at present suffering from the most terrible depression it has ever experienced ; that nine-tenths of the farmers are on the verge of bankruptcy ; that the cry of want ot employment is •till unhushed, and that the public credit it strained to its utmost tension. One would think that knowing this—knowing that both publicly and privately we are at our wits’ ends to k<ep our heads above water—our representatives would give up for a time party quarrels and settle down calmly and quietly to devise means of getting u* out of our difficulties. Such a desire, however, seems to be the farthest from their thoughts. Their conduct so far has been more like a parcel of curs wrangling over a bone than that of men

of sense met together to legislate for the people. Sir George Grey opened the proceedings by a want of confidence motion, which was as imbecile in its inception as it was ridiculous in its termination. On this motion was presented the disgraceful spectacle of men saying they had no confidence in the Government but would not vote for turning them out of office until they got the country in such a mess that the people would be disgusted with them ! This was the cry of the Atkinson party—and a disreputable one it was. The state o( the country is bad enough, and if Major Atkinson and his followers see their way to improve matters, to delay until the present Government get us into a greater mess is, considering onr circumstances, criminal. Then we had men on the other side who stated they had great confidence in the Government but no confidence in their measures, these occupied a position equally as disreputable as that of the Atkiusonians. If they did not support the Government proposals, how on earth did they expect to keep them in office 7 These are the people who call themselves Free Traders people who have read political economy from preface to finis : who are very learned, very clever, and very noisy. Human lips, outside a lunatic asylum, have seldom given utterance to more unmitigated rubbish than that which these Free Traders hare indulged in. To ta’k of Free Trade in this colony is to carry nonsense to its extreinest extent. First of all, a Free Trader should oppose one penny being raised through the Custom House : yet these same gentlemen voted last year for raising one and a half millions of money through the Customs. Thus, logically, they have rendered themselves ridiculous, and yet these men have not the sense to see it. They go about calling themselves Free Traders, while wearing a coat that has paid 15 percent, through the Customs. then, a Free Trader should not vote for State railways, nor State education, nor State insurance, nor Slate telegraph offices, nor State post offices, nor State almost anything. A strictlv Free Trade State should confine its functions to maintaining law and order and defending itself from any foreign invasion. In England private enterprise makes and maintains railways, and until, comparatively speaking, recently it maintained education and telegraph offices also. The silly people in Wellington who call themselves Free Traders, voted against every principle of Free Trade, and yet they strutabout with the air of people who know what they are doing. God help the nation that is dependent on them for making its laws. To save the working men from the burden of taxation is their cry ; but the working men do not appreciate their good offices. The working men of Christchurch recently passed resolutions in favor of Protection. The fact of the matter is this : They know that if industries were established work would become so plentiful that there would be no chance of bringing down the price of labor. What they want is not to lighten the burden of taxation from the shoulders of working men, hut to lessen their chances of getting work, so as to cheapen labor. The present Government have made an honest effort to developeour industrial resources. Their proposals were—that all agricultural implements, agricultural improvements, such as fencing, etc., and all machinery employed in factories to the value of £3OOO, should be exempted from paying property tax, and that the Customs duties should be increased. Thus they proposed to relieve domestic industry from the burden of taxation, and to place it on the imported articles. Anyone with a properly-balanced head on his shoulders could see at a glance that nothing was better calculated to develops our industrial resources than this : yet the unfortunate sufferers from the monomaniacalled Free Trade, but which should have been properly called brainlessness, have thrown out these proposals wholesale, But if these unfortunate people have shown themselves to be incapabls of realising what the colony requires, the present Ministry have shown the utmost indifference to public interests. They have had to swallow all their proposals, they have not been left a shred of their policy, yet they aie determined to remain in office. They believe that their proposals are necessary to the good Government of the colony, yet they will not give the colony an opportunity of expressing an opinion on the subject. The proper and constitutional course for the Government to have adopted was—when they found their policy torn to pieces by a senseless faction—to appeal to the country. They have not done this, they hare stuck to office, and have thus shown themselves selfishly unmindful of the interests of the colony so lung as they can bleed £1250 a year each out of it, Taking an independent view of the whole proceedings, we cannot find anything to the credit of the Government, except that they would do good if they were allowed to do it.

HOMES FOR WORKING MEN. The Christchurch Press says: “ We have always maintained that it would bo better for the farmers as well as for the laborers that the latter should have near their work decent houses with little plots of land, so that married men may not find it so difficult to obtain employment up country as they sometimes do at present. It is a melancholy thing in a young sparsely-populated country like this to see, as may frequently bo seen by a glance at the advertising columns of the newspapers, that single men or married couples, without encumbrances, as child, ren we regret to say are often call'd, are often at a premium, compared with married men with their quivers full of little ones. Farmers who employ labor,

and who can possibly find the means to do so, would, we are sure, be acting wisely in their own interests if they were more often tehan thy do to provide cottastes and gardens for their laborers, so as to fix them upon the soil, and enable them to live in the enjoyment of the domestic comfort which is one of the best aids to the cultivation of all the really manly virtuei. But as farmers nannot be compelled to provide such accommodation, the farm laborer must try and find a home of his own. There is no doubt also that in and around the towns the question of housing the working classes may in time become a serious one here, as it ha« long since become in,the Old World, unless we fake time by the forelock.” We publish this just to show Messrs Talbot and Quinn that the desirability of providing homes for working men is begining to be recognised.