The Temuka Leader SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1889. MR HISLOP AT OAMARU.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1943, 14 September 1889, Page 2

The Temuka Leader SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1889. MR HISLOP AT OAMARU.

“ Language has been given to man to conceal his thoughts,” and so Mr Hislop thinks, evidently, for he has made use of it to hide his own delinquencies, and magnify Judge Ward’s enormities. He appeared before his constituents last Wednesday evening, and bis speech is a miserable, whining wail from beginning to end. The Upper House is in a conspiracy against him; the Lower House is incensed against hirn; the Press has criticised him, and he has been so badly used generally that it'is almost a miracle he has riot fallen limb from limb, like the Ministry of which, he was recently a member. He complained of the Legislative Council, because it set : up a committee to in' quire’iritb the affair without consulting the’. Ministry. The answer to this is that the Ministry 'did their best to prevent an inquiry j they' refused the inquiry in the Lower House by means of the brute force of members, aud it was in spite of the. Ministry the Council inquired into it. Then there is a let of gush about the Legislative Council not being resporisible to the people, and “he considered the question ought to have been tried by the representatives of the people,’ ’ When the representatives of the people demanded an inquiry the Q-overnment refused to allow it. Why did they do so P Because they knew it was a dirty affair. Then he complains that the Government lost prestige on account of it, until their majority in the House was reduced to six, but if we remember rightly the majority was reduced to three votes. It was a most wonderful thing that the supporters of the Government withdrew if there was nothingrdone except what was a bold, straightforward effort to uphold the dignity and purity of the Bench. It would, look as if the supporters of the Government wanted an excuse to turn against the Ministry, It was a weak and silly admission on the . part of Mr Hislop to say that members had turned against ,the government on account of this. Members would not have-done so only that the Government, deserved it; Then members of the committee of the Legislative Council promised him they would not make any report; and on the strength of this he consented to give evidenced After he had given evidence, however, the committee reported on the matter. This, too, is ominous. The committee had no intention of making a report until Mr Hislop gave evidence, but his evidence was so self-condemnatory that it changed the committee’s mind. That; too, is a curious : admission. Then be complains that the' Upper House never iriquired into the question as to whether Judge Ward’s judgment, in sentencing Christie was 1 good or bad. The Lower House inquired into, it and found it was good. It is, top, a fact worthy of notice that Sic Harry Atkinson in his place in Parliament said that Mr Hislop resigned, not because of the verdict of the Tipper House, but because of the finding of the committee, of the Lower House. Mr Hislop; says exactly the opposite of this to his constituents in Oamaru.

And what'has the calm, the gentle, the mild, the innocent Mr Hislop done to merit all this? Simply ; uphold the purity of the judicial bench, he says, but really if that was his object he has » left-handed way of doing it. If he did nothing but ask Judge Ward for an explanation:for presiding in the case while indebted to the prosecuting company no one could, find much fault with him for doing so, but he did a great deal more. He countermanded the orders of the judge, and compelled the cleric, of >the court to disobey the judge, and did many other things on which he is ominously silent. He quoted from various sources to show a. judge should not, hear a ease in which he had any interest, but it appears to us all this refers to civil business. The case which Judge Ward heard was not a civil one; the crime committed was a crime against society, it was fraud, and all the interest the prosecuting company had in it was to punish the fraudulent bankrupt, _ The company had nothing to gain in a pecuniary sense by the conviction of Christie. It would have been d life rout altogether

if the company had sued Christie for a sum ot money. In that ease the company would have something to gain by a verdict in their favor, but in this ease they had nothing to gain except the satisfaction of punishing crime. It is neither reasonable nor likely that they would try to influence a judge under such circumstances, and it is a most extraordinary dictum that a judge is not to try a crime against social order because he has monetary relations with the members of society most affected by the crime. In his speech Mr Hislop brought forward several other charges against Judge Ward, but the test is that never yet did the Court of Appeal reverse any ot Judge Ward’s decisions. There is no judge m New Zealand who has been appealed against so frequently ; there is none whose judgments have been so seldom reversed. What more do we want in a judge P Is it not sufficient, to. find that he administers the law in a manner that can stand the test of revision ? Judge Ward has been disgracefully treated, and Mr Hislop is the cause of it, and we, are glad he is suffering for his iniquities, .Oamaru will doubtless return him. The Christie faction is powerful; the pathetic appeal he made must tell in his favor, and the right and wrong of the political aspect of the question will be overlooked. Still we hope this will teach Mr Hislop a lesson that he will take to heart. He has proved himself spitefully vindictive,, and it may have the effect of making him take care as to what he does in the future,, SOCIALISM. The London Standard warns Australians that by sending money home to London strikers they are playing into the, hands of the socialists. We are much obliged to the Standard, for its kind advice, but we do not think Australians will pay much attention to it. The Standard is a paper owned by a ring of money-lending Jews, whose sole and whole policy is, to play into the hands of thecapitalists. It generally runs down colonial securities when it suits its clients to buy them cheap; and it praises them up when the Jews have a. large stock of them and want to sell them dear. It is the organ of those rings who fatten on the industry of others, and it is this paper which warns us against socialism! We would far prefer to accept socialism pure and simple than tolerate the iniquities perpetrated by the clique of which the Standard is the mouth-piece. But the money sent home to the strikers is not converted to any such uses as the Standard would have us believe.- We are told the strikers have £12,000 in the bank, and that with this they are enabled to carry on the battle. That does not show that it is being used for socialistic purposes. In our last issue we said capitalists were playing into the bauds of socialists, and we were right, and the day is not far distant when the capitalists will realise this. The old feudal barons misused their power and were abolished; the capitalist has now taken the place of the feudal baron in relation to labor, he is misusing his power too, and the result will be'his extinction. This is as sure as day follows night unless he takes care and is satisfied with’ a fair share of the fruits of the earth,. At any rate labor is' winning hands down now, and ,must win in the end, " '' '