THE Temuka Leader THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1891 AS OTHERS SEE US.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2285, 26 November 1891, Page 2

THE Temuka Leader THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1891 AS OTHERS SEE US.

Mr Rudyard Kipling flitted through this colony like a meteor. He landed in Wellington, ran up to the Hot Lakes, came down to Lyttelton in a steamer, spent one day in Christchurch, and went on by sea to Dunedin and the Bluff, whence he went to Australia. In Melbourne he has been interviewed, and his opinions of New Zealand have been telegraphed over here, as if they were really of any value. Mr Kipling thinks New Zealand so lovely, so beautiful, so delightful, that if he had been told it was the Garden of Eden he would believe it, but he wants to know what we want with houses of Parliament or politics. He ridicules giving work to the unemployed, and says he was never anywhere where there is so much talk about work and so little of it done. To show the recklessness of his statements, we need only point out that he said that 300 unemployed were being paid 9s a day at relief works in Dunedin. Everybody knows there is not a word of truth in this.

Before Mr Kipling ever thought of coming to New Zealand, or indeed to England, we read some of his writings, and to the conclusion that he was an empty headed coxcombe. His published utterances on New Zealand proves it. “ Why,” he says “ there is more machinery for running their little handful of people than we have for the whole' of our 300,000,000.” He means India when he speaks thus, for Mr Kipling is a native of India, where he was born, and lived until recently. We may, we suppose pardon him for regarding popular Government as uncoraprehensible to him. He has not been brought up to it, he had seen nothing but autocratic despotism until a few years ago, and consequently it is no wonder that he is Conservative in his ideas. It is really absurd to compare a free country with Inda, although indeed it appears to us that our system of Government is far less complicated than that to which he has been accustomed. The Indian Government is extremely complicated. First, there is the Secretary of State for India, who is a member of the English Government, and lives in London. He is the supreme head of it. Under him comes the GovernorGeneral of India, who has ten Councillors to advise him, but all their acts must be approved by the Secretary of State. Then again, there are governors of provinces who have other councils, and then there are commissioners of districts, magistrates and collectors, and so on. Then there are the native princes, who also make laws, and exercise political functions, and if all these do not make a complicated machinery, we do not know what could. No doubt they have not many laws. They do not want them. The will of the governors, Native and European, chiefly constitutes law, so it is not many written laws they require. It is not therefore surprising, that our free institutions are strange and wonderful to a man brought up in such an atmosphere, but s'.ranger still, it is that anyone should run after him to get an opinion on our institutions. The whole theng is ridiculous, but the most absurd part of all is that this trash should be telegraphed from Melbourne. RISE OF WAGES. A London cablegram says that “ the Government are enquiring into the wages of Leicester operatives with the view of obtaining an increase for them, prior to issuing the Government hoisery contracts.” That means, if it means anything, that the Government of , England intend to bring pressure to bear on employers of labour, to raise the wages of, their employees, before giving them contracts for the supply of hosiery. This is going far enough. It is indeed an extraordinary thing for the Government to dictate to the employers what wages they shall pay their employees. If the Government of New Zealand went to this extent, what would be said V Simply that they were grovelling in the dust before the working men, and that they were the obedient tools of the Knights of Labor. We should hear a howl of indignation about the liberty of the subject, aggression on peoples’ freedom, and so on that would rend the clouds, yet the Tories of England do not think it, outside the functions of state, to look after the most helpless of the subjects of the Crown. That is the way to keep down socialism, and promote peace and concord and good will amongst people. In the history of the world there is no instance in which a happy contented and prosperous people revolted against constituted authority. Wherever rebellion has taken place, or wherever popular discontent has existed, there greivances have been discovered, and there they have had to be redressed in the long run. The surest way therefoi’e to prevent disturbances, and stop the spread of dissatisfaction is to ascertain where the wrong exists, and remove it. In England capitalists are amassing

wealth, while no brighter prospects * illumes the future of the poor workman than an old age of want and , misery, if not a paupers grave. The English workman, works hard all his life, on wages which does not enable him to provide for old age, and very frequently he ends his career in the workhouse. We sincerely hope that this is the first step towards recognising his rights to proper pay, and that he will be® more justly treated in the future.