TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8318, 24 December 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

On the first of January there comes into force in the United Kingdom an Act which has been described as almost revolutionary in character, inasmuch as it creates an entirely new criminal offence. This is the Prevention of Corruption Act, a measure designed to check the widespread custom of giving and receiving, or even of offering, secret commissions, which the Act defines as "corrupt gifts," offered or given with the view of' causing any "agent" to show favour or disfavour, "or to do or refrain from doing any act in relation to his principal's affairs." The practice of "secret commissions" as a means of securing business has in many directions become firmly established in British trade. Doctors are said to get secret commissions from chemists, solicitors from trustees and liquidators, architects from contractors and merchants, etc.

Happy for President Roosevelt, phonetic spelling is not a matter of vital importance to his country or to the world at large • and his reputation as an administrator or a diplomatist is therefore not likely to suffer because he has decided to withdraw his instructions to the public printer to ' spell according to "the new style." The movement in favour of spelling reform in America took organised shape last March, when a body known as the Simplified Spellling Board was formed. The object of this Board was to urge educated people everywhere "to aid in the gradual simplification' of English spelling, and thus help to make the English language more and more easy to acquire and to use." The Board claimed that in taking these steps it was "expediting a natural pi'ocess of change which had been going on for centuries." \ But its purpose was merely to guide the inevitable development of the tongue "in the direction of simplicity and economy." And when the first report of the Board was published, President Roosevelt appears to have accepted the Board's arguments, and adopted its programme without hesitation. But apparently he has found the conservatism of tradition in such matters too great an obstacle for even his "prestige and his energy to surmount.

The - importance of sea training: was touched upon by the Hon. J. A. Millar, Minister for Labour and Marine, in his speech at Auckland on Thursday evening. He said that as New Zealand was an island the people would have to defend themselves on the water, and this fact would inevitably lead the youth of the colony, as it led their forefathers, to follow the sea for a living. Two months hence there would be a maritime conference in London, and New Zealand would be represented by the Premier. He was in hopes that gas a result of that conference one shipping law would be made for the whole British Empire. Portions of th eßritish Shipping Act and the Australian Navigation Bill had been copied from the New Zealand law. It was that Act which had caused the people in the Old Country to think that it was time they had a law for the whole Empire. Foreign nations subsidised their ships and gave .them special advantages over British ships in their own waters. The Mother Country should pass a coastwise shipping law against ships of foreign countries that put restrictions on British vessels.

The steady trend of population in New Zealand is to increase in theNorth Island at a much greater rate than in the South. The tendency is due, says the Auckland Herald, to the greater productive power of the North, even under conditions which close against settlement large areas of desirable Native and Crown lands and prevent the best use being made of still greater areas upon which settlement has entered. Under the automatic process for the redistribution of Parliamentary representation after any census which shows a redistribution of population, this trend of our colonial population .brings about a readjustment of the electorates. For a number of years the old Southern majority in the House of Representatives has been periodically reduced until at last the inevitable has happened. During the > life of the present Parliament the ) equal representation which followed upon the census of 1901 will not be disturbed, but after the next election, whenever that may be, the North Island will have 43 representatives and the South Island 37, three seat 3 having had to be transferred in order to keep the apportionment of Parliamentary representation just and equitable.