MR HORNSBY'S SOCIALISM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8497, 29 July 1907, Page 5

MR HORNSBY'S SOCIALISM.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —I have just received a copy of the Wairarapa Age containing Mr Hornsby's reply to my first letter. It contains nothing which makes me wish to modify anything I have written in my second letter. -Mr Hornsby says I have written with a "set purpose." That is so. Ido not know Mr Hornsby personally. I have no personal feeling against him or anyone of the self-styled Liberals; but I write to the press to try and get the general public—women as well as men —to look at both sides of the social and political questions of the day, and as what I write may have greater weight I desire to inform your readers that I have not only read, but studied and analysed the Fabian essays (recommended to me by Mr Hornsby) but tons of" Socialist literature —if such trash can be called literature; and in addition for the past 30 years I have made a a special study of all social and political questions. In 1890 and 1891 I was the secretary for the Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Representatives, when I had to find the knowledge and brains for the said committee, with one or two notable ex eptions, one being the well-read, square-headed (the late) Sir John Hall; and the pamphlet published by the Government on the above subject was compiled by myself; so that I think my knowledge of social and political economy far transcends that of Mr Hornsby, judging from his speeches as recorded in Hansard and his letters to the Age on Socialism. The electors of New Zealand require to be educated in the principles of good government like the Swiss,and then they would send to the House of Representatives a far better class of man than we have at present/many of whom, like Mr Hogg, fling about "Democracy" and "Government of the people by the people and for the people," and throw dust in the eyes of the public; but they are wishing to enslave the people, by making them all leaseholders. Take, for instance, the land question. The settlers of New Zealand bring into this colony over £15,000,000 per annum for their products—wool, mutton, etc —and the trade unionists add very, very little to our revenue; and yet Mr Hogg and soma score of others in the House pander to the —comparatively—few trade-unionists and would crush, and tax out of existence the very people who are supporting this country. Are these members worthy of a position in the House? The London Punch has often skits about pot-house politicians. Have .we not had pot-house legislation since 1890? The public accounts since 1890 have been kept in a manner so confused and jumbled up as to deceive the people. The State has entered into the peddling of coal! Now 1 dare assert that not a single industry that these Janus-faced legislators have entered into pays; and if not, then the general taxpayer is mulcted in the loss to keep up an army of Civil servants under the slave-driver's whip ot the Hoggs, the Hornsbys, the Tanners and the Fowlds. Have the people had clear and definite balance-sheets of each industry placed before them ? No, therefore the talk of "Government of the people by the people" has been arrant humbug and cant. This is strong language, . but the times demand it. —I am, etc., GEORGE WILKS. East Tamaki, Auckland.