THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1911. THE LIBERAL "CHARTER."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10448, 13 October 1911, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1911. THE LIBERAL "CHARTER."

The Liberal "charter," unfolded by Sir John Find lay at Auckland, is so full of anachronism and political deceit that it deserves more than passing notice. »>hen the belted knight ispoke of giving access to the waste lands of the ■Dominion, he supplied the most damaging indictment that could possibly be levelled at the Ward Administration. As the Ohristch.ure.li Tress, succinctly puts it:— In tlu- mouth of a mcni'Der of the present Ministry, which is afraid to tackfeithe land question, and is only consistent in its lack of policy, the advocacy of access to the land for the landless, with security of tenure, is mere hypocrisy, if the Government were geiminely concerned for the landless man, it would have unlocked

th> idle Native lands long ago 8 and I would have placed the benefit of thd 1 freehold at the disposal of all. The Government's claim that it gives- • men. without money access to capital at the lowest rates, and. on the easiest terms must be read in conjunction with' the fact that .before the live iniMion loan was floated, settlers and •workers, needing advances found it impossible to borrow money from the State Departments, -while at the same time the private capitalist desirous of lending money on land is penalised (by a .spsuial■• mortgage tax, while the man who tends money in commerce escapes. We all want easy an. I cneap access to transportation and communication but baekblock settlers, waiting year after year.for roads .for their properties, may be excused, if they .think idle laovernmei. lias forgomen them. Fewer words- and mom deeds would plea&e j them better. The boast of access to elective power at the lowest ratesi at which the State can supply it, .comes particularly ,badliy from a member of the Government that has deliberately blocked the public access to hydroelectric power until they choose to supply it. Access to invalidity and unemployment insurance, which we | ■ar.j. told -is one of the..principles .'of ( "trite liberalism," was urged-by-Mr Massey before Sir John Findlay re-, turned f rom liia visit to (London, and th'> kind of Liberalism .that is represented by the honourable gentleman 'has therefore no monopoly in eating it, nor oven the distinction of having advocated it first. "Access to justice" is as old, as Magna Oharta, though we .are not a* all sure that the GUovernmenrt'is methods of administration always provide the best means of securing it. As for "access (to free education,- from the primary school to the university," that Ira, been constantly urged by the Opposition. . .vv.nat Sir John Findlay terms the "cardinal principles ■ 'of progressive (Liberalism" are in the main the theories of good government long held by many people in •cnt- iDominioh, but marred in one or two oases .by t~e condition that they must oniy be tranislated, into practice .under State control. The present regime have had some twenty years in which to practise their theories, they" liave had the benefit of many prosperous years, of the handling of enormous sums of borrowed money, and of the support of an obedient majority to enable them to spend as they liked. They have greatly developed the power cf the State, which now controls our lives /to an extent many people perhaps hardly realise..'".— ad yet;.what-is_ the immediate result of their administration, and of their attempts- to 1 confine the great elementary econoniic laws witihan the .narrow and restrict-' ing booirids of class legislation ?■ The worker is no .better off than lie was twenty year's ago. Discontent and unrest permeate all ranks and classes of <the labour world, the middle classes find the cost of living fast outrunning their fixed salaries, and |-capital, harrap&ed by incessant ati tacks i is .timorous of giving that support to the development of [ country in which it would otherwise find profitable exercise. Year by year New Zealand is becoming more and more ibound to the foreign momey-tender; year after year the 'burden of taxation grows heavier; year after year "the State," the huge organisation on which oneitemth of the population of New Zealand depends, dor" a living, has come ifcoMriterfere more and more with our social amd industrial life. The basis of liiberaiisimj declares Sir John, is freedom., hut the Jiiberalisan that he and his colleagues.practise is the negation of freedom.