The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1891.
There is some very thin ice about this dumniyism business. Mr Hogg thought he was skating on ice a foot thick when he went for Ratsey, but flopped into the cold water. When "Mr Anderson was brought up before the Land Board, the Government, for a very good reason, warned people off the thin ice, and even that doughty champion of the people, the member for Masterton, smelt danger and helped to clear the course, while Mr McCardle would not go within a mile of it. There was thin ice too when the Coleman Phillips case came on and the Chief Justice endeavoured to draw a line between legitimate and illegitimate dummyism and even the Hon Mr Richardson felt himself somewhat in a dilemma when he gave his evidence.
In court he stated that he had coined the words " Legitimate Dummyism" by which he meant to say that family settlement was legitimate. Where-
upon the judge asked him, •' but supI posing a father, three sons and one daughter apply for a section, and the daughter gets it—she being 17 years of age—and they all go and live upon the land, that would be legitimate dummyism? (Mr R.: Yes.) The Judge: But would not the girl make a false declaration in saying that she took the land for her sole use and benefit. Mr R.: That, Your Honor, is a legal question which I cannot answer.
(Laughter). All this tends to show what awfully thin ice surrouqds this question and the necessity for a better legal definition of the intention of the
legislature on this head. The Government appeared to have gone "dummy" hunting, not with the object of vindicating this law so much as to trap their political opponents. We do not think the Cro«n Prosecutor ever asked th 3 Government, for example, to give him the assistance of Mr Jellicoe in the Coleman Phillips case. Indeed, it was rumoured that pressure had to be brpjught to bear on him by the Minister to accept the aid he did not seek. These little matters are evidently suggestive of the idea ofa persecution rather than a prosecution. Hence the sympathy that is very generally extended to Mr Cole man Phillips and the feeling that, in his case, there has not been that fair play which all Englishmen love.
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Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3863, 21 July 1891, Page 2
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394The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1891. Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3863, 21 July 1891, Page 2
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