Very Obita Dicta

2.——The Nelson Case.

Of the two and a half well-known sorts of Nelson (Admiral Nelson, O. F. Nelson, and the half Nelson) the most significant at the moment is, perhaps, the Hon. O. F. Nelson, of Samoa—a patriot like the Admiral, but somehow not so popular, and lately involved in a case in which the Supreme Court of New Zealand heard the appeal.

The Administrator of Samoa, it seems, thought that the old British sedition laws were too advanced for so backward a people as the Samoans. The Mau, he saw, were obsessed with two extraordinary and apparently incurable delusions—(1) that Britsh civilisation was not the salt of the earth, and (2) that the Samoans could run Samoa.

In the face of this awkward situation, the Administrator discovered the "snail in the bottle" (grub in the copra) case—Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932 A.C.), and read with delight the words of Lord Atkin:

"I do not think so ill of our jurisprudence as to suppose that its principles are so remote from the ordinary needs of civilised society .... as to deny a legal remedy where there is so obviously a social wrong."

This provided the formula the Administrator wanted. The social wrong he saw plainly enough; and now he had only to look sufficiently hard and he would find the legal remedy. In the famous Section 45 of the Samoan Act he found it.

In no time, the Administrator, by Order-in-Council, had convicted the Mau, and proceeded to haul in their judicial net.

This, it. should be added, was by way of an improvement on the method of banishment without trial, so popular in the old days of Tagaloa and Tamasese. Now, the Administrator has found an excellent device for assuring, as it were, that the cream does remain at the top even in Samoa; and the subtlety of "trial by Administrator-in-Council" has been declared by the Judges of the Supreme Court of New Zealand to be the correct and appropriate proceedure.

As one Judge said, almost the only fault which one can find with the administration in Samoa is that it has tried to give the benefit of civilisation to the natives before they are ready for it. And it is indeed fortunate that means have now been found whereby the natives will be constrained to approach more soberly, by co-operation and submission, to the joys of the civilised world that we know, with its alarm clocks, unemployed levies, and appeals to the Privy Council. —Cato.