Prophesying Deceits.

Of course, the down grade is easiest. The line of least resistance is always easier, and nowhere is it so easy and so disastrous as in page 9 the sphere of the poor law. It is so easy to draw cheers by eulogies of those who have borne the burden and heat of the day, while concealing the fact that your proposals are so framed as to benefit those whom you dare not eulogise—the criminal and the idler, who have shirked the burden and heat of the day and left their share of it to others. It is so easy to say that there are 7,000 old people looking for your Bill to pass, and to reckon up that if they have four or five friends each there are 30,000 votes in the transaction, more than enough to turn the next General Election. It is so easy to say that pointing out the demoralising effect of a measure which puts a premium on improvidence, idleness, shift-lessness, and fraud is "casting a reflection on the people of this colony," when you know that this colony is not yet Utopia, or the Bill would not be needed; that its people have just about the ordinary allowance of human nature in them; and that, however great their virtue, it must be wicked to hold out before them encouragements to vice. It is so easy to say smooth things and prophesy deceits. All these things are easy, and the other part is often difficult, but I believe that there would be little difficulty in touching the conscience of the people on so clear a matter as this if it were clearly put before them. For the present it rests with Parliament, and not with the people. I trust that before disposing of it our legislators will gain a clearer knowledge of what they are being asked to do. To pass the Bill would mean irreparable disaster; to reject it would merely mean further consideration and consultation with the people. I trust that by rejecting it Parliament will save the colony, for the present at any rate, from the blackest danger with which in my experience it has been ever threatened.

A. R. Atkinson.