NEW ZEALAND.

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1668, 7 February 1906, Page 1

NEW ZEALAND.

.(Per Press Association.) Christohurob, last night.

Mr G. G. Stead has given £IOO for the purchase of four challenge shields, to be shot for by Canterbury branches of the Defence Service. The Government will subsidise tho amount with a further £IOO.

[ The Waltham Orphanage inquiry was resumed to-day. Tlio evidence was of a non-committal nature. Norris, scerotary to the Board, under crossexamination, stated that he did not make a practice of discussing tho business of the Board with members before the meetings, nor did he advise them how to act. Ho did not dictate to members or any of them. Members used to go to his rooms now and then to talk over the business.

Dunedin, last night.

Alexander Bennie, single, aged 50, was killed as tbo result of injuries through a fall of ooal at Kaitangata mine yesterday..

The future in politics is ever on the side of the Liberals. The instinct of the people is, doubtless, a right one—for Liberalism is essentially freedom ; it is opposed to narrow and selfish ideas, it is favorable to civil, political and religious liberty, and ii makes for progress, If, on occasion, we have fought against the Liberal leaders of this colony, it has been so not because we have not at heart the promotion of Liberal principles, but because the professional exponents of them in New Zealand occasionally give us an adulterated article which will not stand analysis. They profess Liberalism with their lips; but, by their actions, they show that they are incapable of distinguishing their own base coinage from that pure gold, which alone ought to bo turned out from a Liberal mint. —Wairarapa Times.

Tho rout of Mr Balfour’s party and his own rejection at tho polls point clearly to the disastrous consequences of neglectingpublic opinion and alienating oneself from popular sympathy. It pleased Mr Balfour to pose as a political amateur, a philosophic doubter with no firm convictions, a dilettano who read no newspapers and took no hood of public criticism. The people bore with theso puerile affectations 'so long as they believed in the capacity and public spirit of the man. But the records Of tho South African War, the Education Acts, the Liquor Bill, and the Chinese labor ordinance shook the faith of the poople in Mr Balfour beyond hope of recovery, and when the stress of conflict camo his party was involved with him in a general overthrow. For the Conservatives the moral of the story is plain, and they cannot hope to regain aDy fraction of their lost ground until they can find leaders more closely in touch with public feeling and more keenly alive to tho potency of public opinion than Mr Balfour.—Auckland Star.