Wanganui Chronicle

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 829, 11 February 1868, Page 2

Wanganui Chronicle

and TURAKINA & RANGITIKEI MESSENGER

TUESDAY, lOtii FEBRUARY, 18GS. The officers of the New Zealand Civil Service are forbidden to take part in politics, beyond recording their votes for any candidate they may consider eligible for a seat jn parliament. And because it is so, some unthinking persons denounce Mr Stafford, through various moods and tenses, as a tyrant, if not something more and worse. It niiglit be enough by way of answer to say

that Mr Stafford did not draw up the Civil Service regulations, and that they required the assent of other officers of State as well as his, although we do not doubt and have no vish to deny that he may have left the impress of his convictions as to what was necessary and proper on these regulations. But farther, and apart from this, it may perhaps be useful, in disabusing certain minds of a fallacy, if we mention that in Great Britain and Ireland Civil Service officers are forbidden even to exercise the franchise, yet we have rarely heard of any complaint on the score of such a prohibition. Why should there be? Parties joining the service know its regulations, and they connot eat their pie and have it too. If any one feels his vocation to be that of an ardent politician lie' must eschew the Civil service, just as a man should keep out of the church whose most decided predilections incline him to the prize ring. Not only so. The regulation which gives so much offence in certain quarters is both proper and just. The public at large, not any section of them, employ and pay the officers of the Civil service, and good taste, even if there were no rule on the subject, would suggest to a man of ordinary prudence that it must be unbecoming in him to join one party as opposed to another. A person in the employment of two partners does not, —at least, he does not, if he wishes to perform his duty,—turn violently against the one and hold with equal pertinacity by the other : lie does his proper work and steers as clear of disputes between the partners as he possibly can. The New Zealand Civil Service is sufficiently costly ; the people could hardly be expected to bear a heavy load of taxation to keep up an instrument to thwart their wishes and retard their designs. This cry of tyranny is the purest nonsense, and utterly unworthy of a moment’s consideration. We most sincerely wish there were no greater tyranny amongst us than prohibiting the officers of the Civil service from political agitation ; we might then assuredly sing pleans in praise of freedom ; and our friends who are so full of rage and sorrow ought to seek some other point on which to attack Mr Stafford. They may at least take comfort. Are they not certain that the hon. gentleman will very soon have to give place to another, and two can play at the game of which they complain. It is just possible tnat the wish is father to the thought, but it is at least sweet to dream of it. A new Governor has come ; a proximate Premier is announced, perhaps a little too hastily; and every thing is hastening to a change. The reign of tyranny is about to close ! The vuljnne millerrium is at hand ! We shall see.

The worthy man in Moliere’s comedy, who talked prose all his life without knowing it, was a very lucky fellow. The accomplishments of most people do not come to them so easily or unconsciously, although there are certain subjects which men fancy they understand very much by intuition. We fear they are mistaken. Such particular subjects appear plain and easy to be understood only because they have never been thoroughly examined or thought out. Most of us in plain truth are possessed by the evil spirit of muddle ; we have notions and theories of things very crudely got up, they satisfy us as long as they are not put to the —uire-iuomunc \YU UUUIU UO CIOSO quarters with them, it becomes evident that we have not mastered the questions to which they pertain, and we realise how much may be said upon the different and differing aspects which their deliberate consideration present. The infliction of six months’ solitary confinement would add immensely to the concentration of thought of multitudes—newspaper editors especially, who have to turn their attention to so many subjects Ihat they can only bestow the smallest amount of it on any one of them. We have an idea that it was the fortress of Ham that made Louis Napoleon what he is. He there acquired the power of seeing one thing at a time and of seeing all the sides of that one thing, and in this lies very much of the secret of his power. But many of us are contented with one side of a subject, and even a cursory examination of that one Bide. Take the subject of Liberty, by way of illustration. Every one thinks he understands very clearly what Liberty is, —but does he ? “ Give me,” said Milton, in a noble passage of his Areopagitica, “ the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience.” But even this sentiment cannot he received without limitation. We are not sure that this greatest man of his time quite understood its whole length andbreadth. It is only by slow steps and by the exercise of private virtue in lier citizens, that a nation can obtain anything better than the semblance of freedom of the press. At all events it is intensely interesting to look hack upon the period in which Milton lived, and see how manfully he battled in the cause of free speech,—and who shall blame him if, amid the din and smoke of the contest, he demanded precious privileges for liimself and his countrymen, with a warmth that some may think petulant and a few imserious ; and who need wonder if he did not always discern with perfect accuracy the thin boundary-line where liberty ended and license began. In the Mercurius Puliticus, 1659, there is the following advertisement : —“The ready and easie way to establish a free commonwealth, and the excellence thereof, compared with the inconveniences and dangers of re-adinitting kingship in this nation. The author J. M. Wherein by reason of the printer’s haste, the errata not coming in time, it is desired that the following faults be amended,” &c. “The calmness of the blind hard,” says the

Quarterly Review, “in thus issuing corrections to his hastily printed pamphlet on behalf of a falling cause, excites our admiration and gives us an exalted idea of his moral courage. In two months as might have been expected, lie was a prosecuted fugitive, sheltering his honoured head from the pursuit of Charles’s myrmidons in some secret hiding place in Westminster, whilst his works by order of the House were being burned by the common hangman.” All honour to J. M. He fought well, but the battle is not yet fully won. John Stuart Mill is the most recent writer oa Liberty. His essay is justly regarded as authoritative on the subject, but he confines liimself to discussing the advantages which arise from not interfering with people’s conduct and convictions. A most necessary department of the subject—one which cannot he too strongly impressed upon public attention —but not the whole of it. He hardly reaches or cares for the root of the matter. Mr Mill describes the importance of variety and originality of character considered as elements of .human happiness. He points out the principle, that the utmost freedom of discussion is an advantage to all true opinions, because it allows their truth to be established on the strongest of all foundations, and forces those who believe them to understand accurately what these foundations are, and how they are related to each other and to the objections which can be urged against them. Of course, he condemns all penal prohibition of speaking or writing ; the public alone are to judge of the truth or falsehood of what is said ; he is also pronounced enough against those social penalties which attach to speaking or writing when it runs counter to popular prejudice or to the interests of any strong or unscrupulous faction, —all which condemnation is or should be very useful, but we fear it will take yet another age and a broader and more enlightened idea of liberty, to emancipate us from this latter species of penalty. Men of influence and men in power cannot better serve the interests of their country than by seeking to foster a temperate yet free-speaking public opinion, which permits every man to utter wliat he pleases, so long as he does so without offence to public morality or private character.