The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1892-08-16
THE LEGISLATURE
SiYty-Fifth Day.
MONDAY, Aug. 10.
The House opened at 10 A. NJ.
DE11IfrInNG


Noble Cornwell presented petit
ton asking for $1,000 to bring water
on to certain lands on Maui.
Noble Cornwell asked that this be |
referred to select committee COM
posed chiefly of residents of Maui.
The members of the Public Lands
Committee were not Maui residents.
Rep. r. w. Wilcox said that Noble
Thurston was Maui boy, and he
himself came from the very part of
Maui referred to in this petition.
Noble Cornwell said he knew how
the people in the districts referred to
suffered for water during the summer
months.
The petition was referred to the
following select committee: Corn
well, Baldwin, Peterson, Kanealii
and r. w. Wilcox.
Noble Baldwin presented petition
asking for 5000 for road damages on
certain road newly constructed by the
government between Makawao and
Kula, Maui. Referred to the Public
Lands Committee.
Rep. KamauOha presented petit
ton from Kohala asking for new
Constitution. Referred to the Con-
stitutionai Committee.
Rep. Edmonds presented a petition
from Wailuku asking for a new gov
eminent physician. Referred to the
Sanitary Committee.
Rep. Iosepa presented a petition
from Hama asking for new govern
ment schoolhouse. Referred to the
Committee on Education.
Also petition from man living
at Kipahulu asking for $500 to pay
him for use of his house as court
house. Referred to the Judiciary
Committee.
Noble Ena presented a petition
from J. r. Robinson for repairs to the
government track on Beretania street
and to certain bridge. Referred to
the Committee on Public Lands.
Rep. Waipuilani presented petit
ton for an English schoolhouse in
Kona. Referred to the Committee
on Education.
SELECT COMMITTEES.
Rep. Ashford presented minority
report of the Labor Committee on the
registration Bill 81:
To THE HONORABLE JOHN S WALKER,
President of the Legislature:
SIR: AS member constituting a mi
nority of the committee to whom was re-
ferred Bill No. 81, to provide for the
registration of all male residents OF this
Kingdom, l beg leave to report az fol-
lows:
That, since my appointment on said
i Il e
place on the floor OF this House, that /
was opposed to the object and scope of
said Bill, have received no notice of
any meeting of said committee, nor any
request or invitation to be present at any
such meeting, and | first learned that
such meeting had taken place, only incl
dentally and accidentally, from another
member thereof, who informed me that
several such meetings had been held,
and that report favorable to the pas
sage OF the Bill had been agreed upon.
hope 10 learn, however that the failure
OF the Chairman, or OF other members of
said committee to notify me OF such
meetings, especially in view of my pre-
---yiously expressed opposition to the Bill,
involve nothing more serious than Sc
ries of inadverfe 2cies.
wish further to report that l have
examined said Bill, and find iiatlts
scope and purpose are not such as l can
recommend. 1t proposes to establish a
wholesale and universal system of regis
tration Of male residents, and to attach
severe penalties for any failure to so reg
lister, or re-register, as therein provided.
and, generally, to saddle the community
with law creating individual obligations
of a character never before known in this
country, and of a kind hostile to the
spirit of personal liberty pervading the
institutions under which we live, and at
war with the enlightened sentiments OF
modern civilization and western govern
ments, and that it proposes to employ a
small army of officials TO execute its pro-
visions, at an expense whichthis country
cannot afford.
Such deviation from the essential prin-
ciples OF just and free government
would seem sufficient to defeat the Bill
even in the face of prospective advantage
to our material interest to flow from such
II law; but, besides invading personal
liberty, and the right of free and unre-
stricted movement throughout the differ
ent parts of the Kingdom on the part Of
it's residents, the Bill offers no material
advantage, that l can observe, as even a
partial compensation for its proposed in.
vasion of the primary principles of free.
dom.
If it be claimed that the Bill will Sc.
cure to the sugar planters greater advan-
tage, in preventing, to some extent, the
desertion of contract laborers, l beg to
dispute the claim, and to contend that
even if the claim be we'll founded, there
is no sound reason why every man in the
Kingdom should be placed and kept I'M
der an odious and irritating system Of
surveillance, with a liability to severe
penalties for trifling oversights, merely
as means of assisting the sugar plant
ers to herd their contract laborers with
greater facility than at present.
The contract labor system, as here ex-
listing, is already sorry commentary
upon our boasted civilization, but l sub
NIT that it should not now be bolstered
up by the application to every man in
the Kingdom of system OF espionage as
degrading as that proposed by the Bill
in question.
am aware that precedents for the pro-
posed system may be drawn from some
of the semi-barbarous nations of Eastern
and Middle Europe,-and that where
despotic and personal government pre-
walls, it is usually accompanied by such
a system of registration as that proposed
in this Bill. But 1 beg to remind the
House that Hawaii is already far in adj
vance, as regards the liberality of her
institutions, OF any nation from which
such precedent can be drawn, and that
the true course OF civilization and states
Inanship is forward, and not backward.
1t would be q distinctly rotrogressive
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