which, to say truth, they have much to learn.  Observers outside the Colony need not suppose that New Zealand women are in the least degree either “wild,” or “new,” or belong to any shrieking sisterhood.  Though one or two have entered learned professions, most of them are engaged in domestic duties.  Those who go out into the world do so to work unassumingly as school teachers, factory hands, or household servants.  As school teachers they are usually efficient, as domestic servants civil and hard-working, as factory hands neat, industrious, and moral.  It is true that they are, without exception, educated to the extent of having had at least good primary school teaching.  But though they read—­clean, healthy English books—­this, so far from making them inclined to favour frantic or immoral social experiments, should have, one may hope, just the opposite effect.  Far from being a spectacled, angular, hysterical, uncomfortable race, perpetually demanding extravagant changes in shrill tones, they are, at least, as distinguished for womanly modesty, grace, and affection, as Englishwomen in any other part of the Empire.

There are some who connect the appearance of women in the political arena with the recent passing of an Infants’ Life Protection Act, the raising of the age of consent to fifteen, the admission of women to the Bar, the appointment of female inspectors to lunatic asylums, factories, and other institutions, improvements in the laws dealing with Adoption of Children and Industrial Schools, a severe law against the keepers of houses of ill-fame, and with the new liquor laws and the Prohibitionist movement which is so prominent a feature of New Zealand public life.

A handy volume issued by the Government printer contains most of the Labour Laws of New Zealand.  They are now twenty-six in number, comprising Acts, amending Acts, and portions of Acts.  Their aim is not the abolition of the wages system, but, as far as may be to make that system fair and tolerable, and in protecting the labourer to protect the fair employer.  Some twenty of these laws have been passed during the last seven years.  Of these an Employers’ Liability Act resembles Mr. Asquith’s ill-fated Bill.  Worked in conjunction with a law for the inspection of machinery and a thorough-going system of factory inspection, it has lessened accidents without leading to litigation.  It neither permits contracting-out nor allows employers to escape liability by means of letting out contracts.

A Truck Act declares the right of every wage-earner to be paid promptly, in full, in the current coin of the realm, and to be allowed to spend wages as they choose.  Two more enactments deal with the earnings of the workmen of contractors and sub-contractors, make them a first charge on all contract money, give workers employed on works of construction a lien thereon, and compel a contractor’s employer to hold back at least one-fourth of the contract money for a month after the completion of a contract, unless he shall be satisfied that all workmen concerned have been paid in full.  A Wages Attachment Act limits without entirely abolishing a creditor’s right to obtain orders of court attaching forthcoming earnings.