The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1870.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 290, 14 December 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1870.

" Poison for rats" should be painted on the door of the Provincial Council, and the fate of Mr. Ellis may point a moral, though it fail to adorn a tale. Throwing water on a literally "drowned rat" is a profitless operation, but the honorable and unfortunate mover of the amendment of last night re* quires an "ill memoriam" on the burial of his aspirations. " Poor Ellis" was the oft-repeated expression of honorable members, as the array to right and left of the Speaker's chair told the tale of blighted hopes. He had staked all for place, and on the cast of the die all was lost; and with honorable councillors we too say, " Poor Ellis !" He had heard ominous sounds, as of a house about to fall, and, after the fashion of the fourfooted rodents of the species, he had made a timely run. But the house has not tumbled, and the door is now shut, to be opened to him no more. From the depths of our sympathy, we again sigh, " Poor Ellis !" The defeat of last night has been a rout; and the vindictive clearing of galleries was a petty exhibition of spleen, that showed how the iron had entered the soul." The late administration has been crushed, and routed ; and they have fled with their colors bedraggling in the dirt behind them. After the personalities and coarseness of the speech of the late lawofficer, had victory attended the opposition, we should have cried shame ! on the Provincial Council. Dr. Nicholson and Mr. Creighton haye retired with the honors of war, and not an unworthy or ungentlemanly expression characterised their retreat. It was reserved for Mr. Brookfield, sheltered within the sacred precincts of privilege, to spit out spite, which outside would have led to striking results ; but which only served to show how bitterly he felt the cold shade of opposition. It must be difficult at times to realise the fact of defeat, and all the assurances in the world that the opposition benches are soft and cosey, and the Treasury benches full of thorns, will not convince the uninitiated public that there is not some secret shield to repel their punctures, or some sovereign balm tj soothe the pain. We wonder that men of matured intelligence do not see that all these protestations are universally accepted as so much bunkum; and we would in the strongest manner recommend to those who delude themselves by such professions a careful study of the good common sense style of Mr. W. Swan son. This member has the special gift of lookingstraight through questions, just as the public looks; and beyond any comparison, he has the largest share of common sense in the whole Council ; and in calling a spade, a spade, he talks just as the public talks outside the walls of the Council, and freed from the restraints of its conventional euphemisms. It was not Mr. Swanson, it was the public that last night said of the amendment, "It is the spoils iof office, that's what it's about ; it's the loaves and fishes, that's what's it's about." And though those velvet piled cushions that seem so downy, are declared by Mr. Brookfield to be full of thorns, the head of Mr. Brookfield would fondly recline thereon, and dream luxuriously of "making out miners' licenses, and pocketing the rhino." He may affect to despise the new Provincial Secretary, but that gentleman, in a political sense, has placed his foot on Mr. Brookfield's neck, and all this wriggling is but an exhibition of the galling pain. The circumstances of the late attempt to delay the business of the country give no place for sympathy ; and however mournful the blundering fall of " poor Ellis," and, however painful the contortions of the suffering Brookfield, "we cannot but rejoice at the defeat of the opposition. Over the grave of

buried hopes and restless ambitions, we raise a votive tablet, and inscribe thereon the sad expressive legend, Requicscant in pace.