PUNCH TO THE HON. JULIUS VOGEL.

Auckland Star, Volume IV, Issue 986, 17 March 1873, Page 2

PUNCH TO THE HON. JULIUS VOGEL.

(From the Sydney Punch.) Vooel you are a—very clever fellow. There is a cuteness about you, my little Julius, which must be somewhat alarming to blunt straightforward people who have to cope with you in business matters. For there is a dangerous quality in your talent my child ; and as it seems to me, your wits have been sharpened at the expense of your —well, of something that as a matter of policy is proverbially preferable. There is much smartness, my dear Julius, in that pleasant little letter of yours, which appeared in Monday's Herald. In that precious epistle you paint your own portrait in the softest and yet the tenderest colours You present yourself, my precocious infant, as. an innocent lambkin, a mere sucking dove, a trustful and simple-hearted youth. You to conspire against the welfare of New South Wales ! —you to plot with the delegates of other colonies with any intention of defrauding this colony of her rights ! —Why, your little heart throbs with indignation when you hear such accusations.

That at least is what you would have us believe, Julius ; but I am sorry to say that you fall into the common error of being a little to clever, and so betray yourself. Your pretty letter is indeed a confession. It really seems to me, Julius, as if you were rather confused in your notions of right and wrong, and that your fresh young heart, brimful as it is of poetical sentiment and book-virtue, were quite used to chicanery, for you see no harm in double-dealing. You come here to attend a Conference, and finding as you say, that Mr. Parkes is not disposed to meet you on business matters outside that Conference, you go over to Messrs Francis and Co., who are much less scrupulous. In fact, my clever Julius, by your own shewing you came to sell your vote to the highest bider by private contract, and when our Premier declined to make an offer you carried your wares into the Victorian market. It is to be hoped you sold them at a profit.

But you say that no arrangement was come to in Melbourne by the delegates who chanced to meet there. No, my child, Ido not suppose there was. To have sold to Victoria before you found out the price New South Wales was willing to pay, would not have been clever; and so you waited until you got to Sydney before you made your bargain with the other delegates. What does this matter, Julius? The conspiracy admitted—the bargain confessed —what care we as to where the thing was done ?

Your letter has certainly convinced me of one thing, Julius—that our Premier acted in this matter as became a statesman and a man of honour. Yet you, foolish boy, seem to think that his country ought to condemn him for refusing to make a secret treaty with you, while he professed to deal fairly with the other delegates. Why, Julius, we honor him for that refusal. We don't like schemes that are hatched in dark corners. And were the paltry stake for which you and your accomplices played so unfairly ten times as great we should say that our Premier's loss of it by his simple honesty was far more honourable than would have been the winning of it by such tricks as yours.