THE LATE MINISTRY.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume VI, Issue 548, 15 December 1877, Page 3

THE LATE MINISTRY.

(From the Otago Daily Times.) Never was more grotesque exhibition of impotent rage than is presented in the conduct of members of the late Ministry. Day by day their chances of restoration to office are disappearing,, and day by day does their petty malignity appear to increase. From the Premier down to the " weakest member" there is the same pitiful display of spitefulness, . and nothing more is wanted to make the country feel to the core that it has been happily relieved of an in- ! e-übus. Major Atkinson, in a manj iter that dis-illusionises all those who had any esteem for him, not shared in by any of his colleagues, rakes up. against his successor an old address | of an angry Assembly of a quarter of a century gone, to point a sneer at the present Premier, as "a great reformer and financier." It mattered not that the ill-tempered address was more- than antidoted by the strong expressions of sympathy and commendation from the. country, as was' properly shown by Mr Qisborne.. Tho I ousted Premier cannot forgive hissupplanter, and must rake up the ashes of the dead past, so as to makemissiles against the object of his jealousy and hate. And then Mr George McLean,, who. latterly appeared endowed with supernatural i energy, something after the- fashion of 1 a galvanised frog, even he has the presumption to measure himself by the colosjsgl figure of " the great Proconsul/ and with an audacity that is

excessively laughable, 'ho " .I'.ivihl Kir George to do this, that,, or the othor thing, calling him Ris>< Van. Winkle, and refurbishing that well-worn- woapon of attack, %, how unfit he was iv. his old age to govern thisyoung country."' When one thinks of this coming from such a man, against such a- man, one cannot but reflect on the wondrous capacity of human impudence. But all this is nothing to the* stupendous daring of Mr Ormond. One would have thought that he, whose consummate lying had precipitated the fall of his colleagues, would have for ever after held his peace ; and that having made such false charges against Sir George Grey, which were distinctly disproved, and had recoiled on the slanderer's head with shame, he would have refrained from again attempting the same rdle. And yet that wretched man, who owes his commercial and social position to the kind hand of Sir George Grey in other days, returns to his vile charges, gives the lie direct to the Premier, and more than insinuates that he is in league with the Brogdens to defraud the country. It is true that like any paltroon he humbly swallows his own words, but it is only, we expect, that he may return to the base attacks at the next favorable opportunity, and pour forth all the badness of his vindictive heart against his earliest friend and benefactor. Mr Ormond has a fame in connection with the land transactions in Hawke's Bay, but he has now made himself distinguished as the most consummate slanderer and false accuser in the Assembly. It is true that he and the faction that he represents in the most notorious Province in New Zealand have special reasons for having an honest Government like that of Sir George Grey ousted from power as speedily as it can be effected. With some members of the old Ministry it is a question of bread ; with Mr Ormond it is one of land and. land titles, and as he has more to dread than others, so his feelings, are more tightly strung, and his spite more unmeasured. But, taken altogether, the members of the late Government have made sorry exhibition of themselves in this perpetual nagging*, a course of conduct that seems to have burst up the Opposition of the House, and certainly, at least, has pre duced throughout the country a feeling of irrepressible disgust.