POLITICAL POINTS.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12364, 1 December 1905, Page 7

POLITICAL POINTS.

There are rather more than 200 candidates "out" for the various seats:— "Firo in each eye, and papere in each hand, ; They rave, recito, and madden round "the land." —Pope. Mr Massey defines Tammanyism, as practised in New Zealand, as "running tho business <jf the country in the interests of the party in power." The transfer by Mr Seddon of £11,000 out of the vote for the Midland Railway and its expenditure on tho North Auckland Railway, to which we drew attention on Wednesday, was not the only transaction of tho kind which tho Midland Railway has suffered at the Premier's hantfc. From votes for tho same line, £10.000 was taken to purchase railway material, £5000 for the PaeroaWaihi Railway, and £6000 for the Gi&-borne-Karaka Railway. Canterbury the miloh cow, as usual. In all these cn.-es tho nominal purposo for which the money was voted by Parliament was ignored. What docs Mr Seddon care for Parliament or constitutional procedure? " I want to see a system," paid Mr Massey, in speaking on the proposal for a Civil Service Board, "whereby tbe son or daughter of the wharf labourer who works for a shilling an hour, will have exactly the same opportunity, other thing; being equal, in competing for appointments to tho Public Service of the colony, as the son or daughter of a Minister of the Crown. That is a long way," ho added, " from being the position in this colony at the present time." Mr Rutherford told his Kaikoura audienco that he was not a Masseyito, " but ho believed in the Premier getting a few slaps now and then." There are a good many people who believe in tho same treatment, and they are prepared to give Mr Seddon a liberal doso of it next Wednesday. In a characteristically candid criticism of tho Ministry, Mr F. M. B. Fisher 6aid that in Mr MoGowon they had an honest, straightforward littlo shopkeeper. Instead of running the Minos Department, he ought to be . (" Running a wheelbarrow," suggested an interjector.) It was absurd, added Mr Fisher, to have 6uch inefficient men in the Ministry—men who, when in charge of a Bill, were afraid to accept an amendment to a clause in tho Premier's absence without first ringing him up and asking him about it. Tho "man on the land," said Mr Rutherford at Kaikoura, had now actually beoomo a Conservative; one only had to walk over a new "oocky's" land to see how tho "cocky" performed. These men wore going to take a big part in the management of the colony, which had been left too much to city folk. "To hear the Premier talk about land fo.- closer settlement," says Mr J. G. W. Aitken, of Wellington, "you would think he was findina the money himself." He (Mr MoLaculan) would have us believe, writes a correspondent of the Ashburton "Mail," that the whole prosperity of the oountry is due to tho present Government. I will speak from cxperienoe. I was a farm labourer during the reign of Sir Harry Atkinson, and I never received less than £1 2s 6d to £1 5s per week, but a year after the Liberal Government camo into offioo I had to tako 17s 6d, and could not get any more in any part of the .Ashburton County. As tho farmers had to aooopt low prioes for their produce, they could not give big wages. 1 Our freezing works, the drought in Australia, and the Transvaal war, together with good seasons, havo done more for the working men of this oolony than our present Liberal Government. It is the easiest thing in the world for tho Premier to casually appropriate the notions of Mr Massey and his opponents and represent them as his own, remarks the Wanganui "Chronicle," for long practibo has rendered him an adept in tho art of political pocket-picking. Tho "swag" of unconsidered trifles which Mr Seddon has "pioked up" here, there, and everywhere, and which ho has boldly labelled as his policy, is certainly worth looking into. Here is Female Franchise, flagrantly filched from the pioneers of electoral extension and reform—the Opposition. Here is a promise to givo assured finance to local bodies, a plank cribbed from its rightful owners—the Opposition. Here is a promise to give timber and flax royalties to local bodies, a piece of policy which has grown old in tho possession of the Opposition, and which in its old age has been coolly collared by the Premier. Here is a proposal for universal superannuation, tho property of the Opposition, but sadly mlitilated in the process of appropriation. And hero is tho much-boomed Workers' Homes, an idea deliberately stolen from Mr Bollard, a prominent member of tho Opposition party These are some of the "pickings" culled at random from the Premier's "swag," but they do not by any means exhaust the list of'its illegitimate contents.