OUR MEMBER.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume 2, Issue 1, 3 June 1892, Page 5

OUR MEMBER.

The Otago Witness, in dealing with Mr O'Conor and his recent interview with a press representative at Wellington, says:—" Mr O'Conor has been away six months, and during that time has qualified himself to inform the world definitely upon the ultimate destinies of several nations of Europe (including, incidentally, the British. Empure). He is under the innocent impression—which We Bhould be the last to disturb—that fo spend a few weeks in England is to entitle a West Coast politician to polish bfl in a few glib sentences the whole of the military, commercial, and political con-ditions,-present and future, of x the Mother Country; that a trip "to France—whicli several hundred thousand Englishmen take every year and nay nothing about'it —suffices io put the galloping tourist au fait with the entire machinery of the great republic; and that similar principles apply to Italy, Switzerland, and (for aught we know)., the Buller. He is also under the equally innocent hallucination that no other New Zealander has ever seen the countries named—except, of course, the Buller;'though very few

New Zealanders, we admit, have seen that. 'On arrival in England,' Mr O'Conor remarked, ' I was much struck with the magnitude of her industral operations.' Ought not some one to be sent home to England at once t« see whether this startling discovery can be substantiated ? Mr O'Conor cannot really be serious. ' The country population is really the backbone of France.' Amazing! ' The general and local taxation in'Europe is very heavy.' Mr O'Conor ought to have broken the fact to us more gently of there being any taxation in ' Europe' at all. He really leaves us all gasping."