The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED DAILY WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31. 1928. MR. LISSANT CLAYTON AS CRITIC.

Gisborne Times, 31 October 1928, Page 4

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED DAILY WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31. 1928. MR. LISSANT CLAYTON AS CRITIC.

I(; is quito plain that it is not patent to Mr. Lissant Clayton, the United Party candidate, that ho is proceeding with his campaign on lines similar to those which must’ hnvo been responsible, in the main, l‘or his heavy defeats on the two previous occasions on which ho tried to achieve Parliamentary honors. Modesty, it would seem, is conspicuously absent from his political make-up and the wholo constituency must be convulsed over his advice to the effect that ho is really the only Candida to whom electors could, with feelings of pride—if he should he elected—claim that they had assisted! A s a. rule, political aspirants prefer to leave it to others to extol their worth, hut Mr. Clayton, presumably, wishes to make certain that that part of the stage-management of his candidature is not overlooked! To get right down to tin-tacks, Mi. Clayton is once again affecting. such a. grandiloquent tone of superiority that it is not unlikely that he will become a political laughing-stock from one end of the Dominion to the other. It will bo generally agreed that ho quito overstepped the bounds of good taste when he charged the Prime Minister with having a swelled head, hut, in asking an audience which of the other Ministers, besides Sir Francis Bell, Mr Downie Stewart and, as he put it, perhaps Mr Coates, has any intellectual ability he made an excursion into the realms of political unseemliness. There is, however, nothing new about these foolish tactics on his part, for, both at the 1905 and the 1908 General Elections, he transgressed the general rules of political etiquette just as flagrantly. It may he recalled that in the former year, lie hurt the feelings of the bulk of tlio electors of the old Waiapu constituency by his rudeness in referring to Sir James Cairoll as a, “nonentity” and by his ill-humor in designating Mr Sedclon “the Czar of New Zealand.” A further gratuitous remark that he made no hoast of special ''.love

•for tho Maoris could not. have failed to make him still more unpopular. On the occasion of 1908 contest, Mr Clayton made further bad “breaks,” of which possibly the worst bad reference to the appointment of the Hon. (now Sir) Win. Hall-Jones to the High Oominisionership. “It has been publicly stated,” he remarked, “that Mr Reeves was asked to resign and a decayed Minister has been asked to take his place.” In all tho circumstances, the Hon. K. S. Williams could hardly have reproved Mr Clayton in a more gentlemanly manner, but, of accepting the reproof in silence, Mr Clayton lias, in his rejoinder, merely aggravated his indiscretion. What requires to be borne in mind, however, is this: that, if he had so desired. Mr Clayton might have been even more insulting to the members of the Coates Ministry, if one may be guided by what he said in 1905 concerning tho Seddon Ministry. r ‘Wo want straight men to administer tho affairs of this colony,” ho claimed at his To Karaka meeting during that election campaign, continuing: “‘And I say this: that there are Ministers of the Crown at the present time whom I. would not give £2 a week to work in my office.” Humor)"is, of course, lent to the quotation by the fact that Mr Clayton’s new political boss was, at tho time, Mr Seddon’s chief lieutenant! Rut on this aspect, of the matter, more anon.