The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Thursday, August 4, 1887. A TORY VIEW OF N.Z. POLITICS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 23, 4 August 1887, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Thursday, August 4, 1887. A TORY VIEW OF N.Z. POLITICS.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy counti y’s. Thy God’s, and truth’s.

Mr. J. W. Sunderland, one of our best-known and most respected settlers, has been casting what are no doubt in his own opinion, pearls of political philosophy before the public through the medium of our contemporary’s columns. It is a good sign to see a man of his stamp come forward and take a practical interest in the political questions of the day, but we trust that there are not many in the district who share his political views. Space will not permit of our doing more than merely picking out a few of the salient points of his letter, but there are one or two statements, or rather opinions, which should not be allowed to pass unchallenged. From the general tenor of the letter it is easy to see that Mr Sunderland is a good old English Tory, one, who at Home, would be a faithful follower of Lord Salisbury, one wedded firmly to the ideas of by-gone days, a hater of democracy and democratic ideas. A leading idea of his is that Parliaments are falling into disrepute, mainly on the assumption that there is too frequently a reversal of a previous policy, and a hasty adoption of a new one. This is Toryism all over. Let us die rather than change our opinions. However much we may be in the wrong in

□ur views, once we adopt 'them, let us stick to them as tenaciously as an average barnacle, and refilsb to budge one inch on the path of progress and reform. No thank you, Mr Sunderland, the age is necessarily an age of change, and therefore changes must come. To expect an assembly of men to sit still and refuse to reverse the bad legislation of the past simply because it means a change will never do now-a-days. Then we colonists are accused of winking at arid encouraging wholesale and retail bribery, This is apropos of the Vegelian loans. We can hardly agree with our critift on that point either, for we hold that the loans have made New Zealand a great and prosperous colony, have lifted it out of the mire of apathy and somnolence, have brought it out Or the rearguard into the front rank of British possessions, There have been mistakes made, but as Shakespere says “ The best men are moulded out of faults,” and from the mistakes of the past we have gained a Valuable experience.

Mr Sunderland would have us believe that all our politicians are " professed,” we suppose he really means “ professional ” politicians. We refuse to believe this. There have been men in the House who were unworthy of their position, and who stooped to base and despicable devices to gain popularity, but the New Zealand Parliament will compare well, as to honesty of purpose and decency of demeanour with even that which sits at Westminster, and is assuredly superior in tone to any in the Australian Colonies.

Then again our reformer says; “Hardly any constituency returns the best man it could. Possibly because the best men object to being candidates, object to canvassing, to hobnobbing with individual constituents, object particularly to abuse from the papers, object most to telling lies, without which but few men can be returned.”

This is mere bunkum. Surely Mr Sunderland, even looking at the question from the lofty pedestal of philosophic criticism whence he regards the common herd of electors, does not expect the candidates to elect a man unheard, who never explains personally to them his views on the great questions of the day. “Hobnobbing,” Mr Sunderland contemptuously entitles the personal interview but greater men than he have “hobnobbed' without damage to their noble selves. Let a man be a man, come out boldly with his views, interview his future constituents, argue matters out with them, and, even if he be not a University man, or an army man, or a “ sassiety ” man, his opinions may be well worth hearing) and possibly be just as acute and well weighed as those of the man who objects to “ hobnobbing.”

Then “the abuse from the papers.” Of course there are men whose writings are a disgrace to journalism, but, happily, they are few and far between. We think Mr Sunderl_and is doing the New Zealand Press an injustice when he insinuates that abuse is its main weapon against a political antagonist. The taunt is unjustified, and would not apply except in very few instances. It is only natural that satire should be used at times, but the sheathed sword of satire is far different to the deadly dagger of malice and persona] abuse. As far as we are concerned we may occasionally use the former, but, we trust, and feel sure, never the latter. An ungenerous sneer too is that which refers to the Home Rule question. To catch the Irish vote, infers our reformer, candidates are deliberately espousing a cause in which, in their heart of hearts, they do not believe, at least so Mr Sunderland thinks. We cannot believe this to be true, for we cannot understand how any sane individual, especially if he have liyed in the colonies a few years, can possibly oppose Home Rule. Of course, we have no doubt that Mr Sunderland is one of those gentlemen who leisurely study their Times and Morning Post and their Saturday Review ; naturally an English Tory would do so, and his earlier bringing up and connections make him blind to the other side, but all men are not alike, and do not read Tory papers exclusively.

No, in company with him, who, in spite of jeers and sneers, is truly the “grand"old man, theyjhave studied both sides, have read the thrice hateful tale of English tyranny and injustice, of landlords' rapacity, and the sufferings of an indusrious peasantry, and are they all to be put as hypocrites because they refuse to worship at the shrine of Salisbury, and swallow holus bolus the vamped up cock-and-bull stories which the Times is so industriously circulating. Certainly not and certainly they should be thus hastily “writ down as hypocrites.” But we must close this already too lengthy article. We trust our criticism of Mr Sunderland’s letter will be received by him in the spirit in which it is written, that of dispassionate argument on a public letter. It is not every day we come across a colonial specimen of the genuine old True-blue, and the temptation to reply to his attack upon our New Zealand democratic system was irresistible.