Hawke's Bay Herald. TUESDAY, MAECH 25, 1879.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5339, 25 March 1879, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. TUESDAY, MAECH 25, 1879.

One of the cablegrams recently received from London stated that Mr Graham Berry was anxious to be credited with moderation. We suppose it may be inferred from that expression that Mr Berry has made up his mind to accept very much less than his demands. It is a pity that the inclination to be moderate did not come upon Mr Berry earlier, as that was really all that was needed to prevent the troubles with which Victoria has been agitated almost from the moment of Mr Berry's advent to power. It was his want of moderation which at the very ©nset opened the quarrel with the Legislative Council. Mr Berry would insist upon tacking the payment of members to the Appropriation Bill, and so the Council put the bill on one side. He knew very well that that would be the result ; he knew that the matter of payment of members had always formed the subject of a separate bill ; but he was eager to try conclusions with the Legislative Council, and he purposely invited the contest. Had lie been moderate, had he confined his action to the endeavor merely of rewarding his hungry followers with the £300 a-year, the Legislative Council would have yielded, though not with a very good grace. But Mr Berry had not then learned the lesson of moderation. Nor had he learned it when, to coerce the Council into subjection, lie dismissed a host of civil servants, including Magistrates and County Court Judges, and threatened to open the gaols and lunatic asylums, and let loose the criminals and the insane. Even just prior to his departure from Melbourne, when he addressed a public meeting of his admirers, Mr Berry had not learned to be moderate. His speech then was full of fire and fury. He was for stripping the wealthy landowners of theirlands,and plainly told his hearers — and, we are sorry to say, it was received with shouts of applause — that it was to accomplish that object that the Legislative Council must be subjugated. There was no moderation about Mr Berry then. The fact was that it did not suit what Mr Berry was intent upon to be moderate. Had he taken up that role then there would have been no need of the embassy to London. Mr Berry would not have had the chance of being presented to Hoyalty, of being made a lion at the dinner given by a Secretary of State, and of being otherwise honored, and finally returning to Victoria as Sir Graham Berry, instead of the plain Mr Berry that left its shores. Nothing of this was to be attained by being moderate. It was only by deluding the populace into the belief that something very extreme in the way of a Liberal constitution would be obtained, or else that worse would follow, that Mr Berry could get to be sent home to England as the Chief Ambassador from Victoria. Strange that the Victorian people did not see through it ! Such obtuseness is not, however, very new. Mr Graham Berry is not the first demagogue who has deluded the masses, and who has contrived to keep up the delusion for a much longer term than an honest patriot could retain the confidence of the country. It seems almost incredible thatthe man who would have given up the Colony of Victoria to the wildest disorder because he could not get the Legislative Council under his heel, and who more, than hinted at revolutionary proceeding's if the demands of his party were not conceded, should have the effrontery to enter the presence of his Queen, and perhaps to receive from her a distinguishing mark of her favor ! But such a man as Mr Graham Berry has effrontery for anything. It is of the nature of such a man to feel no shame. The worst of it is that when we see men of that stamp rising to honorable positions, and receiving distinction from the hands of Royalty, the doubt arises whether honesty really is the best policy — whether, after all, knavery is not the right road leading to the highest pinnacle that a man can reach who chooses politics for his vocation. Who knows? There is, however, one thing to be said — and that is that we have not yet come to the conclusion of the history of Mr Graham Berry.