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Lyttelton Times, Volume LIII, Issue 5920, 16 February 1880, Page 4

The appointment o£ General Davidson to the command of the Middle Island Volunteers recalls a chapter in recent colonial history, besides the one on which we enlarged a few days ago in connection with it. The virtuous, patriotic, and public spirited gentlemen who formed the Opposition to Sir George Grey’s Government were most terribly exercised about Mr Luckie’s appointment to the Oommiasionership of Annuities, if we remember aright. The speeches of Mr Hall, Mr Rolleston, Mr Richardson, and others too numerous to mention, and the gentle mild article writers of the Opposition Press, all fastened both in sorrow and anger upon the appointment of Mr Luckie., It was a most unheard of thing that any one outside the service should be appointed to a high post. Nobody could say positively, so wo heard, that Mr Lubkie had ever shown any special aptitude for insurance business. It was, we were informed, monstrous to pass over men who had grown grey in the service in order to make room, for some reason or other, for a man who had no connection with the service whatever. The whole thing, wo were assured, was an awful job, an abuse of power calling for the hurling of any Ministry from the Government benches; one of those things only heard of in the most corrupt times. Now, it is a singular thing that none of these patriots have fastened in sorrow or in anger upon the appointment of General Davidson. No one, not even Mr Rolleston, has told us that it is a most anyone outside pH*! the Ami sAi H wiad

command of the whole of the Volunteer Force of the Colony, and held it well. The only reason he left it was that the House of Representatives was in an economical vein. If any one was entitled to bo reinstated when the office was. re-created, it was the officer who had been abolished. But the new office created is not the full ancient office, but a new subdivision of it, the principal difference being that tbe new one is proportionately far better paid—if what we hear is true. Nobody, moreover, has ever said—not even Mr Hall—that the new General has any fitness for the work he baa been appointed to do. Nobody —-not even Mr Bowen —has told us that it is monstrous to pass over men who have grown grey in the Volunteer service, in favour of a greyheaded old gentleman who has been found ready to hand to adorn the salary of the position. Nobody has assured the public that the whole thing is a most awful job or an- abuse of power, yet there is no difference at all between this case and tbe case of Mr Luckie. We beg Mr Luckie’s pardon, there is this difference, that the creation of the post to which Mr Luckie was appointed was necessary to the public service, but the creation of the commandership of the Middle Island Volunteers, with headquarters at Nelson is highly unnecessary, ridiculous, and wasteful. We do net say that General Davidson is not, eminently fitted to command the volunteers of Te Pounamu, but we do say that if these warriors required a commander, there are plenty of men in the service who are fit to command them and ought to have been appointed. The passing over of these men is inexcusable. While commenting upon such unwarrantable conduct, we cannot help laughing in our sleeve at the tremendous virtue which the gentlemen of the Hall Government assumed when they were in Opposition. Too much virtue, gentlemen, is inconvenient.