PUBLIC OPINION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15900, 11 April 1912, Page 7

PUBLIC OPINION.

FROAI YESTERDAY’S NEWS. PAPERS. (By Telegraph.) NOT PLAYING THE GAAIE. Tho Hutt electors were disfranchised during the late session simply because the Opposition, in its desperate desire for a transient triumph, could not rise to. a generous occasion. As regards Air Herries, the most popular and perhaps the ablest member of the reactionary party, we earnestly hope that he will be well and strong when Parliament reassembles, but should it unfortunately be otherwise, the Prime Alinister’s personal promise of a pair (so ungraciously received in some quarters) will be scrupulously fulfilled. Neither Tauranga nor-Hutt should bo virtually disfranchised, and there is no real difference between the two cases. “ Star.” THE MODEST .MINISTRY. It is a quaint spectacle that is presented to the country when Air Thomas Alackenzie, Air G. W. Russell and Mr Laurenson, each of them . discovering the existence of some previously unsuspected virtue in the other, occupy a common platform as members of the Government, but even more entertaining is the chorus of self-laudatioii which the new Ministers are insistently raising. Air Hanan, who lias from long practice in fulsomely praising the leaders of his party acquired a vocabulary of panegyrics such as his. colleagues may well despair of mastering, has, as might have been expected of him, surpassed all the other Alinisters in tho fervour with which lie extols the curiously assorted Government that temporarily administers the affairs of tin country.—“ Otago Daily Times.”