A LIMPING REPLY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 16326, 23 August 1913, Page 10

A LIMPING REPLY.

It cannot have been for lack of material that the Prime Minister failed so dismally in the speech with which he concluded the financial debato in tho House of Representatives yesterday. It is many a long year since a Government has been eo vigorously attacked by an Opposition as Mr Massey and his colleagues have been attacked by tho Liberals during the last fortnight. Every department of their administration has been reviewed with a candour that ought to have given the Minister a great deal to say in defence of himsolf and his colleagues, but apr parontly ho deemed it wiser to lot the graver charges go by default and to make a jest of the rest. Mr Massey’s humour is always a little halting and on this occasion it appears to havo been particularly feeble and obscure. Probably ho was joking when he said the Liberals were responsible for four millions and a half of tho enormous sum added to the public debt last year, but tho facts disclosed in the Budget itself called for more serious treatment after they had been so scathingly analysed by his opponents. The Prime Minister seemed to find a more congenial task in making offensive personal allusions to his critics than in attempting to defend Mr Allen’s finance, and when ho sat down with a grudging apology to Mr G. W. Russell his friends must have felt that he had made a most inglorious display. His reference to a photograph of his predecessors in offioo and his threat to read a letter from the member for Grey Lynn promising him support in turning the Liberal Government out of office may bo taken as sufficiently indicating the tone of a speech that was utterly unworthy of the loader of the House.