Mt. Ida Chronicle NASEBY, THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1893 MR REEVES' STUMPING TOUR.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume 24, Issue 1227, 1 June 1893, Page 2

Mt. Ida Chronicle NASEBY, THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1893 MR REEVES' STUMPING TOUR.

The HonV W. P. Reeves, who likes to be known in the towns as the Minister for Labour, and in the country as the Minister for Education, has made two very characteristic' speeches in this province. Mr Reeves is a smart, shallow, clever, and eminently plausible whose; principles are anything that suits the popular whim of' the hour, and whose practice' is- in excellent accord with his principles:He has half-read a number of semiSocialistic tracts of the day, arid acquired a dictionary acquaintance with some of the more dreadfully serious professors of that dismal science, which enables him on occasion to reel off their names and fancies by the • yard with astonishing glibness, and is intended to strike his hearers dumb with astonishment at his great erudition. By the time the trick has been played half a dozen times or so, people get accustomed to it, and the " fizz " ■ goes out of it; but it is always good for a new place for a time or two, and was duly "got off" with satisfactory success the other day. Another stale' witticism of the hon. 'gentleman's, which must be very familiar to the readers of his speeches in Hansard, ispicking out a string of words from an opponent's speech (of course carefully concealing the con text from his audience) and making feeble jokes upon the col' lection as he passes them in review. This, too, is effective enough when worked in a new place—just like thelectures of Mrs Dr. Potts and her colleague, " Dr" Harrison, with their moral stereopticon views to demon-' strate (in elaborate and seat-filling detail) the distressing effects of youthful improprieties. We should imagine it is played out in Parliament and in Christchurch, but there can be no real objection to its being trotted out in other localities when more valuable matter is not to be had. The special' object of the hon. gentleman's dislike is our own member, and one of the ways in which he shows it is that he is invariably afraid to make a speech until the member for Mt Ida has finished his. No matter whether in Parliament or on the platform, nothing will induce Mr Reeves to open his mouth as long as there is any fear that the battery of Mr Scobie Mackenzie's terrible straightforwardness will be turned upon his flippant pretences, as was so often tlie case before the bird became too shy. As the Wellington correspondent whom we recently ' quoted said, it was useless to endeavour to get the Minister for Labour to speak either in Dunedin or in Lawrence* until the echo from the Naseby platform had safely died away, A large part of Mr Reeves' speech was devoted to an attempt to explain away and . make a joke of Mr Scobie Mackenzie's slashing criticisms; and the line adopted was one well calculated to take with an audience almost exclusively composed of the hon. gentleman's " labour " partisans. Mr Reeves was smart enough to see that if he could only, by a few jocularities and quips • and smirks, avoid anything in the shape of argument or real reply the purpose of, the moment could be served with his supporters, and the thing could be made to read fairly well at a distance. Accordingly we find plenty of these somewhat amusing but rather paltry quips and cranks, but hardly a single serious attempt to explain away the proved fact-s which Mr Scobie Mackenzie recentlyadduced against the Government. compares the two speeches, it will be found that the attack upon Mr Mackenzie is almost wholly personal. It is directed more against the grammar of his speech—for which after all nobody cares except Ministers of Education, who have to be precise oflicially about the grammar of everybody—than against the facts. Some of the most striking of the latter are, indeed, not even alluded to—they are left discreetly alone ; while as to the others, the jocular method of treatment was almost wholly relied upon, and argument was, with considerableastuteness, left unessayed. We confess that to us the most striking part of Mr Reeves' speech—and we wish we could add the most creditable—was the abuse and contempt which this young politician poured out, from the lofty elevation of his superior wisdom, upon the•/■■'<■'. Legislative Council—an institution of which, up to within a year or two ago, his own father was one of the leading members. The spectacle of the sonthus holding up to the ridicule and hatred of a city audience the position and the work with which the father's ambition and patriotism had so long been associated, was truly a painful and indeed a shocking one ; and there must have been few indeed of Mr Reeves' own friends present who did not feel a shiver as they saw and heard him bidding for popular applause there on tho platform, and prepared to buy it even at such a cost. We do not wish to pursue this distress-

ing subject. To ourselves "we confess it is sufficient to thrown a sickly and 'even a ghastly hue over the string of feeble jocularities which might otherwise have better satisfied our ideal of ' a speech from a Minister o£ the Grown. _ Mr Reeves described the Legislative Council as the washers and manglers of Parliament. lie meant the term for one of contempt, but it is fairly true. He says they have given up washing and taken to mangling. Probably tie reason they have given up ■washing of late is that by no possible process of purification can the Government dirty linen be made to look decent or smell sweet; but, as to mangling, he admits that they still stick to that. Mangling, as we understand, consists in bringing a steady and well regulated pressure to bear on a crude mass of tangled and otherwise objectionable

stuff. It has the effect of smoothing out the asperities and irregularities, unravelling the secret folds and twists, opening out all the hidden corners to the light of day, and displaying the ,best aspect of a previously shapeless bundle to the public eye. In this work, at which Mr Reeves, regardless of his father's long and honourable share in it, sneers and jokes on a platform to earn a round of applause from his masters, there is neither dishonour nor futility. We defend a late honourable Councillor from the flippant jeers of a " successful" son.

At Lawrence Mr Reeves, after the *ustomary manner of Ministers, put the jargon of the towns and tried his level best to appear in the character of a born agriculturist. He demonstrated (with as much success as some of his colleagues at Vast public expense demonstrated the same thing to the Bruce electors last year) that a Government which is under the heel of the city unions is the "best possible Government for the independent farmer, and that each of its members Was a self-sacrificing patriot of a kind that never was seen in the rural districts befores Mr Reeves may Test assured that anything his Government may do in the way of assisting settlement will receive full appreciation, and. we think the Government is, as it ought to be, and as it is to be hoped all New Zealanders are, -anxious to see settlement spread and prosper. But he must not forget the shameless statements on the subject which were made from the platform at the Bruce for the purpose of humbugging the- farmers, and the exposure that' followed them ; and he will find that actions speak louder than words, and ; that the only w*y to capture the country vote is not to beat his breast and trumpet forth his unequalled virtue, but to show that when the enenries.of the farmers demand their oppression he has a soul of his own to resist the order. He has not shown that yet, but the reverse. The only other remarkable thing in Mr Reeves' addresses was his singular and significant silence about his present chief. His tribute to Mr Ballance "was excellent, but it only served to Tiring out with more marked emphasis his dogged silence about the Hon. - Uichard, whose iron hand, it is well known, leaves a burning mark whenever it is applied upon the comparatively slim and nerveless wrist of the ! •Minister for Labour. I