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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7415, 25 August 1885, Page 4

People seem to have made up their minds now that nothing good can come out of the present session of Parliament, . and that the best that can be hoped for is that it should abstain from doing some great evil. A Government is holding office which has invariably been defeated, but members will nob turn them out, and they have not sufficient self-respect left to go out. They are eager to lead the House into courses which would bring disaster upon the colony; but probably they will be prevented, and tied up so that they cannot do the mischief they would like to perpetrate. The Public Works Statement comes on to-night, and will cause a revival of interest, the important point being the proposal with respect to the East and West Coast Railway. The Government will propose a vote to'make a commencement of the work at probably more than one point. We hope that a majority of the House will set thfcir faces against this like a flint. If the House voted £150,000, and kept up that sum each session, twenty years would not see the railway completed. Members should have three golden rules for this session and the next, at all events—no more large public works to be entered into, no more loans to be authorised, no more taxation to be sanctioned. Mr. Montgomery is still shivering on the brink of a no-confidence motion, and 1 will probably remain in that uncomfortable position till the close of the session.

Tub telegram published to-day respecting the massacre at Berber throws a lurid light on the condition to which insurrection has reduced the inhabitants of the Soudan. It appears that the populace, reduced to a state of starvation, rose en masse and • took -possession of the treasury, with a view to the releaving of their distress, when the garrison endeavoured to repel the people, and as a matter of coarse great loss of life ensued. This event reveals the attitude which the people bear towards the representatives of insurrectionary authority, and is a sorrowful reflection on the mismanagement which the British Government have been guilty of in that country. In consequence of unpardonable delays in the movements of the British forces and tho egregrious , mistake made in selecting the Nile route, instead of the route via Suakim for the Khartoum relieving expedition, Berber was allowed to fall into the hands of the rebels, who, despite Gordon's temporary recapture of the place, have since remained masters of the situation. What the effect of their sway has been, and will be if the country is to be suffered to . remain under their rule, is demonstrated by the deplorable results just reported. In these may be witnessed the usual ghastly consequences of anarchy ; the industry of the country arrested ; those in arms devouring all the produce obtainable; and the peaceful inhabitants made desperate through suffering from want. And yet this is the condition in which the British Government apparently propose leaving the country! For that is really what the recall of the British forces denotes ; unless, indeed, other means are being devised for pacifying ..the, . country which have not yet been disclosed. This melancholy event supplies a painful confirmation of the recorded views of Lord Wolseley on the measures necessary for the establishing of order in that unhappy laud. •In language, whose neglected significance has been accentuated by the insurrection and slaughter of the oppressed inhabitants, he plainly told the Government of the day that their obligations to that country could not be discharged by simply abandoning it, and that the evils afflicting it, if not dealt with then, would have to be met at a later date when their cure would be far more difficult to effect. His warnings were disregarded, but they have now been proved well founded, and the settlement of the Soudan will henceforth be forced upon Britain as a duty which it owes less to policy than humanity. That, as we have all along maintained, is the mission to which her interference and control in Egypt has irrevocably committed her, and all attempts to evade the obligation will only cover her with shame, if not disgrace. Her choice lies between the prompt adoption of measures for the establishing of order in the Soudan, or the immediate abandoning of Egypt altogether. This view of Britain's position derives startling confirmation from another of this morning's cables, which states that a thousand Dervishes have now assembled at JDongola. The presence of these men there is an unmistakable sign that they are about to preach an insurrectionary crusade for the expulsion of the foreigner and the exclusive establishment of Islam rule, which, if not checked, will speedily overrun the whole of the Egyptian territory.