SIR ROBERT STOUT AND THE PRESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9369, 20 May 1889, Page 5

SIR ROBERT STOUT AND THE PRESS.

HIS OPINION OF THE WELLINGTON JOURNALS. LIBERALISM, ECONOMY, PARSIMONY, AND PESSIMISM. [BY TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT.] Wellington, Saturday. Tins morning's paper glows with very warm amenities between the late Premier and the editor. Any kind of diversion in dull times is worthy of thanks. That which this morning's Times affords is specially acceptable. It has the flavour of a very sharp political and literary duello. SIR R. STOUT AND THE WELLINGTON NEWSFAPKRS. Sir Robert opens the proceedings in a letter to the editor, a column and a half long, in which he speaks of the , Wellington Press in the following terms : — " Had there been any paper in Wellington representative of Liberalism I should not havo troubled you with any notice of your strictures on my late colleagues and myself. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there is no Liberal organ in the political capital of the colony. One journal considers that independence consists in being erratic, and all you can predict regarding it is that the set of politicians it supports one six months it will donounce tho succeeding half-year. Another writes as a constitutional Liberal, but is in the end on the Tory side. I am writing of what it used to be, but not lately. Its chief characteristics may be summed up in a word coined on the other side. It is ' froudacious.' It is brilliancy first; the rest, veracity, etc., nowhere. Your modesty has compelled me to mention yourself last. In the parish churches of England there is a very important functionary called the clerk. One of his chief duties is to utter the proper 'aniens' at the fitting times in the service. For the Atkinson party during the past ten years you havo pet'ormed that function. Whenever an 'amen' was necossary you uttered it, and you seemed to think of nothing else. I do ! not blame you. As a party paper you may havo been performing your duty ; but you are a party paper. In England and North America no one expects a party paper to bo very accurate or very impartial concerning political opponents, and can we expect tho New Zealand party political press, necessarily behind that of larger countries, to bo impartial or fair ? I can best give my opinion of your article by comparison. It is as veracious as the telegrams I read in the Southern press during session time, which came from a special correspondent whose journalistic confrere* have nicknamed him 'Ananias,' which stated that when the late Government left cilice there was a deficit of £528,000. Now this is ridiculously untrue. The deficit up to the 3lst March, 1887, was £92,293. All I care to show, however, is that our deficit was but £92,293, whilst the deficit of our successors was £382.074. I have omitted the Land Fund from our deficit, as it never was usual to bring it under the ordinary revenue account ; but if that be done, the deficit would be increased by £54,203. Now I ask the most biassed politician that ever read your paper, is it fair to charge us with a deficit that took place at the end of 31st March, 1888, when we ceased to be Ministers in October, 1887, and when if our policy of economy and fresh taxation had ever been carried out, there must have been no deficit ?" PARSIMONY AND ECONOMY. Referring to his letter to Mr. Joyce, M.H.R., Sir Robert says he defines what he meant by " parsimony" and economy as follows :—"You have wrongly assumed that in my letter to Mr. Joyce I was criticising the Acts of the present administration. I was referring to the young New Zealand party, nor did 1 say one word against economy. I objected to parsimony. You seem to see no distinction between the two. Economy consists in tho proper and careful spending of money ; parsimony is the with holding of expenditure. If parsimony had been the policy of the colony in the past I doubt if it would even have been a sheep walk. There would have been no towns, no education system, no direct service, no telegraphs, no railways, in fact no enterprise. Parsimony thinks the highest aim in life is to accumulate money ; economy believes that wisely spending money, looking with hope to the future, is a higher aim in life. 1 favour economy. To parsimony I am opposed, and I believe so far as the idea of parsimony has taken root amongst us it has been injurious.*' RESULTS OK A PESSIMIST POLICY. Sir Robert next enumerates the following as the consequences of a policy of "pessimism." Immigration has been stopped through it, and the cries of "depression" repeated until people outside New Zealand thought this colony bankrupt. Hero, he exclaims are the results of making a "god" of parsimony : —What a conservative action has done : (I) the honorarium has been re duced ; (2) the number of members has been reduced ; (3) Ministers' salaries have been curtailed ; (-1) aid to high schools withdrawn ; (5) village settlement scheme abandoned ; (0) perpetual lease system destroyed ; (7) small runs system destroyed ; (8) the tenure of pastoral leases largely increased, ami in certain runs made secure for 21 years ; ( ( J) valuable land sold at 10s and 12s per acre without settlement conditions ; (10) diimmyism is left rampant without check or hindrance ; (11) attempts made to weaken the State system of education ; (12) last, but nob least, 000,000 worth of property, our State railways, have been handed over to three irresponsible Civil servants. Till: NEWSPAPERS IN REPLY. The editor replies in a column and a-half of a leader. The following gives a fair idea of its tone and purport:—" All the Wellington daily papers are denounced in one sweeping anathema. They are not ' liberal.' Does anyone ask 'what is Liberal.' Sir Robert Stout has a ready answer. He is Liberal, so are those who acrco with him ; all others are illiberals of the deepest dye. True, Sir Robert Stout has professed all sorts of utterly contradictory political opinions since he first came before tho public. But surely this sort of charge comes with a singularly illgrace from Sir Robert Stout. Who was it that used to donounce State education as tantamount to a political crime, and now can find no words too hard for those who hold the same view, even in a modified shape? Who was it that denounced protection as ' robbery by the arm of the law,' yet now is the most pronounced of protectionists? Who now advocates land nationalisation, yet was only a few years ago one of the Ministry that adopted the largest scheme of Crown land alienation yet seen in New Zealand ? \Yho condemns the banding over of largo tracts of land to private owners and absentee proprietors, and yet handed over to a private syndicate of absentee capitalists trie hugest territory yet held under any single ownership in this colony ? Who was among the bitterest opponents of Sir Julius Vogel, yet unhesitatingly took the first opportunity of entering into a political and Ministerial alliance (we will not say an ' intrigue,' although some have said that) with him Who used to denounce imperial titles, and condemned those who accepted them, yet eagerly grasped at the first that was offered to himself? Must not the truthful answer to each of these queries be ' Sir Robert Stout ?' And if so, does it become him to accuse anyone else of inconsistency ?" The Post takes the opportunity of asserting its independence, and speaks of Sir Robert Stout in the following terms : —" It is the curse of New Zealand politics that its public men are constantly dancing Jim Crow, and advocating one session what they denounced the previous year. Sir Robert Stout is a conspicuous instance of this. There is scarcely a single political question on which he has not held briefs on both sides. On some he has changed his views several times since he entered public life, yet he rails at those who refuse to follow his political gyrations, or to admit that he is the sole exponent of Liberalism, or that whatever views he holds for the time must be designated by that title." The Press takes occasion to criticise some other compositions with which Sir Robert Stout has favoured the public, and turns back the phrase, " Liberalism," on the exPremier in a remarkable way. The following occurs in a leader this evening :— " It is unfortunate that nowhere can we get the question of the San Francisco mail service judged on its true merits. Sir Robert Stout, while alleging that he writes in the interest of the colony, does his best to becloud the whole issue by directly charging

Auckland with maintaining it for purely Auckland interests. His whole appeal to Auckland is based on the hypothesis that Auckland is adhering to the line out of a miserable selfishness. Does it never occur to Sir Robert that narrow-mindedness may be even further intensified in the clannish Scotch section of the Edinburgh of the South, and that his charge against Auckland may be the reflex ot his own mind ? Certainly Sir Robert is not in a position to throw stones or preach sermons to Auckland, whose people are quite as publicspirited, wide-minded, and enterprising as those of any of the provinces of this colony. Sir Robert Stout, in his conclusion, says : — "I am out of public life, have no desire to return to it, and possibly never shall do so. The pettiness of much of our recent political agitation is very painful to me." Such a letter as this is not likely to make any thoughtful person desire his return, and we can assure him that the colony is progressing very substantially in spite of the loss it has sustained by the retirement of so important a personage. We trust that his pain will be assuaged by the conviction that we are all perfectly happy, and that if we are ignorant of our misery, our ignorance is at least bliss."