THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1905. MR. MASSEY'S SPEECH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 13030, 22 November 1905, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1905. MR. MASSEY'S SPEECH.

The enthusiastic gathering that filled and overflowed the Opera House last night in, order to hear the Leader of the Opposition reply to the Premier's recent campaigning speech at the Drill Hall was in no way disappointed. In all respects the proceedings were in remarkable contrast to those of last week. Instead of an audience torn by opposj ing feelings, and of which even the most friendly elements made no secret of their real opinion of the ; treatment of Auckland in the distri- : bution of Public Works money, the Opera House meeting exhibited from the commencement a* hearty unanimity rare in the political annals of Auckland. Nor was the con-

trast less marked between the evasive pleas and misleading utterances of the Premier and the decisive sentences and authoritative statements of his opponent. The audience had evidently not come merely to hear Mr. Massey, but to express their • sympathy with him in the battle that he is waging on behalf of the better administration of the colony in general and of the North Island and Auckland province in particular. For Aucklanders cannot forget, when Mr. Massey comes among them, that ho is a leader who is lifting the North from the degrading position to which it has been reduced by the long dominance of the Southern Administration. Mr. Seddon is necessarily at home in, Westland, where seven times as much is spent in Roads and Bridges as in the North of Auckland but Mr. Massey is at home throughout this island, and rightly - popular wherever the public have come to understand that every citizen must be a gainer by honest and impartial government, and a loser in the end by any maladministration of the public funds. As Dr. Bamford correctly expressed it, in the terse and eloquent summary of the position with which the proceedings were ushered in, this election should be fought out on the question of administration." Upon whatever else citizens may disagree, there should be no disagreement upon the fundamental principle that equity and justice should dominate public life. That gross injustice is the present rule whenever Auckland's interests are before the Cabinet and Parliament is a fact notorious and unchallengeable, being complained of as much by Government supporters as by Oppositionists at all times excepting when an election is to the fore, when Governmental promises are falling like autumn leaves, and when the party drum is beaten until it hypnotises and obsesses every man who sets party above country and policy above principles. It is therefore not to be wondered at that Mr. Massey received a magnificent reception last night. The ovation which greeted him both inside and outside the Opera, House will encourage him to continue to the end the uphill fight he is making for the cleansing of public life, the reform of public administration, and the economising of the public funds.Mr. Massey's speech will be perused by our readers with the careful attention it deserves. It should convince them that if, when he returns to Wellington—for it is not a McCardle who can oust a Massey from the affections of Franklinhe is accompanied by the candidates who supported him on the Opera House platform last night, we shall not only have an Auckland delegation that will not sit dumbly under provincial injustice, but one which will enable Mr. Massey to make effective his ringing protest against maladministration. For Mr. Seddon's assertions and professions were swept away like chaff by Mr. Massey's simple appeal to what everybody who heard him, as everybody who reads him, knew to be true. Our Auckland public buildings, he declared, were a disgrace to the colony; as for our railways and our roadswhere were they"? And as for the Premier's vividly imaginative statements upon the Mapourika trip, the Wanganui trip, the voucher incident, the land tax statement, the land question, the wire item, and the score of other matters covered by Mr. Seddon at the Drill Hall, they were traversed by the Leader of the Opposition with an incisiveness that should make the Premier less careless of mingling fact and fiction in his future dealings with his. doughty opponent from Auckland Province. Some of these matters may beV and are, so small as to be beneath the legitimate notice of the leaders of national politics, but it must be remembered that each and every one of them originated with the Premier, who has considered no subject too petty and no half-truth too flagranti in his endeavour to discredit Mr. Massey with the people of Auckland. The speaker made it clear that in the complete absence of a policy by- the Government, and in the concentration of its energies upon the mere retention of office, it has been driven by the Opposition j to accept . progressive measures which it had never initiated. Mr. Massey, in passing on to general politics, eloquently advocated universal old age pensions, showed how the Workers' Dwellings Act owed its conception to Opposition members and its improvement to their efforts in committee, quoted his own past advocacy of the American system of giving the wife a legal share in the home, and , otherwise offered convincing disproof of Mr. Seddon's electioneering charges that the Opposition were the enemies of the workers of the colony, and that soup kitchens and shelters would be the penalty if Auckland took part in removing from office a Ministry to which Auckland owes so little. The platform upon \sfeich Mr. Massey stands should already be familiarly known to all who have followed the course of our colonial politics. Those who heard him last night will be at ! least convinced that in him that platform has a most capable exponent and the Opposition itself a capable and eloquent leader.