THE BROGDEN CONTRACT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 40, 28 October 1871, Page 2

THE BROGDEN CONTRACT.

[lndependent, October 23.] The trick of setting class against class, which, at the general election, was so indecently resorted to in Wellington by the Opposition, is now being repeated. The meeting of Saturday night last is its first development. A more ludicrous farce was never enacted in the Odd Fellows’ Hall. Mr Wakefield “ starred” it on the occasion in a manner that must make every right-hearted colonist blush for very shame that Par liament is disgraced by the presence of such a political mountebank. The resolutions drawn up, it is understood by himself, with the assistance of Mr Stafford, did not seem to be comprehended by any of their proposers. They never spoke to them at all. Mr Wakefield’s own speech was so irrelevant that he was repeatedly called to “ stick to the question.” This he either could not or would not do. One of the best speeches was the candid and judicious introductory address of the chairman — the very best, in our opinion, being the threeworded one from a gentleman in the audience : “ Read the contract.” Every man of sense present felt that the whole affair was a perfect farce. The meeting was called to pass resolutions on a subject of which speaker after speaker admitted in express terms be knew nothing. The Brogden contract was condemned, but the condemnation was in every case accompanied by the confession that it was not understood. Every speaker, from different and even conflicting postulates of his own devising, came to the same conclusion. Mr Wakefield stated that a few days before the meeting he had given the Working Men’s Committee a copy, but speaker after speaker seemed to vie with each other in showing profound ignorance of its provisions. But with all this ignorance there was much wilful misrepresentation. The language used by Mr Wakefield with regard to Mr Vogel and the members of Parliament who generally support him, was too foul to be reproduced in our report in all its unmitigated blackguardism. Leaving him for the present we proceed to notice some of the misrepresentations of the speakers. The first intentional misrepresentation (for much of the misrepresentation was due to utter ignorance) was the assertion by .Mr Williams about the number of unemployed in Wellington, and in New Zealand generally. He read a sentence shewing that things were worse in Victoria, and that the people there are rising against immigration ; but in his quotation from the report of Mr Hart’s speech, taken from the “ he adroitly left out a sentence, which W 0 take leave to supply : Mr Sterling’s invitation to all present to ascend the platform, and say what they felt, was accepted by Mr Hart, who had been 19 years in Melbourne, bat had had no regular work for three months paßt, and was now a meal-a-day man. There were manifest tokens, however , about Mr Hart's left eye of his having had some very serious business on hand quite recently. He estimated the unemployed of Melbourne and suburbs at 4,000. He went in strongly against immigration so long i as work was scarce, and also against sub-con • | tracts. I

If this Mr Hart has become a meal-a-day man through the system of subcontracts, what a deplorable future are

Mr Williams and his colleagues preparing for us ! The meeting was throughout further misled by the speakers on the subject of the navvies that, under the contract, are to come out “in shoals.” The contract which Mr Gisborne stated the Government are prepared to recommend for adoption, is that known as Number Two Contract—and will it be believed by those who listened to the speeches on Saturday night that that contract says nothing ivhatever about immigrants of any sort! Yes, the working men of Wellington were most shamefully abused. Ten thousand immigrants were to come out, who were all to marry wives, and when the railways were ready, they were all to desert them ! The people now in the country are to be praised and encouraged for having left England to try to better their circumstances; but the people sent out under the Brogden contract are to be condemned and discouraged for following their example ! Then again Mr Brogden was represented at once as the cunningest and silliest of mankind. He is going to swindle the country, and go home with his ill-gotten gains, which by cunningly acting for a series of years on the principle of paying twice as much for everything as he requires, are to amount to millions ! To spite New Zealand and benefit himself he is going to pay £IOO for an imported article which he could here get for £SO ! In order to make a colossal fortune he is going to employ none but inferior workmen, and in his eagerness to be rich through theirlabors he is going to appoint over them incompetent overseers ! His best chaDce of making the contract pay is, as we learn from the printed papers, by keeping down as far as he can “ the amount of deterioration in value through wear and tear or want of repair.” And yet these wiseacres would have us believe that he will attain this end by making “ miserable railways, requiring constant repair f’ He is going to intro duce the ten-hours system ; he is going to import that “ heathen Chinee he is going—but really we are tired of euuine rating all the dreadful things he is going to do. It is truly lamentable to read the wretched balderdash uttered by Mr Wakefield and his “brother working men.” The most of it we have heard over and over again in the same hall. Mr Wakefield tried hard to persuade the electors of Wellington that their representatives, Messrs Hunter and Pearce, had broken their pledges, but the attempt was a miserable failure. Mr Pearce’s electioneering address, advertised in the “ Evening Post,” thus begins:— First, then, I am a supporter of the policy of the present Government for the advancement of the colony by means of borrowed money for the construction of roads, bridges, railways, and other reproductive works. Foreign capital obtained on equitable terms, and judiciously spent in the country, cannot, I believe, fail to be of immense benefit to all classes of the comm unity. Of Mr Hunter the same journal writes :

Mr Hunter was tlie next to ascend the table, and confined liis remarks to the subject of borrowing, He warmly advocated the policy of borrowing as much money as possible for the purpose of opening up the country by roads and railroads. He also advocated a large scheme of immigration, and contended that Dr Featherston’s acceptance of the office of agent was the best proof of his belief in the possibility of carrying out the policy and plans of the Government. And in the very same issue we read— It is quite clear (our contemporary, is by the way, always very clear in his prophecies. They would be all the better, perhaps, of a little more ambiguity!) from the expression of opinion recently elicited at public meetings, that this city will soon be delivered from the incubus of that system of “ family Government ” with which it has so long been afflicted. The great mass of the people—the independent electors—the working men—who have no office to retain, and no billet to expect, will certainly, as a body, vote for Messrs Travers and Richmond. They can do so safely now, because under the protection afforded by the ballot, their votes will remain an absolute secret, and it will be impossible for men of wealth and position to oppress and try to ruin their poorer brethern, only because they have voted according to their own consciences. This has often been done before in Wellington, but, thank Heaven, those days of corruption, undue influence, and oppression have departed for ever. The working-men of Wellington, we can assure L\fr Wakefield, are not so easily befooled. Mr Travers is a far better hustings orator than he is ; he tried all this anti-immigration, anti foreign capital and labor bunkum, and he tailed. Mr Wakefield cannot sureh expect to succeed by his drearier inanities, even although they are illustrated with the double shuffle, his dexterity at

which lie so amusingly displayed on Saturday night. In attempting to persuade the electors that all the patriotism, all the virtue, and all the talent of the Assembly are on his side, he is nothing compared even to poor Richmond ! His abuse of his Canterbury colleagues who support the Government, as needy adventurers without any stake in the country, and with no interest in its future, suggests the presumption that he is sent to Coventry by such gentlemen as Hall, Studholme, Rhodes, Peacock, Richardson, Karslake, Brown, and others; and that, in common with a large majority of his own constituents, they consider Christchurch disgraced by havingsuch a representative. What gives a man an interest in the future of New' Zealand, Mr Wakefield does not clearly define, but w T e venture to assert that his Canterbury colleagues alone, who support the Government, have far more at stake than all the glorious minority put together ! To assert that Taranaki, Wellington, and Hawke’s Bay are now represented by members who take bribes in the way Mr Wakefield so comically illustrated on the stage, is an insult to all the settlers in these three provinces. They support the Government, it is true, but they have more interest in the future of the colony than the Browns and the Shepherds whom Mr Wakefield finds more congenial associates. On the Brogden contract a plain issue will be put before the country in a day or two. Any discussion on it in the meantime is both premature and abortive ; and for a member to take part in it while Parliament is sitting is simply digraceful. The w'orking-men’s committee, some of whom are excellent citizens, have simply been made tools of. We regretted to see them associated with a man like Trueman, whose scandalous conduct at the general election we ha 1 occasion to expose. They should leave him to the more fitting companionship of the buffoon who calls himself “ Teddy Wakefield.”