CURRENT TOPICS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1289, 12 November 1896, Page 34

CURRENT TOPICS.

MR WILFORD AT PETONE.

Patitt Government is the system in force in this Colony, because it has justified itself to the popular mind by its results. The general election, therefore, it follows as certainly as day follows night, must be fought on party lines. In the district of Wellington Suburbs there is no personal question between the candidates. The only question is of political colour. Mr Wilford is the Liberal candidate. The only question is, does he come up to the standard of colour demanded by party considerations ? There is no doubt that he does. His speeches prove that Mr Wilford is a Liberal who subscribes to all the points of the Liberal doctrine, and believes in the Liberal leaders who have made good so many of these points, and are ready to make good more of them. That is the supreme test. It is not enough for a man to be sound in the doctrine alone. He must be sound also on the party question. It is obvious that without the help of the party the doctrine would have been a dead letter in the past, and that it will be a dead letter in the future. Liberalism must be judged therefore, not by principles alone, but by the readiness** of its advocates to give practical effect to the principles. There is no other way of doing that but the way of party. Every man who wants to destroy the party system is an iconoclast who is ready to break the principles of his party. Mr Wilford has from the first complied with the standard by which Liberal politicians must be judged; and every speech he makes brings the fact oat in stronger relief. Every elector who aims at the triumph of Liberal principles will see the necessity of endorsing the vote of confidence given to Mr Wilford on Tuesday night at Petono by voting for him at the polling booth. ANTI-PROHIBITION. The general election is the chosen opportunity ©f the Prohibitionists. For them -there is nothing in the political programme but Prohibition. They recognise no o£her issue but liquor or no liquor. All the social problems are to them nothing, and every financial consideration is in their eyes a thing to beat the air with. There is for them but one root of evil, and it is the .drink traffic. They have persuaded themselves, by some curious process of reasoning, that if the properly regulated sale of alcoholic liquor is stopped, thelmillennium will follow. That is in itself an amiable weakness; meritorious distinctly, but weak nevertheless. So long as this weakness is contained to its victims, it is worthy of nothing but admiration. Just as worthy of admiration fit is as any other unselfish spirit which causes its owner to spend himself in efforts for the amelioration of his fellow-man. But when it takes to force, the biutal force of numbers, it becomes mischievous, and at once forfeits all claim to admiration. Prohibition, when it insists on compelling people to accept it 3 arguments for no other reason than that other people accept them, becomes a nuisance, juat as mad dogs become nuisances in the dog days. The essence of the argument for Prohibition is that it does not prohibit. _ After persuading people that the abolition of the sale of liquors is the establishment of virtue, Prohibition finds itself obliged to ostentatiously ignore the Increase of vice. To out' mind this has been amply proved by the experience of the Prohibition States of the American Union. With us in this view are some of the most candid and industrious minds of the age. It is the fashion, however, to regard the disputes that have raged about this point from the earliest establishment of Prohibition as a reason for agreeing to differ. Many good people compromise with their consciences in this way, neglecting their duty of investigating for themselves in search of salutary truth. We have in this country a fact, however, which avoids this rather pusillanimous method of treatment. Prohibition, so far as the issue of licenses is concerned, was tried in a district not far from here some 10 vears ago. The story was alluded to mcidontaily last night by one of the speakers at the meeting of the Liberty League recant! v formed in this city. The Prohibition to which he alluded was t)xQ outcome of a terrible murder. That murder, committed in delirium tremens, roused me public conscience, and the issue of licenses was forthwith abolished in the districts of Ormondviile, Norsewood and Makotuku. But the millennium so fondly expected did not come. On the contrary, it receded farther into the dim distance. Liquor poured into the districts notwithstanding the closure of the publichouses, drunkenness increased, the sale became more profitable than;ever, and the Last state of that •population became far worse than the first. Speaking from personal experience the speaker above alluded to described various arrangements by which alcohol was made available to thirsty souls. Capital was embarked in the business, bars were fitted up all the paraphernalia of a roaring trade were found, and the liquor traffic went on as before, with one important exception. The exception was that there was no regulation, no control, no supervision, no check. So bad was the state ot things that the public conscience was aroused, just as it had been by the aforesaid murder. The result was that at the very first opportunity the people voted for licenses, and the millennium at once lost its leeway. Drunkenness decreased and the number of hotels increased. Licenses, in short, counteracted the evil effects of Prohibition. It is an instructive chapter of our own history. With an object lesson like that at our doors we have no occasion to ramble over the United States, or any other country. The case of Clutha, in later times is a strong corroboration. But without that case, which has not yet been worked to a finish, as the fighting men put it, the argument supplied by the Norsewood experiment is completely fatal to

Prohibition. It proves conclusively that Prohibition does not prohibit. It not only does not prohibit, but it demoralises as well. It demoralises the seller of liquor who breaks the law, and being successful cultivates hypocrisy and makes it profitable by foul means. It demoralises the consumer who breaks the law by habitual subterfuge. It demoralises the Prohibitionist who resorts to dishonourable means of discovery, developing the vices which mankind by common consent execrates in the informer. " These," said Bishop Neville, of Dunedin, " are immoralities of a deeper dye than drunkenness itself." Another view of the same authority is that Prohibition is "a departure from God's way of dealing with his creatures as moral agents." These utterances enable us to understand what a famous churchman in England once said when he declared that he would rather see the people free than sober. Prom every point of view Prohibition is a failure. It is, moreover, unnecessary. The Colony, spending less in drink by half a million than it did a quarter of a century ago when the population was one-third of its number, must necessarily be more sober. We yield to no one in our detestation of the evils of the drink traffic. But we recognise in the above fact the superiority of moral suasion, and of all the influences that belong to that powerful weapon, which has in example and public sentiment its most potent auxiliaries. This Colony is fortunate, in the presence of the other failure of the tyranny of force, in possessing the living power of moral suasion. The Colony will not hesitate at the elections to put force out of court.

SIR ROBERT STOUT'S FAILURE. Our evening contemporary is keenly conscious of the absolute failure of Sir Robert Stout to make any impression upon the electors of Wellington, and allowance should undoubtedly be made for its chagrin at the result of the meeting in the Opera House. The manner in which our contemporary has chosen to vent its ill-temper is, however, open to severest censure. Sir Robert Stout endeavoured to make out a case; that case was not only deplorably weak, but the manner in which it was put was insulting to the majority of his audience, and the audience took the plainest and most direct course to convince the speaker of their conviction of his want of veracity and tact. We do not defend in any way unseemly conduct , or improper interruption at public meetings, but if the beaters of a speaker owe a duty to themselves and to the constituency of which they are members, so does the I candidate who comes forward to seek their suffrages. He has no more right to insult them personally by his rude references to their appointed leaders than he has to insult their intelligence by repeating to them a thrice-told and thread-bare story which has been refuted over and over again. Sir Robert Stout chose to repeat a speech which has done duty in nearly every part of New Zealand, in Parliament, and in the columns of certain journals whose especial favourite Sir Robert happens, after many days, to find himself. That many men and women, too, in the audience at the Opera House should resent his stale accusations advanced without an atom of proof—is not at all to be wondered at; and if, in resenting them, the people exceeded at times the bounds of strict decorum, they may surely be excused somewhat, seeing that political rancour on the part of Sir Robert roused political loyalty and enthusiasm for the Liberal chief on their part. But for the Post to declare that the ebullitions of feeling were prompted by the party, nay, J organised by it, and that they wore the direct result of Seddonism, is to write itself down more than ever a malicious falsifier of ordinary overy-day fact. The people of this constituency are well aware that whatever took place at the meeting at the Opera House was absolutely unpremeditated; that it was the result of Sir Robert's own utterances. As a rule —and it is a well-defined rule in this as in other countries —a candidate for Parliamentary honours has the making or the marring of his own meetings, and if he choo3es to bo insolent, overbearing and malicious in his statements, ho can expect but one thing in return —the indignation, not over-nicely" expressed, of that portion of his hearers Who are not in strict accord with his views. Oiii? contemporary, however, has ghosen not only to magnify the occurrences til ih& meeting, but it has gone out of its way to G&&V insult to the Premier of the Colony and to vilify the men and women wno —if it comes to it— have a right to express their disapproval of: a x;anui date's utterances in their own way in public meeting assembled. Some time since, mi Opposition journal, the Dunedin Star, warned Sir Robert Stout that he, having made set charges against Mr Seddon and his Government, must bo prepared to furnish proof of these in the House and the county, or stand discredited before the constituencies. Sir Robert has not substantiated, because he could not substantiate, the statements made by him in the bitterness of his disappointment; in his hatred for the men whom he has so long and so vainly striven to injure. Seeing that that is the position of affairs, we hold that, by the evidence of his own supporters in the press, he now stands discredited, and therefore is unfitted to guide public opinion on any subject. We sympathise to some extent with the Post in its laboured and bad-tempered attempt to fasten a stigma upon the men and women of this constituency who have shown a contempt for Sir Robert Stout, because, but for the ill-advised acts of the Post itself, Sir Robert would not be so unpopular as he is at the present moment in this electorate. But the Post and Sir Robert saw fit to join their forces, and in the doing it, heaped upon the Government and the supporters of the Government every insult that could be conveyed by means of vulgar and opprobrious epithet. There was a time when the name of Sir

j Robert Stout was one to conjure with; j but it is now one that arouses in the breast of every consistent man and woman a feeli ing of contempt—a contempt, we are com- | pelled to say, that is richly deserved. Sir j Robert has basely deserted those to whom ihe was a leader and a teacher; he has f or- ! saken every one of his early supporters ; | he has broken every pledge and sundered every political tie, and he stands before the Wellington electors unable to I justify his conduct ; his only apologist being a newspaper that has been, like himself, " everything by turns and nothing long." It is not for us to make any threat regarding the conduct of the campaign; but we would advise the Post to be careful how it insults its readers, [ how it attempts to fasten the guilt of unworthy conduct upon electors who have not deserved such condemnation. To attribute anything that was done at the meeting'in the Opera House to other than its real cause may be characteristic of that peculiar line of conduct for which the Post has become notorious ; but the fact remains that the people are done with Sir Robert Stout; that they have lost all faith in him, and that now or at any other time thej' will have none of him. j THE MAYORALTY. I Wellington is unaffectedly glad to see Mr | Bell once more a candidate for the MayorI alty. In the political field as member for Wellington Mr Bell was not a great success, chiefly for the reason that he belonged to a party that was quite hopelessly in the minority. Other faults he had, on which, as he has retired, we will not dilate, any more than we feel ourselves called upon to dilate on his good qualities and the good furniture for political work with which his mind is supplied. Mr Bell has been throughout his career a politician who did not combine rapidity of development with the high integrity and honesty of purpose which have been always his guides. A rest from the turmoil of the political arena will certainly do him good. An attempt has beeu made to place the issues of the contest for the Mayoralty on the lines of Liberalism and Conservatism. The attempt is an absurdity, for the same reason that it would be an absurdity to suppose that the municipality makes laws and grapples with social problems. The municipality administers its finances to the best of its ability; its ability in this direction has not been start- ' ling of late; the line " broils root out the work of masonry," fairly describes many recent phases through which the public work has been. Last, but not least, the drainage system now in course of construction will, it is an open secret, be much better for the presence of some of the men who brought the drainage of the city to the front, and substituted a practical scheme for the vapourings of the preceding dozen years. Of these Mr Bell was one, and it is not saying too much to say that he was the foremost. We trust the citizens will, by their votes, show how they appreciate Mr Bell's return to the useful sphere of municipal life. THE PATEA SEAT. That Mr George Hutchison is not to have a walk over for the Patea seat is a thing that might have been expected. It will probably be said that he can only be beaten by a strong man ; and we say at once that if that should be said, it would be true. Fortunately for those who like to see sport, and also for the cause of Liberalism, Mr Parsons, who has come I out against Mr Hutchison for the Patea < seat, is a strong man. He was a very warm friend of the late Mr Ballance for many years; he is well furnished politically, with principles and details; the possessor of a shrewd brain, a powerful memory, and a capacity for fighting ; all of which make him a dangerous opponent to Mr Hutchison. The leading point, which can by no means be forgotten, in this and every other case, is that we are living under party government. The election is being fought on party lines. While it is being fought it is all very well for Mr Hutchison to tell us as ho does in his artistic way—for he is no vulgar braggart—on a hundred platforms that he is as true a Liberal as breathes anywhere. The fact is notorious that for six sessions ho has been lost to the Liberal Party. Another fact is equally notorious. It is that Mr Hutchison has been also lost to the Conservatives, who I know as well as he does that permanent | connection between them is impossible. ! As an independent, he is out of place, ! without any ground of his own to stand ! upon, a vigorous sort of firework who j labours hard to do nothing brilliantly. We : Mr Parsons to the electors who ' lijc.e not o;;Iy force in their representatives • but likewise practical results.

GEORGE HUTCHISON IN THE LIGHT Ob 1 GEORGE HUTCHISON. The member for Patea may be everything by turns and nothing long. We may call him Waitotara, Patea, Libel Action, anything which may show one of the many sides of his political virtue. But throughout his whole career there is one thing which he never has been, either by turns or for long or short. He has never been a true prophet. Ho has never forecasted the future correctly, because he has never possessed the faculty of gauging the present. We republish this morning extracts from fiis famous " pimps and panders" speech of 1890. The extracts exactly illustrate our meaning and prove our position. They contain a perfectly deadly prophecy, which as all know who remember the occasion of its delivery, derived a special deadliness from the concentrated essence of awful tone with which it was delivered. The manner was, on that occasion, felt to be far more conclusive than the matter. Many good people, in consequence, expected that within three years of 1890 there would be either a loan of eight millions raised in a hurry or colonial repudiation and general bankruptcy. There has, oi course, been nothing of. either kind.

Then we have the memory revived of the exquisite taste of the Hutchison tirade against the Atkinson Government, of which the chief feature was the brutallycallous reference to the illness which was rapidly and unmistakably killing one of the bravest, most public-spirited and honourable men in this Colony. Is this the sort of critic for the electors of a great district of New Zealand to pin their faith to ? Entirely wrong in his facts, absolutely false, and therefore merciless, in his denunciations, offending against the canons of decent manners, he came to nothing, like the charges he made. With these credentials he -began the same tactics against the men who saved the country from Atkinsonism. If he had a logical sense only one-tenth removed from his sense of decency, Mr Hutchison would have hailed the Ballance regime, with its Seddon continuation, as a good thing for the country. But he has persisted in pretending to believe it worse. Seizure of sinking funds, the raising of loans, services to banks, these are the things he hurled at the Atkinson regime. These he hurls at their successors now. What he said on the first point was bad then and is bad now; what he said on the second is worse now because the amount of the loans is smaller, and, out of the whole five millions, less than a quarter of a million touches the public pocket in any way. As to the third point, the abomination of the reference to the Atkinson regime is deepened by the present utterances of the member for Patea. The man who, in his elegance of thought, compared hisenem. : es to "pimps and panders" stands before the electors with a record of six years of close alliance with these same " pimps and panders." His own words of 1890 prove the utter hollowness of his later criticisms, and the failure of his many insinuations against Mr Ward, kept up so long before the Lower House Committee, make a hideous corroboration. It is time the electors decided they had enough of Mr George Hutchison.

THE COLONIAL BANK LIQUIDATION.

The result of the application to the Supremo Court in Dunedin to remove Mr Vigers from his position as one of the liquidators of the Colonial Bank has failed, as every right-thinking person aware of the tactics pursued thought it would. Further, Mr Justice Williams has made the following statement with regard to the .£30,000 oats transaction, about which so much has been insinuated, and of which so much political capital has been attempted to be made for use against Mr Ward -. —" I certainly am unable to say that Mr Vigers was guilty in this transaction of anything dishonest or dishonourable, or that there is anything in the nature of the transaction which would lead me as a reasonable man to suppose that it was being carried out for some improper purpose." We recommend Messrs G. Hutchison, Maslin, Montgomery and certain other M.'sH.R. to study the above statement carefully, and, in face of it, to make their peace with their constituents by publicly abandoning the attitude they took up last session. As for the others who have lent themselves to propagation of insinuatory slanders as to the characters of several persons in this connection, we leave the public to judge of them. THE ISSUES BEFORE THE ELECTORS. It has not taken long to convince members of the House who are now candidates and who " wobbled" during last session that the constituencies will have none of them unless they are prepared to give in their full allegiance to the Liberal Party. One after another we find them telling the electors that they are prepared to support the Government, as they are " convinced that to do anything else would mean the sacrifice of those principles which the great mass of the people have adopted as the sum of their political faith." Even Messrs G. W. RasseU and A. Saunders have declared for the Government, and are prepared to put up with the Premier. That they have been assisted in coming to this decision by the attitude of the people of the country is apparent, and the "hardening up" of the party is going on more briskly in the country than it did in the The Opposition members and their organs cannot now say that these members are merely answering to the crack of the Go/eminent whip, or, in Atkinsonian parlance, the " hobnailed boots." The fact that the electors of the Colony are demanding this pledge of loyalty is the best possible evidence of the popularity of the Government and the Premier. It is a more eloquent testimony to the worth of Mr Seddon as a great Liberal political leader than the votes of confidence which greet him when bespeaks to the people and places the case for the Government before then. Then, if we examine many of the speeches delivered by Opposition candidates, what do we find ? That they do not dare to say they are opposed to the policy of the Premier and his Government. Speaking at Riccarton, the Hon Mr Rolleston said Mr Seddon was a resolute man with a great deal of intelligence, ability and grit. Again, one of the chosen three who are to do battle for the National Conservative Association in Christchurch admits that the land policy of the Government is good ; that their legislation is in nearly all respects worthy of support; that the reforms they propose are for the most part necessary ; and yet he would not vote for the Seddon Government! This is such a contradictory condition of things that the electors of the Southern city may well be excused if they begin to ask themselves questions as to the political honesty of men who pretend to favour a Government's legislation and yet would go into Parliament prepared to wreck that Government and to place in power a party which would begin a retrograde march. So far as we have been able to gather, there are few, indeed, of the Opposition candidates who

/ have pronounced against the policy measures of the Seddon Government. Attacks there have been upon Mr Seddon personally, but few of even the National Association candidates have ventured to say that they would be found opposing Mr Seddon's Liberal measures. No later than Friday last, the Post declared itself favourable to the expropriation of large landed estates, and it declared that it was neither good policy, nor honest, on the part of the Opposition to declare that the Government was departing from a non-borrowing policy in raising money for the purchase of these private estates. " These are borrowings for which there are tangible assets," says our evening contemporary, " and the policy of these investments has been accepted by the country." That is precisely what we have all along contended ; that is exactly what Mr Seddon and his colleagues have again and again declared. Then, what are the issues before the people of the Coloiry ? If to purchase Native lands, to open up the country with roads and bridges, to enI courage the mining industry, to pur- : chase from private owners large landed ! estates for the purposes of close settlement, to break up the fire insurance monopoly, and to provide for the aged poor, is the " policy accepted by the country," what I becomes of the contention of the emaciated remains of the Conservative Party in New Zealand that the present Government should be removed from office ? The fact is, the Opposition realises the hopelessness of the task of convincing the people that the policy of the present Government is other than the right policy. Yet the Opposition has the effrontery to ask the people to place themselves in the hands of a party whom the merest tyro in politics is aware would set about reversing that policy. The only signs of a policy from the Opposition is that Captain Russell wants back the Railway Commissioners and the property tax, and Sir Robert Stout wants land nationalisation. But the Opposition declare that they " would not for worlds " do anything to hamper or destroy the Government policy. If we are to believe them in this, if we are not to accuse them of falsehood and deceit, what are we to say of their conduct and how characterise their endeavours ? They declare the policy of the Seddon Government to be desirable for the purposes of settlement and for the amelioration of the condition of the people, but in the same breath ask the people to destroy that Government and to reward the men who have spent themselves in the perfecting of a policy " accepted by the country " with : the baseness of blackest ingratitude. To harbour the thought even that the people of this Colony would act so base a part would be an act of disloyalty to them ; it would argue the existence of a belief in a faithlessness which would be deplorable. No; the issues are perfectly clear—the people have declared them without the assistance of anything but the evidence of their senses and their experience. Loyalty to the Liberal and Labour cause and to the Seddon Government means the perfecting of the policy accepted by the people, and there is nothing more certain than that that loyalty will survive the excitement of an electoral campaign as it has already done the insidious attacks of the tinscrupulous, who have proved the willing tools of a designing and selfish minority. THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY. What might have happened in the world had Mr Bryan Avon the election may be ; surmised from the fact that Prince Bismarck, in writing to the Governor of one of the American States, expressed a predilection for a double standard, and said he thought it advisable to bring about an understanding between the States principally interested in the world's commerce. He added that if North America should take an independent step in this matter, he believed such action would lead to the establishment of an international agreement. When a man so far-seeing as Prince Bismarck talks in that way, there is some reason for believing he is right. But as the United States have not taken the independent step considered probable when Prince Bismarck wrote, there is no necessity to discuss the matter further in the light of what might have been. The fact is that the cause of bimetallism has received a serious blow in the defeat of MiBryan at the hands of the Republicans and Democrats of the Republic. What will happen in the States in consequence of the victory of Major McKinloy is matter for more grave concern. If a remarkable article of Senator Tillman's is to be taken as a guide to the feeling and the determination of the Silver Party, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that civil war is near. The Senator talks in that article of the "industrial slavery" of the capitalistic system, pronounces it to be worse than the "chattel slavery " of the pre-em;mcipation days, declares that its abolition is the question to be decided by the ballot-box, and hopes fervently " that the cartridge-box may not yet play a part in the settlement." Much more there was in the article to the same purpose, but it is unnecessary to describe the details of the case made out by Mr Bryan and the Silver Party, as the above remarks of Senator Tillman's cover the whole ground. We may add that the Senator predicted that with a united South and West, the victory of silver and industrial freedom would be complete.

But the first thing which the numbers have told us is that the South and West were not united. It is obvious, therefore, that, if they united to vote, they will certainly not be united to fight; and that consequently the cartridge-box will not be heard from. It is, of course, obvious that much allowance has to be made for the time. In judging the value of the warnings and denunciations made, we must remember that a very large proportion of their fervour—to use a mild word—is due to the exigencies of election time. On the other hand it is the first time since the War of Secession that fch.q

political issues have been drawn with so intj'ch; of humanitarian vital force; for which reason the danger so generally feared c&nnot be regarded as unreasonable, But, ~-SLs we have said, the South and West have not stood together tftaanimously. , Moreover, had Mr Bryan won, the Silver Party would not have had the victory; they would only have won the first step of the three required by the Constitution before any great change of policy can be made. If they had captured the Presidency, the Silverites would have had to capture the two Houses of Congress, and that they would have had to wait two years to attempt. So that, however strongly the average Silverite may feel (after the election excitement has cooled off), he is hardly likely to see any necessity for taking to the cartridge-box, merely because he has failed to carry the first of three positions necessary to success. He is far more likely to reserve himself for the attack on the other posts, at the Congressional elections. On that occasion his chances will not be any the worse by reason of the tactics o£ the other side ; which, in the throes of the Presidential fight, put its sacrilegious hand on the throat of commerce. That unscrupulous action of the Gold Bag Party will probably cause a strong reaction at the proper time. In the meanwhile, the condition will be peace, tempered by bitter discontent. LIBERALISM. iNDEPBiia- - ~ia Conservative " There were many of trie ~_. ""-^epenparty who now called themselves Ardent Liberals, but the public would lmo** what to think of the men who had opposed the progressive legislation of the past six years." Thus Mr Tanner the other day in addressing the electors of Heathcote. Curiously enough he made that speech on the very same evening that the son of an old Canterbury colonist was addressing the electors of Christchurch in the Conservative interest. Mr Beswick, whese father was once a power in the Plain Country, a shining light of the provincial system, did not bring to the contest any knowledge of public affairs which could compare favourably with the knowledge his father used, in justice to the electors, to furnish himself withal. But his speech, bad as it was, points the moral of the time as well as a better. He likes the Liberal programme, he does not like the Liberal administration, and the fact that he refrained carefully from showing where the administration is defective is the chief reason why he should be elected against the Government candidates to thrust the Government from power, and carry out their measures without any other difference than is implied in the august approval of " a party by the name of Beswick."

Mr Tanner's statement of fact is as timely as it is clear cut in its expression. The Independent Liberals whom it are, of course, not Liberals at all. They are masqueraders. Like the celebrated "living pictures/' they make tip by borrowing for all the deficiencies in their own figures. The "livingpictures" wereadmitted to be very pretty, at a respectful distance, but no one in his senses would ever dream of taking them seriously as works of art. In the same way, these Independent Liberals are very pretty fellows in their way, no doubt, but no one would ever dream of taking them seriously as politicians.

Mr Tanner himself has been something of a " wobbler" in this very matter. He told the electors of Heathcote that he once favoured an elective executive; but he took good care, after describing the fancied advantages of that bastard system, to add that the electors would understand very distinctly that he pledged himself to vote for the Seddon Government whenever they should be in danger from hostile motion. The two statements are ludicrously incompatible. The second reduces the first to the lowest level "of lameness and impotence. For a man to declare that he is both against party government and determined to use the system to the fullest keeping his party chiefs in power is supremely absurd. But we need not quarrel with this one, as the only fact of any importance is his promise to be partisan while he allows his mind to wander among the delights of the elective system. Why this change on Mr Tanner's part ? Why this lapse into illogical absurdity ? Simply because ho has seen tho writing on tho wall which others have marked with the most salutary results. When even the Nestor of the House is careful to tell his constituents that, whatever may be the value of the venerable ideas ho gives them on great occasions of general and world-wide importance, ho may always be depended upon to keep tho Government in power; whenever the course of politics sets them too near the rapids of minority, he will bo there to help to take them out on the right side; when Nestor takes this line it is clear that the popular mind is made up for the Government. Many have seen the writing on the wall, and their chorus of feelings, long pent up, is the death knell of the senseless agitation against party government. The elections will be fought, as they must be fought, on the lines of party government, and no other so far as ordinary politics are concerned.