The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1883.

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 6846, 31 March 1883, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1883.

Mr Montgomery is a most respectable old gentleman, but he is not a success as a speakist. If he is not saddest when he speaks, he ought to be, for he makes other people sad. He reminds us a good deal of Mr Feed. Maccabe’s moneyed old gentleman, who makes a fussy after-dinner speech of considerable length, but is altogether destitute of a single idea. He seemed, if we may judge by the Press Association’s record of applause, to have been well received at the buttery and cheesy little village of Akaroa, but the oration, was a dead failure as an actual answer to Major Atkinson. The critical bystander can only address the Chairman of Governors of Canterbury College iu Virgil’s words: —

« Infelix puet! at que impar oongressus ACHILLI.” We gather from Mr Montgomery that " the party to which he—Mr Montgomery— belonged was prepared to meet Major Atkinson if he touched on party questions,” from which may be logically inferred that Mr Montgomery and his party are not prepared to meet Major Atkinson on any questions which are not party questions. The latter part of the statement wo are quite prepared to credit. “ No one could believe that the Treasurer —a politician—addressed large public meetings simply to speak philosophical truths.” The real object of politicians’ speeches, according to Mr Montgomery’s theory, is not to speak philosophical truths, but unphilosophical fallacies ; and if the speeches are not of that sort, what is the use of them I Well, that is just the very question we should like to ask Mr Montgomery and some of his friends. The answer would be likely to be a very instructive one. The member for Akaroa is opposed to the Hare system of election ; but the reasons be gives for his opposition are curious. “ He would ask if it were not of the first importance that electors should know the man for whom they voted ; therefore, that man should have an interest in their locality.” Now, if Mr Montgomery has tho least acquaintance with the Hare system—which, apparently, he has not —he would be aware that it is just (hat very Hare system which requires that a member should be known and believed in by a much larger number of electors than is the case in any constituency at present; for under that system the electorate is composed ot all the people of the colony. A public man may bo known in one of two ways. Ho may be known as a politician of intelligence

by hia views, or he may be known in his immediate petty circle of townsmen, at Akaroa or elsewhere, by the cut of his boots and trousers, the hotel bar he “ liquors up” at, and the dinners he eats ; but the latter kind of knowledge is not generally—except at Akaroa—regarded as being of as much consequence as the former. But under the Haee system a good man is likely, so says the Canterbury oracle, to “ be kept out of Parliament by a stump orator, put forward by a moneyed ring.” One would have thought exactly the opposite would have happened. A mere stump orator surely would have a bettor chance with a little agricultural village than with a constituency composed of people of the whole colony, and certainly it would be easier for a moneyed ring to bribe a little village than the whole colony. But “ the sooner the people of the country had a voice in returning members to the Upper House (he better.” As this outburst was applauded, we are afraid that the audience were not aware that the sentiment was one of Major Atkinson’s, which Mr Montgomery had never, apparently, endorsed before his Akaroa meeting. In tact, the leader of the Opposition was stealing the Major’s political clothes while the latter was bathing So, also, with regard to the property tax, to which Mr Montgomeev somehow takes objection on the ground of its unfairness. “He himself was for a tax on lands that benefited by the expenditure of borrowed money.” So, also, was Major Atkinson long before him; and it is idle for the Akaroa orator to attempt to hoodwink the people whom he is addressing by telling them that the property tax does not affect the object which he professes to want accomplished. Property tax forms are so common among the general public of New Zealand that almost everyone knows that land, in common withallotherkindsof property, is taxed already, and at the same rate. And then, though Mr Montgomeev tried to score a point by observing that there was no such thing as perpetual leasehold tenure of land by the Act of last session, he forgot .to observe also that that was not the fault either of Major Atkinson or of the Ministry, but of the members of the Upper House, who mutilabed the original Bill which contained the very proviso Mr Montgomeev professes ardently to desire. 'With regard to the national insurance scheme Mr Montgomeev was quite as tame and unconsequential as his worst enemy could wish. “In England it had fallen flat.” Likely enough; but what of that ? 3?or all practical purposes New Zealand is a country of almost fabulous wealth for the average working man, as compared with England, where him dreds of thousands of men, in full employment constantly, cannot save a couple of shillings a week out of their earningswithoutapprcaching the verge of starvation. But, continued the speaker, “ Major Atkinson had spoken very vaguely at Christchurch.” We fancy that some other people can speak very vaguely; such,for instance, as the accurate censor of the Treasurer, who follows up his‘ words on this subject by asserting that “in reality the proposals meant a poll tax of a million a year.” A million is a nice, clean, round sum for frothy orators, but. in this case how is the million made up? Mr Mont60MEET has not enlightened his hearers, but no doubt made their hair stand on end by the sight of this terrific spectre, “ Would like ■“their employers to stop their money, or would employers like to take tbe trouble?” Well, of course, they wouldn’t like it. No man likes to pay taxes, and no man likes to take trouble he can avoid. But very often he has to do both, in fact in every civilised country every man is subject to those little inconveniences. And then, as a clincher to the argument against national insurance, Mr Montgomeev resorted to the old quack remedy of altering the land laws again. Of what good would that be in the way of averting pauperism? It is not the price of land that prevents most people from settling on it, and cultivating it; but the circumstance that nine people out of ten scarcely know the difference between a plough and a harrow, and if they got a piece of land to-day would only sell it to-morrow without ever thinking of putting plough or spade into it, and Mr Montgomeev has been long enough in the colony to know that well.

Foolish fallacies of this sort, and reiterated misstatements, long since confuted in Parliament, about Ministerial delay in bringing forward measures last session served to eke out a very useless speech, which Mr MoNTGOMEur would probably have declined to utter if it were not that, like Bob Aches, in “ The Rivals,” he had to tell the hot-headed “ great Liberal party,” which was jogging his elbow, “ We won’t ran, Sir Lucius, we won’t run.” Still, it would have been better for his own reputation for common sense if he had.