UNMITIGATED IMPUDENCE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6361, 8 November 1907, Page 4

UNMITIGATED IMPUDENCE.

The Honourable Mr Rigg prides himself upon his independence. He believes that he possesses so largo a share of tho quality that he may, perhaps, he pardoned for thinking, further, that there is not enough to go round. The Attorney-General had moved the committal of the Land Laws Amendment Bill in the Council yesterday afternoon, in a short speech, indicating the position of the Government and asking members to deal with the measure, with a due regard to all opinions, when Mr Rigg rose with a pained expression on his countenance to ask whether the Council was expected merely to confirm what the House had done? There was no harm in this, and if Mr Rigg had simply confined himself to putting his sturdy intolerance of “compromise” upon record, nobody would have uttered a word of protest. Unfortunately for himself, Mr Rigg went on to presume that the newly-appointed members of the Council would support the Government because they are “under an obligation” to Ministers for their appointment. The indiscretion of this accusation turned out to be a more serious matter than its offensiveness. Mr Rigg ought to have reflected that, while no resentment would be felt by the majority of the new Councillors, the stigma would be violently repudiated by those who had been called up to the House to divide with him the representation of Labour. And, of course, it was from Messrs Barr and Paul that Mr Rigg received the hardest knocks. He was quite prepared for, or father quite impervious to, the sarcasms of the Attorney-General, but ho shrank visibly under the whips of his Labour colleagues. And it was not so much the indignation of Mr Barr, aa the biting hometruths of Mr Paul, that told. Mr Rigg had condemned the Government for not sticking to the Land Bills as originally drafted, and Mr Paul reminded the Council that the most reactionary proposal on tho second reading of this Bill had come from Mr Rigg himself, namely, that the lease-in-perpetuity settlers should be permitted bo obtain the freehold at the original valuation. Mr Paul happily described that proposal as “the most unscrupulous bribe offered by the most reactionary politicians in. New Zealand.” The curious thing in connection with the incident is that Mr Rigg himself is a new member, in the sense that he has just been reappointed for a period of seven years by the very Government whose good faith ho, in his characteristic way, has so becomingly derided. If he expects that Messrs Barr and Paul will show their gratitude for being appointed by slav* ishly following the Government that appointed them, what does he think is hia own case? If there is any question of gratitude, it is Mr Higg, and not his colleagues, who should feel grateful, because he knows as well as anybody else that his reappointment was a piece of quixotic magnanimity on the part of the Government, which bad

never looked for, expected, obtained, or desired his general support. That his reappointment was not conditional upon a promise of future support ho has pretty conclusively demonstrated, and it is a singularly refined piece of impudence on his part to insinuate that Messrs Paul and Barr had to give a pledge while he was allowed to get hack with his hands and conscience unfettered I