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Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 343, 30 May 1877, Page 2

Of late some very queer reports have been circulated as to disagreements in the Government dove cot. From what source these rumours sprang we know not ; but although the Press Agency, with its well-known willingness to serve those in power, has gone to the trouble of denying the correctness of the reports, we have little doubt that the statements made with regard to ruptures having taken place in the Cabinet contain a considerable amount of truth. Anyone who has paid the slightest amount of attention to the doings of Ministers during the recess, and who had carefully taken note of the incongruous mass of discordant atoms of which the present Government is formed, must know that the Cabinet is not a happy family. Of the members of the Ministry capable of forming opinions of their own—and they are not numerous—we doubt if two could be found who would agree upon any subject but the drawing of their salaries and travelling expenses. This fact has been fully exemplified over and over again, and it needed not the special correspondents of contemporaries to tell us that there were serious dissentions in the Cabinet. The only ground upon which there is likely to be anything approaching unanimity amongst our mighty rulers is that very common one—retention of place, pay, and power at any price. The denial of the Press Agency is hot likely, therefore, to obtain any very great amount of credence with the thinking portion of the public, and the Agency might just as well have saved itself the trouble of writing the denial, and its clients the necessity for such very unreadable and unreliable u news."