Untitled

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 986, 17 June 1879, Page 2

Thx Bon. Mt. RichitdKD, C.M.G., one of the representatives of Chrittchurch, is not an orator in any sense of the word; he is essentially a practical politician, possessing a tolerable amount of plain common sense, and it is chiefly owing to this reason that the speech he delivered to his constituents on Friday evening is deserving of consideration. e scarcel} know, after a perusal of the hon. gentleman's speech, whether to look upon him as a supporter of the present Ministry, or aa a member of " Her Majesty s Opposition," as Mr. George M'liean euphoniously designates the disintegrated placehunters who last session opposed the Ministry. Of this, however, wc are certain, that while the Opposition claim Mr. Richardson aa n member of that party, he has done more to show the goodness of the Ministerial policy than has been achieved by many of the strongest supporters of the Government, and we may fairly claim him as a supporter of the Ministry. His speech was ezccedingly ternperate in tone, aud nearly every other sentence contained bouio approving remark with reference to the policy of the Ministry, accompanied by promises to support most of the principal measures of the Government. It is true that he found fault with many of the details of the Government measures, but his fault-find-ing ivaa couched in exceedingly mild language. Starting with the Electoral Bill, the newly-created Companion of St. Michael and St. George said he had supported the Bill because it contained many excellent features, and because he thought it would confer great good upon the Colony. He even went further, and promised to support "any Bill whioh will improve ami widen the franchise fairly." But strangely enough, Mr. Richardson condemned the Electoral Bill of last session on account of it bestowing upon the natives a dual representation, as he and those who tliink with him style it, and declared that he would never support such a Bill. It is very remarkable that the members of the late Ministry should so suddenly have been aroused to the danger attendanfeuponanelectorallawwhich would enable Maoristorecord votesat electionsfor members of the House of Representatives- It is also remarkable that they did not make the discovery while in power, for the very same principle has been followed for years, and Maorjs have been, and still are, allowed to enjoy a "dual representation." It is singular that the late Sir Donald M'Lean, the great Maori doctor, who occupied the post of Native Ministor in the Cabinet of which Messrs. Richardson, Atkinson, Ormond and Co., formed such distinguished membere, failed to deal with the matter. Sir Donald M'Lean and his colleagues would never have dared to undertake the abolition of the right of native landowners to evereise the privilege of voting for members of the House ; and if the " Continuous Ministry'' had remained in office until doom's day they would never have dreamed of adopting the course they strove to compel their successors to follow. The whole thing, as we have previously seen, was a shallow pretext. Finding it impossible to defeat the Grey Government by fair means, the Atkinson faction sought t'> wound the Ministry in a vital part by endeavoring to lessen their prestige with the natives. They knew that the Government were engaged in delicate negotiations with the natives, and strove to so. injure them in the eyes of the Maoris in orner that those negotiations might prove abortive. They hoped, in fact, and many of them, we believe, still hope, to see the Ministry involved in a native war. By this means—a very treacherous one— tliey hoped to bring the present 3linistrv into disrepute, and so eventually succeed in turning t]u_*ni out of office. But to return to Mr. Richaftison's speech. Following on his advocacy of electoral reform, wc find the hon. gentleman announcing that a redistribution of seats is necessary, and promising to use his utmost efforts to secure the passing of a measure to that end- We also find the hon. gentleman promising to support the Triennial Parliament s Bill, another of the measures promised to be intraduced by the 3lini3try. On the question of taxation Mr. Richardson is certainly not at with the Ministry. Like most of those who form the Opposition, he cannot see how the removal of |d of the duty off sugar and 3d from that on tea can have benefited the working classes, and believes that it would have been better to have removed the duty from one article altogether, instead of making small reductions on several articles. But he also appears to be of opinion that white new taxation should have been levied, no reduction 1 should have been made in the Customs. The burdenvof the people, he thought, ought to have been increased, in fact, in order to pay the interest on the loans we have already raised ant» others that we hope t» raise. With referent? to the f.vtul tax, Mr. Richardson's utterances .are rmmtatakeable. He does not believe in the tax, and urges that a general property tax should have been introduced, by means of which every person would have been compelled trj contribute " to the carrying on of th» piaehinery of the country," except," and here he pauses to endorse, at least, a portion ,of the Ministerial fiscal policy, those owning property of a very moderate amount." Passing over many of the minor points in Mr. Richardson's speech, we come to the question of further borrowing. On this subject he gives utterance to no uncertain sound. That fresh bor- : rowing is necessary he freely admits ; that the Government will propose another loan he has no doubt, even going so far as to express the belief that "one of the first Government measures cf the coming session will be a new Loan Bill"; and he leaves no room for doubt that he will [support such a Bill. He even goes I further, and quotes figures to show that ; the Colony S9P fairly go into the money market with a a»W loan. The views of Mr. Richardson on lh& pative question are not of any very great for he .possibly knows less of the Manns £h<jn ihe Maoris know of hiui. His explanation of how the present difficulty was brought about, though unique, is not worthy of any further notice than to say that it is siniply the opinion of a man who has not apparently given any very great amount ot study to native affairs or to the character and disposition of the Maoris. It is. however, pleasing to £nd that Mr. Richardson does not think nny serious truubb pjil arise, and that he given ike Government .credit for the manner in which they have acted in order to cope with the difficulty. Wc hayc endeavored briefly i»> notice the chief topics t>j which Mr. Richardson gave his attention. H/s speech contains a few matters that require special comment, atwl U> these we shall refer in a future issue.

temporary, "ridicule these displays, and even those susceptible beings whose hearts flutter with, excitement at the thought of them, admit that they serve no practical purpose. Theycertainlycannot be justified on esthetic grounds, unless there is something Jesthetic in the gulping of hastily prepared food, and the gosling of unusual quantities of wines and spit Its, and the delivery of speeches which, judged by their intrinsic value, require in their deliveries no higher qualifications than the brains of a peacock, the fluency of a fishwife, and the assurance of a showman." We are now sorry that we went. But perhaps the chief representative of our morning contemporary regrets that he was not present. Wewonderwhetherornot, if he had partaken of the magnificent bounty of Mr. Reifl and Mr. Menlove he would have said there was no philosophy in the event; that tho3e present engaged in "gulping hastily prepared food," &c. By the way, we think that "gulping hastily prepared food " should have read hastily gulping prepared fowl, in order to show that it was not partaken of in a raw state. It will, therefore be ggPf\ that, whatever other indiscretions the ladies and gentlemen who were present at the demonstration _ were guilty of, they have not yet joined the ranks of a great German doctor ;,nd learned to eat their food uncooked. If eating food slowly and decently like Christiana Wbi'O the ojily necessary evidences of the excellence of a the turning of the first sod of the Livingstone Railway was perfection. But the speeches i>rj= objected to. They were not up to the standard of our contemporary; indeed, although they were made by the orators of this town, they were npt sufficiently Deniostiiepc.m, Jsow, as it happens, our contemporary is not In a position to jiulge as to the merits of the speeches. It ha<l a representative on the ground, and so had we : but our representatives dived deeply into the festivities of the occasion, an.l wrote not a note. The reports that appeared in the papers were concocted partly with the assistance ftf a friend with a good memory, and partly by the bringing together of the scattered ideas of both newspaper representatives. In writing about "the braine of a peacock," the editor of our contemporary may be paying anything but a compliment to his subordinate. But, even admitting that the speeches that appeared in our cojitemporjiry were the speeches of Mr, Steward; Siirimski, Air. Sumpter, and the other speakers, they are not so bad, and are rather creditable than otherwise to the reporter who, under ouch distressing circumstances, succeeded in doing so iyeU. There was no poetry in them, for the speakers are evidently not

" Like hinj who, his seat astrode, Could not 3 leader without an ode;" they were not esthetic; they were common sense—at all events they appeared to bo so as they fell fresh from the speakers. The only tiling that we can see might favour our contemporary's view, is what was said by " Carlyle, thirty years ago but, as we are not told which of the many things the great writer sajd at that period our contemporary had in his mind, we are deprived of his assistance, as an auxiliary to Byron, in arriving at a conclusion. we say that, after all, our contemporary's contempt for the food, the wines and spirits, and the speeches i 3 unwarrantable, and the insinuation that the line, the commencement of which was celebrated in this district, is of less importance than that which vas opened by Mr. Pyke is the result of nothing more' than conjecture. How is it possible for onr contemporary to know which of the two lines will be'the more important ? He has surely been earned away by the flowery oratory of the groat I'yke, who is capable of lubricating the most common place matter so a3 to make it digestible. Those who know the lay of the country assert that the Livingstone railway should be a section of a line to open tip the interior, and we believe tljeni, Ceremony was as pardonable—aye, as necessary—in the one case as ill the other. Xo man can tell what may be the ultimate destination of the Livingstone line. It may ei-en outstrip in importance theOtago Central Kailway. The circumstance that we have started in a small way is no excuse for ridicule a:;d sneering. Most people here know what motive led those interested to get a portion of the line taken in hand, if it ivcre lie verso .small. Once commenced, it must go on to the end. There is some excuse for engaging in the usual jollification over tiie affair, even if it were only for the object of letting it he known throughout |;]}e Colony ! that the railway has been started. There 1 was method in the madness of those who gathered together at Windsor Park a few days ago. All that was said there may not have been as sensible as our contemporary, lor ourselves, or even the speakers themselves, could have wished it to bo,. it j will favorably with what has been : said in more pretentions places, and not a little that has been written und printed.