EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXV, Issue 9748, 27 January 1908, Page 1

EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

If all political persons were like Mr Thomas Mackenzie there- would be few deaths from anxiety amongst them as to what to-morrow may bring forth. But. having completed a score years of Parliamentary servitude as representative for Mackenzie, our hero has grown weary of so indulgent a master, and asks himself the pathetic question : "Am I, by righting alone, putting my time and strength to the best use." One is always learning, and. though 20 years have expired since Mr Mackenzie entered politics as a devotee of the seer of the Clutha, he has, it is evident, at last, become disillusioned as to the infallibility of his deity : and so he has turned his devout eyes towards the sun of Liberalism. How glorious to bask in its genial warmth. His new experience is exhilarating—that of finding rest for his political entity in the bosom of the liberal Vsitv.

■ "Friendship ! Mysterious cement of the the soul ! Sweet'ner of life! and solder of society!" Ah! those baa my words, wafted across lhe Mackenzie's fevered brow, ihey are as perfume from the Garden of the llesperides—a foretaste of Nirvana—a breath from Valhalla! Is it possible that Robert Blair anticipated the .Mackenzie sorrow when he wrote these lines more than 500 years ago? He that as it may, they lit his political case as though made for it. It was something to have Clutha in his pocket and Waikouaiti up his sleeve. But. to be a legislative pariah, trying to fatten on one's own solitary notions in a frii'Ularium of Parliamentary ostracism — it was 100 much. Kven Mr Masae;y spurned him as an ill-bred political creatine, whilst the more ehas liable Tarty of l'.o. "i-i'ss beheld him with pitv. What wonder that he has preferred Sir' .Joseph Ward to this. Presides, though it lias iaken Mr -Mackenzie some yeais to dis- : cover the great fact—"Sir Joseph Ward has done well." Done well! We should think so. indeed, fs he not loading and railing Catlins for the sake of dear old Clutha. Hut this is a mere circumstance to Mr Mackenzie, after all. It is "the, change that has come over the position of public affairs" that has won Mr Mackenzie's admiration and allegiance. If that change had only come sooner, what developments might have been possible!— how the whole lace of our politics, and the destiny of this Dominion might have been changed ! For two decades the heaitfelt, honest co-operation of a strong man has. been lost to tiie community. Otherwise there might have been no Sir ■Joseph Ward, and Sir Thomas Mackenzie might ha\e been our paramount politic Lii power.