THE OTOGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1899.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11455, 21 June 1899, Page 4

THE OTOGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1899.

The colony was fairly entitled, on the! eve of the. meeting of Parliament, to look for a more statesmanlike speech from the Preihier than that which he delivered at Wellington on' Monday night. We;had. been led to believe that on that becasion MrSeddbn was going to rise to the dignity of his. office and speak as Premier of the colony, to the electors of the colony as a whole upon | public topics of general interest. On that "understanding, we were informed from Wellington, the bi'iginal intention to give the, proceedings somewhat of a party character, and use the meeting as a means of rallying the Liberals of Wellington, I was abandoned, and arrangements were made, by the issue of invita- j tions to several hundred leading men and women, who were to be accommodated with seats on the platform, to ! secure that the meeting should be a J thoroughly representative one of the j citizens of Wellington. In Dunedin we I have had our experience of a non-party I meeting—a meeting at which the Pre- j mier undertook that there should be no j " party tint): in his speech",—and we j know how illusory the promise that Mr Seddon would rise above the level of party proved. Wellington has had the same experience. Its citizens of all shades of political opinion, gathered together upon the pretence—the false pretence— that the first Minister of the colony, with a high sense of his lofty position and great responsibilities, would deliver a speech that was devoid of "party tint," we're condemned to listen once more to the oft-repeated and frequently controverted accusations against the Opposition, to the grotesque' claims that the prosperity of the colony is due to the policy and administration of the Government, to the manifest evasion of the whole point of the Marine department scandal, and to r. repetition of the programme which Mr Seddon recently outlined at his meeting in Auckland. With trifling variations one speech has served him for all his platform utterances of the recess, and in his own elegant fashion he declared at Wellington that he was not to be " drawn" ; —he was "too old Sin politics for that!" In this remark and in another which was made in the course of his speech on Monday night Mr Seddon furnished the key to his conception of the obligations of Ministerial office. " When such men as John M'Kenzio and himself," he exclaimed in an unwonted burst of candour, "got on those benches [the Treasury benches] they took some shifting." In this admission much is conveyed. It is virtually an admission that it is not for the sake of the country but for his

personal benefit that lie fights so resolutely for office, and in it is implied a determination to stick to power if possible, at any cost. This, then, is his policy: to resist ".shifting"! The remark is significant in another way. It is '" John MiKenzie and himself" who "take some shifting." Mr Walker, Mr T. Thompson, and Mr Hall-Jones were on the platform with Mr Seddon while he was speaking, but they are treated by the Premier as quite negligible quantities. Mr Thompson, it is known, leaves the Ministry at the general election along with Mr Cadman, and Mr Hall-Jones may be got rid of at any time, his presence in the Government, like Mr Thompson's, being merely a source of irritation to some of Mr Seddon's snpporlors and of ridicule to the Opposition. There remains Mr Carroll, who is in the Ministry but not of it, the holder of a portfolio but not a member of the Cabinet, the" recipient of no salary bnt of handsome allowances. Mr Hall-Jones' and' Mr Carroll retain their office at'tho Premier's pleasure, and no one can pretend that if he were to sacrifice them the Ministry would be weakened. It would not take^ much to " shift" them, anxl probably Mr Seddon had this in hta thoughts when he significantly coupled the name of Mr M'Kenzie —the one other " strong" man of the Government—with his own. Clearly he recognises that the condition of his party is desperate. In another frank sentence he confesses this. " There was internal dissension in the party of progress," under which title we are supposed to recognise his party,—" and combination was necessary." Then follows the assertion, which will not be disputed, that Mr M'Keiiaie and himself take some " shifting." May it be inferred that, in order to increase the ditficulty of '' shifting " Mr M'Kenzie and himself, Mr Seddon is prepared to " shift" his more incompetent lieutenants, and so attempt to reduce the breaches in his party ? There is " internal dissension in the party of progress!" The influence of the jingling catch words to which Mr Scobie Mackenzie attributed the growth of the spurious Liberalism of the present time has, we take it, faded away, I and Mr Seddon hopes by making the issue at the general election one of the land and income tax against the property tax to reunite the heterogeneous elements through the chance combination of which his parly was placed in power eight years ago. It is' a rain hope, for Captain Ru&sell has expressly declared that there are no grounds for the assertion that ne is in favour of repealing the land and income tax and reinstating the property tax. Mr Seddon will havo to invent some other rallying cry with which to go to the electors. "That' \v» will not hesitajpflffc make what capital he can out of the misrepresentation of his opponents may be , taken for granted. At Wellington he denounced as an insult to the men of the colony the application by Captain Russell of the epithet " waifs and strays" to the unemployed. In this he employed an old trick cf his—one that is more familiar than respectable. He pounces upon an expression in a speech, lakes it out of its context, gives to it a meaning that was ne\er dreamt of by its author, and uses it for the ignoble purpose of stirring up ill-feeling. The pronouncement which he made with reference to the Marine department scandal is more satisfactory than we should have expected from him—namely, that he proposes to submit it to a tribunal independent of Parliament. The reasons for this .are conclusive. Mr Seddon acknowledges that there have been ca«es of parliamentary committees making their facts to fit their findings, and accordingly he does not approve of parliamentary committees." . We are glad thatvMr Seddon has come to a sensible judgment on this matter. We accept his resolution and the reasons by which he fortifies it as an acknowledgment of fhe justice' of pur ' criticism of the findings of certain parliamentary committees which the Ministry has set up within the last few years and packed with its own supporters. If,' however, Mr Seddon imagines that by the reference of the scandal to an independent tribunal ho is goiug to burk discussion upon it during the ensuing session he is very much mistaken. The Minister for Marine and himself are responsible to Parliament for whatever share they may have had in the squalid business, and Parliament will rightly insist on being placed in possession, of full information concerning it. We are rather inclined to suspect that it is the fear that Parliament may not- be content to accept a committee of inquiry with the usual preponderance.of Ministerial claquefs on it by which Mr• Seddon has been led'to j recognise the valuelessness of the findings' of parliajuentary committees. The Premier's claim that the progress which he has noticed iii Wellington is due to the present. (Jivernment is beneath noj tice. "Who," he asked, "could deny that this was due to the present Liberal and progressive Government?" Who j but himself, rather, would have the j hardihood to suggest itp Who would suggest that the prosperity of Dunedin is due to the Government? Y/ho can deny that it is due to conditions for which no Government could ever be responsible-—the "bounty of Nature^ the prices that arc'being obtained for staple products, of' the" colony, and the, development of our industries? And for the development'of bur industries what have we to thank? Mr Seddon has supplied the answer—in his speech at the opening of the Winter Show in Bunedin: "the indomitable pluck and wnergy of the people." It is an insult to the intelligence of the public to suggest that :any Government can produce prosperity. The list of measures proposed to be introduced- by the Ministry in the coming session, as stated on Monday night, is the same as Mr Sed■rloii announced at Auckland, with the addition of a Bill to fix in all public contracts a minimum wage and a ri:ix;mum number of hours of work. There is nothing very tempting in the programme, much of which will have to be dropped. We fancy that even among his own followers, who will not unreasonably have looked tor some guidance and some encouragement from him, Mr Seddon's latest deliverance will cause no feeling other than that of extreme disappointment.

A question of importance to both the pastoral .and the mining community was discussed at Alexandra last week upon an application for a prospecting Jicense over a pre-emptive right and an application for a special claim of 100 acres over land which is held under pastoral license. It- was raised as an objection to both applications that the laud to which they referred was cultivated and used in connection with other land, known as the Galloway run, held by

Robert Campbell, Sons, * and Co. (Limited) under pastoral license, and that it would seriously and permanently depreciate the value of the run if/the cultivated lands were severed from the pastoral country. The land applied for embraced an. area 0^192 acres, and has for many years past been cultivated by the present runliolde'rs and their predecessors in title, who have used the products in working the run, which has an area of 132,000 acres, and it': was alleged that if it.were taken away from ■the company it would necessitate their cultivating other lands in order to profitably work the country. The; warden (Mr S. E. M'Carthy)' decided against the runholders in both applications.: He swept away the objection to the application for the special claim by/pointing out that the pastoral license, under which Robert Campbell, Sons, and- Co. hold the land, confers a mere right of pastiirage and gives rio right to. cultivate, so that the land could not.be said to be cultivated lawfully and bona fide within the meaning of section 166 of " The Mining Act; >. 1898." Indeed,' he said, " the fact of the land having been cultivated constitutes- a' breach by the objecting company of the provisions under which the land is held." He could not recognise that the fact' that the Land Board tacitly permits the_ cultivation of lands held under pastoral license ought to weigh with him in exercising the discretion vested in him by the Act, because so to do would permit a pastoral licensee to gain an advantage out of his own wrong. "There are specific provisions," the warden wenfon to say, "in the legislation of the colony the object of which is to prevent the alienation of auriferous lands situate in mining districts; and if pastoral licensees by Unlawfully cultivating their pastoral lands, or if others by simply ' squatting' aiid cultivating, could in a mining district impede the march of tHe miner, thai object would be frustrated." As to the application for a prospecting license^ Mr M'Carthy granted it also, observing that the ruiiholders could further prosecute their objections when an application for resumption should be made; but in this connection he was '' compelled to remark that a contention which sets out ( that the alienation of 192 acres, situate not in the middle but the boundary of another area of 132,000 acres, will seriously and permanently injure tho working of the latter, comes almost as a, shock to one's common sense."