POLITICAL PORTRAITS.—VI.

Otago Witness, Issue 1179, 4 July 1874, Page 9

POLITICAL PORTRAITS.— VI.

HON. W. FITZHERBEItT.

Anyone entering the present House of Representatives for the first time, and looking round the benches with that peculiarly intelligent aspect of criticism which such people affect, could not fail to be struck by one of the most remarkable physiognomies the human being was ever gifted with. Sitting on the bench opposite Mr Speaker's chair is an old careworn looking man, from whose features, how- v ever, the fire of youthful energy is not 'altogether extinguished by the coldness of age ; and where many substantial marks of that intellectual calibre, which gained him a name at his university are still discernible, whom, you are told in answer to a necessarily wondering enquiry, is the past, present, and future Superintendent of Wellington. You may pass round the rows of countenances on Government and Opposition benches, and on some will be seen signs of higft and prominent intellect, on some only the indications of plain but hard common sense, and on a great many no signs of anything at all in the way of intellect; but the eya involuntarily comes back to the old place, and rests on Mr Fitzherbert. Darwin would be at a loss to classify him ; he certainly never came into the world, by natural selection, and it is doubtful if he could be recommended to a vacant place in the survival of the fittest. The phrenologist gives up the cranium in despair, but would give worlds to have it in his studio, and to draw on it those mysterious and inconceivably absurd lines which show that we would have had philoprogenitiveness if only we had developed philoprogenitive characteristics, and that we should most undoubtedly have been extremely industrious if we had not been incorrigibly idle. In these days of modern scepticism it is undecided by whose instructions we were moulded and formed to the shape we present ; but if the majority of men were figured and trimmed under the auspices of the first progenitor of all chimpanzees and gorillasj that inventive genius must have resigned his prerogative in the case of Mr Fitzherbert, and handed him over to a conclave of bird, beast, fish, and fowl, who all contributed to form one of the most extraordinary coalitions ever produced. No pen could describe Mr Fitzherbert's personal appearance without descending into personalities ; he is one of those startling scenes which the playbills emphatically designate aa "to be seen to be realised." The strangeness of „Mr Fitzherbert's public career has been fully in accordance with the abnormal cast of his features, and his actions have not a little puzzled the men of his own generation, and of the rising one in the House, which regards him with a kind of superstitious reverence. We hear of him a long timn back in the History of the Cjolony amongst the very pioneers of our Legislation. He was in one of the first, if not the first, Parliament, and he has been a member almost ever since. Like many of the other elder members of the House, he may be said to have grown with New Zsaland ; nor has he been only an excrescent fungus, but rather part of the sap itself. But it would not be profitable to trace his career through those bygone times, though they are full of interest to those who were watching from the outside of the political arena ; the position of these men now is about the culminating point of their past experience and policy ; and as such it is a good time to pass judgment upon them. Possessed of a powerful mind, considerable administrative ability, and an irrepressible determination to get what he wanted, Mr Fitzherbert always made a noise in public affairs, though very often it all ended in a teapot. On the Maori question he clothed himself with a papal dogma of infallibility, and was naturally as much believed and credited as the Pope himself on that particular subject. On finance he was acknowledged to be a good, though not always stable, authority, and he filled the post of Colonial Treasurer several times during the Ministries of Mr Stafford and others : unfortunately or fortunately, on the last occasion on which he sat on the Treasury seat he had not finished counting his money before he had to hand over the unfinished sums to their former manipulator. There are several financial statements of Mr Fitzherbert, which were published in pamphlet form, and care/ully circulated — of course not by the hon. member himself — as masterpieces in the financier's art : and they certainly are in one way. There is an air of Primitive Methodism about them which was no doubt vinintentionally imparted, but which makes them amusing ; and any one who can make a financial statement a piece of light and amusing literature, must certainly be looked at as a clever financier. This is the principal right which Mr Fitzberbert had to the term. He always

knew the money he had, but he had no idea of how it should be distributed ; and in order to hide his want of precision in this respect, flights into decidedly mixed mathematics were indulged in, whilst the element of pure mathematics, with a tacit excuse, pleaded " unavoidably absent." Wherever t v ere was the gathering of eagles together over the carcase of a fallen or falling Ministry, the first to descend with closed wings and projecting beak was the quondam Treasurer, and he generally managed to get the choicest morsels before the rest of the flock of political vultures came up. People who have not been accustomed to the Venetian blinds and patent shutters with which those obnoxious and daylight-loving things called facts have to be darkened from the political atmosphere, never cease to express their wonder at a Financial Statement being considered anything wonderful as far as the plain items of receipt and expenditure are concerned. They can understand why a clever foreshadowing of a future financial policy, or a brilliant sketch of financial reforms in new devices for augmenting the revenue without increasing the taxation, should be applauded, because these deal with probabilities and possibilities of future times, instead of with certainties and conclusions of past years. But their unpoliticallytinted visions cannot see how there can be a difference between the balancing of the actual receipt and expenditure recorded in the Treasury books ; and they conclude, with their natural simplicity, that there can be only one mistake — that of simple addition — when two financial statements of similar past transactions differ by millions, and that with all due respect to his years and experience, the honourable member of the Government or Opposition in the wrong should be reminded of the defects of his early education. Their argument is this : So much has been spent on railways, so much on bridges, so much on salaries — add them all up and check the total. So much has been received for Customs, so much for land, so much for fees — add them all up and check the total. Balance debtor and creditor, and close the account. Now, they say, how can two different totals be made out of what are necessarily the same items. One Treasurer states in I one way, and another, a few weeks afterwards, makes quite a different result, and they are nonplussed at the immensity of ; the difference. But this class of people forget that when they go. to the theatre and see Dukes and Duchesses, Kings and Queens, dressed in Royal and Ducal robes, and talking impossible grammar, there is a "behind, the scenes, where all this glitter and gold " descends into the mild dross of reality. They look on the political stage, and see all things done in a grand style of loans and millions and so on, but they forget that all of the actors are by no means up in their parts, and are constantly making mistakes which would throw the whole play into inextricable confusion if it were not for the kindly services of the prompter. An undeniable authority tells us that all the world's a stage, and all the men and women actors on it ; and the political stage is only a sub-section of the great one, though the most important, and it should always be remembered that there's more acting on that stage than on any other, so that the vagaries of politicians like Mr Fitzherbert should not astonish people, if they would only consider the motives, and form their opinion independent of those motives on the really substantive motion which underlies the personal element ; but they will not do that. Say what Premiers and stump orators will, it is " measures, not men," that Bhould be the cry if the choice is to be between "measures, not men," and "men, not measures"; but the best way to solve the difficulty is to make the cry "measures and men," and until that is the basis of our political learnings we shall not have a defined public opinion. Look at the men like Mr Fitzherbert, and you get a onesided view ; look at the measures like his financial statements, and your vision is again distorted ; but take a fair estimate of the kernel of both, dismissing the rind of ambition and expediency, and a tolerably correct judgment cannot fail to be formed. From want of public opinion, defined and established, the best efforts of I our legislation have been thwarted. I Though he had made his name in Parliament and in New Zealand, before he attained to the office he now holds, Mr Fitzherbert is best known perhaps to the Colony as the Superintendent of Wellington Province. In that capacity he has indeed done many marvellous things, some of which do not all bear the mark of ingenuousness, a quality in which Mr Fiteherbert was accused lately of being singularly deficient. There can be no doubt that in his questionable ardour for the advancement of the Province of Wellington, he has been betrayed into schemes and devices which look only to the aggrandisement of Wellington as if it

were the Colony itself, and not merely an integral, and not over-important part of it. Helped by the General Government on every possible occasion, benefited by its presence in Wellington to a degree which he obstinately refuses to recognise, though everyone else sees it plainly, the Superintendent of Wellington has quite lost that once fervent and creditable interest he once took in matters of wide Colonial interest and significance. In every question he may be heard urging the claims of Wellington to a point it would be absurd to entertain, and grinding down the Estimates to get twopencehalfpenny more for a Wellington road or railway. While these Ultra-provincial sentiments run wild through the House with the sanction of an acknowledged chief, there is less and less prospect of the one Colonial policy being firmly established. The desire of a member from Otago for the advancement of Otagan interests, and the endeavour of an Aucklander to have a University for some half dozen students from his own Province only, is to a certain extent pardonable, especially if the proposals proceed from young and inexperienced member?, and is looked upon as a zeal which experience will correct. But if leading men foster these principles, very little useful work will ever be accomplished for the mutual benefit of all the Provinces. Our resources are sufficient to advance New Zealand as a Colony at a very rapid rate ; but if this general prot gress is to be sought through each Province endeavouring to get far above its neighbours and then crow over them, a great failure will inevitably ensue. We have got our Provinces and our Provincial Governments, and there iis every prospect of their remain- | ing institutions in the land for a long time to come ; but that is no reason why the one New Zealand, of which they are only so many integral members, should be left out in the cold. Luckily there are independent men at its helm, who are determined to keep the ship clear of these Provincial icebergs ; but their course is naturally impeded by such a policy as thab pursued by the Province of Wellington. Mr Fitzherbert seems merged in the not quickly brightening obscurity of his own Province ; and it is very hard to awake him from the lethargical Provincial wrapped-up-edness which the consideration of No 3. 1 and 2 accounts involves him in. It is so much available fuel for the Colony wasted. Mr Fitzherbert is unquestionably one-, of our ablest public men, and showed himself a really good and useful colonist before he became a Provincialist, and there are still a few occasions on which he evinces his former vigour. But he has become too much a bird of ill-omen to be ; listened to in the House with the same respect that he used to be. His speeches have lost the old fire and none of the old length, and they have now become tedious and prosy. Yet there is a charm still in listening to him. There is no one more master of emphasis, the great art of impressive speaking, than he is, and as far as elocution can carry a point, he has the facility. But his day is decidedly past as one of the leading speakers. The benches as they were during his first financial statements, and as they are when he speaks now, present a very different appearance. The fire of the gods has' departed, and left only a flickering flame behind, which sometimes rises to a false glare, but as speedily subsides into its former glimmering obscurity. The enunciation of his once clear views of things he leaves to the very emphatic, but far less convincing, gesticulations and harsh voice of his faithful henchman. The last time he occupied the Treasury seat was too short I for decided action, and the sudden overthrow was too much a disappointment. Taking now only a second-rate part in the debates in Parliament, he makes in the eyes of Wellington people an excellent Superintendent, and they have testified their approbation by repeated elections. But though he now looks at things very much from a Provincial point of view, he analyses all things thoroughly, so as to draw as much benefit for his Province as possible. Consequently he is always thoroughly up in every question, though argued from its* Provincial bearings only. Mr Fitzherbert ranks, too, amongst the favoured ones of the Colony, who have been honoured by their Sovereign with admission to the companionship of a knightlyorder, in recognition of Valuable services given to the Colony ; and those who watched the doings of the first struggling years will not begrudge him a well earned, dignity. Abdul.

A portion, consisting of 10,000 copies, of a recent issue of the Dundee Advertiser was printed on a paper manufactured from reeds grown on the banks of the Tay. The paper is said closely to resemble that made from jute. As far as the experiment has been tried, it is said to be satisfactory.