THE HON. G. F. RICHARDSON AT WYNDHAM.

Otago Witness, Issue 1966, 29 October 1891, Page 16

THE HON. G. F. RICHARDSON AT WYNDHAM.

(From Our Special Reporter.) Wyndham, October 22.

The Hon. G. F. Richardson addressed a meeting of his constituents in Milne's Hall this evening. There was a large attendance, and Mr J. Milne (chairman of the Wyndham Town Board) presided. The Hon. Mr Richardson, after expressing pleasure at being amongst old friends again, said he was exceedingly gratified that at euch a short notice, and in such unfavourable weather as of that night, that there should be so large a muster. As they were aware, the session had not been of so agreeable a nature as some others, and had been of very considereble duration. Two or three of the Ministers had spoken lately, and Mr Ballance, at Dunedin the other night, stated that he was not speakingimpartially — that while he did not wish to exaggerate or state anything unfairly, he was speaking from a party point of view. It might be that all who took part for any length of time in political life unconsciously became tinged with party ; but with regard to anything he (Mr Richardson) would put before them there would be nothing of party about it; anything he would advance could be corroborated by documents bearing on the subject, and he would try to avoid speaking in an unnecessary party spirit. It appeared to him that the Government, the great Liberal Government, had so far only provided a rather large crop of promises, and the colony was now anxious to see a little performance. THE LATE SESSION. He thought it might be assumed that the session which had so recently closed had been tbe most singular the colony had ever seen. It was the first session of Parliament in which labour had been largely represented, and he must do the labour members the credit of saying that so far as their conduct in the House, and their ready grasp of the rules of procedure, were concerned, they set an example to many older members. In one respect, however, they disappointed him, and that was the manner in which they blindly followed the Government on all the minor points, as well as on the party questions which arose. No matter how practical or how trivial an amendment attempted to be moved in any of the bills might be, it was all the same— into the lobby the labour members trooped with the Government. If the Government disapproved of an amendment, it was not made, and to that course of action might be attributed the fate of several of the bills in the legislative Council; at all events, he was of opinion that had they been reasonably amended in the Lower House, their chance of passing the Council would have been very mnch improved. Bat perhaps the most remarkable feature of the session was the fact that, almost for the first time in the history of the colony he believed, the people, by petition and by letter, applied to the nominated chamber to be saved from the action of their representatives. The most deplorable feature of the session was the lowering of the tone and the dignity of the House, and the introduction of much personal matter which bad hitherto been absent from its debates. For this he blamed the Government. They scarcely seemed to realise that they were not still in Opposition, and adopted throughout a very offensive style towards the other side of the Houee ; but this was hardly to be wondered at when one looked at the front row on the Government benches, which ranged from flippant crudity on the tight to brutal rudeness on the left. By the latter term he alluded to the Hon. the Minuter of Lands, MR JOHN M'KENZIE. For some reason unknown to him, Mr M'Kenzie appeared to be actuated by a very bitter feeling towards him, which had been manifested from the first. In the short session jast after his appointment, when he ; congratulated him upon his accession to officej he retorted upon him (Mr Richardson) in a manner that was certainly not courteous ; and again in the recess when ha visited the district he put a slight upon the electors through him (the speaker) as their representative. He was there when Mr M'Keuzie visited and travelled through the electorate, but he did not think it incumbent on him to tell him of his intention, and went through tbe district accompanied by his (Mr Richardson's) political opponents and members of the great Liberal party. Again, before the session, speaking at Palmerston, too late for a reply to be made before the opening of Parliament, Mr M'Kenzie's text from first to last was the maladministration of his predecessor in the Lands and in the Stock departments. It was hardly necessary to follow the matter up in all its details, but in speaking in the financial debate Mr M'Kenzie nsed expressions implying maladministration in respect to the Ofcakeike runs. He (Mr Richardson) had no chance then of bringing the matter up, as Mr M # Kenzie was replying to him, but later on, having in tbe meantime assisted him loyally with the Land Bill, and endeavoured to avoid conflict with him in the House, he took an opportunity to say that the expressions used by Mr M'Ketzie went either too far or not far enough, and that if there were anything he knew on the matter he should say it, or withdraw the expressions. Thereupon, in replying, he made the charge that he (Mr Richardson) had been 11 squared "by the late Hon. Robert Campbell. He did not believe the charge had .injured him with the electors or with those who knew him, but it wa3 a matter that he conld not let be. He brought it up in the House as a question of privilege, and they all kcew the consequences whioh ensued — namely, THE RESIGNATION OP MR BRYCE, and the loss of his valuable putlic services to the country. With respect to that point, he did not think the public generally were aware that the disorderly person was not Mr Bryce", but the Premier. Mr Btyce had the floor of the House, and was speaking, and when he used the vrords, "The Premier should be ashamed of hhnself," Mr Billanca jumped up, and contrary to rule aud order, commenced speaking across the House to Mr Bryce, ordering him to withdraw these words. The Speaker should bave at once made Mr Ballance sit down. He v had his remedy, if he felt aggrieved, by rising to a point of order, whereupon Mr Bryce would have been requested by the Speaker to sit down until the point of order was heard. Had the proper course been taken the unhappy scenes ■which followed would not have occurred. The language was so applicable to the circumstances that when the sentence was completed he (Mr Richardson) believed the Speaker would probably have said that aa the Pr etnier felt the expression to be offensive, it was undesirable that such an expression should be used ; but he did not think he would have asked Mr Bryce to withdraw it, and Mr Bryce would at one > have said that he would Bob have used the words after the Speaker's expression of opinion, and that would have ended the whole trouble. To go back to his own part in the matter, had the Government done wbat they ought to hive done as honourable men who were not ashamed of the notion of their colleague, acd at once agreed to the setting up of a committee, t\e whole debate and consequent trouble wdulft'have been avoided. To his mind, their evading the matter by moving the previous 'question, and their refusal of the inquiry, were tantamount

to an admission of guilt on their part. To remove any false impression WITH REGABD TO THE BUNS obtained by Mr Campbell, he would only say that they, together with a large number of other runs, were classed by the Classification Commission as suitable exclusively for pasturage, and not capable of being used with profit in areas of less than 5000 acres. The term of lease and upset prices were fixed by the Waste Lands Board of Otago, and the leases of the runs were sold by public auction under keen competition, and fetched nearly double the upset prices. The only question affected by the mistake in the telegram was as to whether, after a subsequent report, it would have been found possible to deal with them in five small grazing runs instead of two pastoral runs. He had only mentioned this because some people appeared to have the notion that a large area of land suitable for small settlement was parted with in some private way by the Government to Mr Campbell. THE OPPOSITION had had a difficult task before them, as not only had the Government a very large majority, but all the committees were packed by Ministerial supporters to the extent of two or three to one of the other side. He did not think that in reality the Government had a larger following of stanoch supporters than had the Opposition, but in the meantime what he would term the floating population of the Houbo was temporarily attached to it. Id spite of the recess, during which the Government were to Tiave had all their measures prepared for tbe House at its meeting, the time proved too Bhort for the work. Some bills were ready, tew well considered, and throughout the session, even to its dying hours, Ministers were constantly introducing fresh measures. The most important bills which did not become law were, first, THE FEMALE FRANCHISE BILL. He opposed this measure, not through any want of respect for the other sex, or of faith in their ability to deal intelligently with public questions, but owing, he presumed, to his oldfashioned notions on such matters. The bill, or a similar one, would no doubt be heard of again, and, judging from the feeling of the House, he thought it not improbable that it might before long become law. He did not say it in any improper spirit, but it appeared to him to be an attempt to amend Genesis, which said of the woman, " Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee "; whereas the bill said, " Thy desire shall be to the Government benches, and thou shalt rule over men," for it was clear that they could not grant the franchise to women and logically refuse them admission to the House. The next important measure wa9 the PAYMENT OP MEMBERS BILL, and he found that locally a good deal of capital had been attempted to be made out of his action with regard to it. To him it appeared that tbe position he took up was perfectly straightforward aud consistent. The first vote was on the question of the bill being read that day six months, which of course meant killing it. He voted for killing it. The next question on which a vote was taken was " that it be now read the second time." This was supposed to be the vote on which members expressed their opinion of the principles of a measure, and he also voted against the second reading. On the first vote the majority for the bill was nine ; on the second it had increased to 11. It was therefore quite clear that there was a large majority in favour of carrying the bill, and to have persevered in calling for divisions, or in voting against the bill after that would have simply been obstruction ; and as the Government had introduced it, and as they had a large majority at their back to carry it, when amendments were proposed in committee by some members of the Hous9 he voted against them, voting, after the second reading, for the bill as it stood, having done his best in the first instance, and at the proper time, to kill it. The LAND BILL was perhaps the- most important measure introduced by the Government, and was considered by them as one of their principal policy measures. " He need not go at length into the matter, except to express his doubts as to the authorship of the bill. It was quite clear that it did not emanate from the present Minister for Lands. His speech in introducing it was all written and read, and written by somebody who was not fully conversant either with the existing land laws or with the bill under discussion, as one or two of the clauses to which special attention was drawn, and for which the Government claimed merit, were clauses in existing acts. So illconsidered was this measure, that on the Waste Lands Committee considerably over 100 amendments of a minor character were made in it; but as the committee consisted of so many Government supporters it was impossible to get amendments made in respect to the main differences between the bill and the existing law. The first principal difference was that a cash purchaser obtained no title until after some years, and until after considerable improvements had been made. The second and more important amendment was the taking of power by the Minister to override the present right of the selector to choose his own tenure. That right, oonferred by the act of 1887, had, he thought, been much appreciated by settlers, and he did not believe the people of New Zealand would quietly submit to have the right taken from them. Looking to the known and expressed views of the Premier, and of the Minister for Lands, though he said that this power was not inserted for that purpose, there could be little doubt that the act would have been administered solely, or very largely, in the direction of perpetual lease pure and simple, that is, without the right to obtain a freehold. They were told more than once that perpetaal lease without the right to freehold was popular, bat it was pointed out that if such were the case there is nothing at the present time to prevent anybody who wished it from continuing to hold under perpetual lease over a series of renewed terms— in fact so long as he chooses. The Government had taken credit for new regulations in respect of Special Settlement Associations under the perpetual lease system without the right of purchase, and the Minister for Lands, speaking at Palmerston, claimed that he had placed l nearly 400 selectors on something like 75,000 acres of land under those reculations.and that when certain titles to land, formerly Native were acquired he had as many more people over another equal area ready to take up land under those conditions. He thought this statement somewhat amusing and a little incorrect, for when he left Wellington the other day the survey of some of those blocks of land on which the people were now said to be had only just commenced, and he failed to understand how the selectors had managed to find their sections before tho surveyors had been over the country; and the statement was the more amusing from the fact that the Minister prefaced it by sayirg that he had been accused of doing nothing and that he was now going to £t a j?^ W? iDtO that matber by Wnmg what he had done. He then went on to say that if certain ifs and ans turned out to be pots and pans, in the next 12 months he hoped to have put a thousand people on the land under those conditions. Now the reason that land was readily applied for under these regulations,

which professed not to give the freehold, was, he believed, that the selectors were quite well aware that the regulations wero not worth the paper on which they were written, and that at any time, having complied with the other conditions up to date, they had the right, despite the regulations, to get their freehold whenever they saw fit;. No regulations made by virtue of an act could possibly amend that act. The associations to which he had referred were collected bodies of men, who applied for a block of land, and when granted it was cut up into the number of areas required to give one to each. It was then ballotted for between them, and immediately the allocation had taken place, if they had taken up the land under the deferred payment system, they became ordinary deferred payment selectors of the Crown; if under the perpetual lease system, they became ordinary perpetual lease selectors under the conditions- pertaining to perpetual lease, which, in the present state of the law, gives the right to the freehold. He could take up the whole evening with the Land Bill as his text, but he would only touch upon one other point—the " one-man-one-run," than which a more ridiculous proposal was never made to Parliament. It was •• one-man-one-run" irrespective of area, irrespective of carrying capacity, irrespective of anything but one-man-one-run. He knew runs not exceeding 200 or 300 acres, and not carrying more than from 100 to 200 sheep, yet their owners would- be debarred from becoming Crown tenants for any farther pastoral lands. In support of much that was proposed by the Government, he regretted to say that statements were made which would no doubt tend to convince those not conversant with the subject but which were of a character inconsistent with fact. This habit did not seem to have dropped with the close of the session, as he noticed that the Minister of Lands is reported to have said, speaking of runs, that 163 were I held by 13 lessees, covering an area of over two and a half million acres, and carrying about 1,000,000 sheep. He stated that one of these companies occupied 450,000 acres with 140,000 sheep ; another, 363,000 acres with 200.000 sheep, and a third somewhat less. He (Mr Richardson) did not know whether these figures j were correct or not — he was not challenging them— but the Minister went on to say that 11 these three companies occupied about half the pastoral land of the colony, with balf the number of sheep." A more grossly misleading statement could scarcely have been made, yet such statements carried weight and misled those who knew no better. Half the pastoral lands of the colony! A million acres! Why, there were nearly 12.000,000 acres of pastoralland now under lease. Half a million sheep ! Half the sheep of the colony !— a colony whioh the last returns showed possessed nearly 17,000,000 sheep ; and these statements appeared to have been made for the purpose of setting class against class and agitating to drive the so-called "social pests" from the colony. All the measures to which he had alluded had happily gone into the waste paper basket, but he noticed that they were threatened with regard to the Land Bill that they would see it again, and that the Government would take efficient means to force it through, a portion of this threat being levelled against THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL. If the Government supposed that they were going to put as many of the great Liberal party into the Council as they liked, he thought they were reckoning without their host ; and at any rate, however many they were permitted to nominate, and however liberal those nominees might be, about 48 hours in that Legislative Chamber would make them very different men. LATE GOVERNMENT had been pretty severely criticised, in some cases no doubt Bomewhat deservedly, but to his mind there were some of their actions that, whatever others might think, he considered of merit. Firstly, he would cay that the late Colonial Treasurer's handling of the finances of the colony, the liberal provisions of the Land Act of 1887 in respect to settlement, the appointment of the Railway Commissioners, and the appointments to the Legislative Council were matters of which he at least felt proud. He regretted exceedingly that the political bad been allowed to override the business aspect of our finance, and that; the LAND AND INCOME TAX had passed into law. He would not attempt to explain it, partly because he did not properly understand it, and did not know of anyone who did. The broad aspect of the matter, however, was this— that the taxation of the oities was to be lightened, that the same money was to be raised and that the additional amount was to be made up from the country. There was no getting away from that. They were told that the smaller farmers, or men whose improvements did not exceed £3000, would get off scotfree. That remained to be seen— he doubted it, though it was possible that the taxation on that class might, in the first instance, be lightened. But already he had beard of cases of large landowners distributing their property among their families so as to evade the heavy progressive taxation. The whole matter was as yet conjectural. Until the assessm L nli , I wa ? P r °P erl y made it was very difficult to say what amount would be obtainable on the basis of a penny, and it was quite clear that if the large estates did not, or roa |] l .J? ein ? broken U P oeßßed . to contribute the additional amount expected from them the exemption must be from time to time reduced till all were included. The worst feature, apart from its unjustness, of the progressive taxation proposed was that it fell entirely on the class employing labour; and he believed that every sixpence collected under this progressive taxation would mean many shillings out of the wage fund of the colony, for these owners would not continue to improve and largely employ labour with the result of rendering themselves liable to heavier taxation ; aud it must not be forgotten that they were distinctly told that the present measure was only an instalment of what was to follow. They might depend upon it that very soon it would be discovered that from an employment point of view a great mistake had been made and he yet hoped to see the bill either repealed or very largely modified next session. He did not wish to be in any way personal, or even to be severely critical, with regard to the PRESENT GOVERNMENT. Because he believed that they were not running the country on the right lines he wished them a short life, and because he wished them a short life, wished the Minister of Lands to live for ever and the Minister of Mines good health. Just when the public works expenditure had been contracted to a point which would have allowed of the balance of loan money sufficing for the next three years, just when, in the general administration of the country, lines of expenditure had been reached inside the lines of revenue, the advent of the great Liberal party to power had overturned everything. They heard of economy, of retrenchment, of dismissals of officers, the great Liberal trumpet sounded loudly in these directions, but when they examined into the accounts and looked at the Estimates, it was found that though the Government might have been correct when talking about dismissals, they bad omitted to mention the appointments, and that for every man they had turned out of the Civil Service

they had replaced him with a man and a fraction. The Premier had lately stated that a Treasury return showed that 181 officers had been dispensed with and 180 appointed, or 51 less, of whom 35 belonged to the Public Works department, and that the same return showed a saving of salaries of £14,500. Unfortunately, however, the Estimates— now the, appropriations— for the year showed seven officers more, and a saving of salaries of only £1900, the greater part of which represented the salary of the unfortunate judge they were starving to death. The Opposition had experienced extreme difficulty in dragging returns out of the Government, and many returns and papers necessary for the proper consideration of business were only laid on the table of the House at the very close of the session. One rather interesting return was that of the TBAVELLING EXPENSES OF MINISTERS, the economical Ministers of the great Liberal party, from which it appeared that during an ordinary recess their travelling expenses amounted to £140 per month, while the expenses of the members of the late Government, during the three months oovering the exciting period of a general election, amounted to £40 a month. ALL THBOUSH it was the voice of the gatherer, the hands of the scatterer, and, in other matters, promise rather than performance. The advent of the great Liberal party was to have stopped the exodus. It had increased. The great Liberal party were to Bet an example to the late Government in settling the lands of the colony. The returns for the six months of the present financial year showed that 74,000 acres of settlement land had been disposed of less than for the corresponding six months of the previous year. Now, at our rate of settlement of about 202 acres per seleotor, and three of a country population to each selection, as given by the late census, this additional area wonld represent over 1000 additional country population, and he was very much afraid that settlement was contracting, and would continue to contract more and more under the present administration, and that a much larger deficiency would occur in the present half of the current year. There had been a great flourish of trumpets about the LABOUR BUREAU, by means of which a large number men had been found in work at next to no cost at all. The late Government had no labour bureau, and blew no trumpets, but was in communication with the chairmen of the charitable aid boarda and the mayors of the principal cities, and all good men wanting work up country were provided with railway passes and the means of reaching employment, without its being advertised from one end of the colony to the other. Then with respect to those for whom the Government provided work : For the year 1890 the average for the colony was 33 per day, and the cost for the last financial year was under £1600 ; but, aided by this new department, the new Government had improved all these things In March they had 55 men, in May 229, in July 467, " and," added Mr Richardson, "goodness only knows how many they may have got now." July was the last return that could be obtained. The cost for April was £250, and for July £3730, the number of men and the cost steadily increasing month after month. A sum of £7600 was spent in the first four months of the year, yet the vote on the Estimates was only £4600 for the year's expenditure. He believed that A, VEBI GRIEVOUS INJUBT was being done to the country by the Government administration in this respect. It was all very well to talk about co-operative road works and co-operative railway works, and the men obtaining the profit which would otherwise go to the contractor ; but it was forgotten that the contractor had to bear the risk of accidents happening to the works, to find the capital, and to supervise the men. The men now employed on the co-operative works were not liable for these things, which fell upon the .Government, and the risks being removed, an engineer's estimate of contract price became unduly high, and he had heard of men being v tempted from bash clearing for the settlers in Catlins to the Government unemployed works, and of men leaving pernrsuent employment in the mines in Central Otago, and of navvies coming from railway contracts on the West Coast, to the Governme.it co-operative works. The prices appear to have been arranged so that the townsmaa unaccustomed to pick and shovel work, unaccustomed to hard labour, could earn what was considered a good day's wage, which meant that the experienced navvy, at these prices could earn nearly double the current wages of the colony for similar work, This was a matter that must shortly cure itself, for the Government was not only oompeting with settlers, but with mining companies and contractors, and if it continued to pay as liberally as it was now doing and to find work for all who asked it on those terms, they would soon have every available working man in the colony in their army of unemployed. REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE. He had already said that the prudent lines of expenditure adopted by the late Government had been reversed by their successors, but he thought they would be startled to learn the extent to which this had taken place. The annual appropriations had now been, printed and circulated, and comparing them with the actual expeHditure for last year (and this was taking the most favourable view for the Government, as the votes for last year were considerably overexpended), the total votes on the consolidated fund exceeded the expenditure of last year by £73,000 and on the public works fund by £418,000, or a total of £491,000 voted in excess of last year's actual expenditure. These, of course, were the votes for the services of the year. The revenue for this year was estimated at slightly less that last year's— the expenditure, tLT*? P romised » B &<Kdd be considerably less. With last year's revenue and last year's expenditure the late Government had a surplus of nearly £150,000. They were promised this year a surplus of £113,000, though one item of revenue would, he was afraid, not be realised. In the Financial Statement Mr Ballance expected to obtain £23,000 more from territorial revenue " on account of the general acceptance of the Government's land settlement proposals." As the bill was in the waste paper basket he sapposed this item might be dropped. For the half year just ended the revenue had exceeded that of the corresponding portion of last year by £11,000, which was highly satisfactory ; but the expenditure under "annual appropriations," where, we were told, the economy was to come in, shows for the same period an excess on the same basis of comparison of £101,000, so that by this time the Premier himself must have given up hopes of a surplus. BESTOBING SALARIES. The Government had been very muoh twitted in the House with having replaced the salaries of deserving and net overpaid officers which, when in Opposition, they had, with the skinflints, been instrumental in cutting off. Mr Ballance at Dunedin said since tbe Government came into office they had effected a redaction of £41,253, and that they had only restored £475 in salaries. Well, if people would make these statements, these half truths, and would quibble in that way, it was very difficult to know where to meet them. He had gone partly through the Estimates, and found that salaries to the amount

of £1400 had been restored. The quibble, he believed was this : That Mr Bal lance was only reckoning salaries that had been pat back, and was excluding from his reckoning the Salaries that had been increased of a large number of officers who had not been cat down, and that was where injastioe came in, for there were several officeia in the Land and Survey departments whose salaries had been cut down and not restored. The speaker did not say that the mcrtases were not deserved, bat the officers first dealt with should have been those whose salaries were cat down last year. Instead of £475beingthe amount restored, £1875 would be well inside the mark, and he supposed the total would turn out tobesomewhereabout£l6oo. The Premier, since the House rose, had turned the corner a little with respect to borrowing. When he (Mr Richardson) stated in the House that the government proposals meant borrowing next S^«ff& saftass vnU» work., tee we, e wil™,™ p, O^S to be constructed aaoh 08 tbe Tbamas-TA A? n h<. »»j-tteSSH at what was called the double cut. To go half way between the double cat and the gorge meant absolute waste of money, for what 3 the use of a railway terminating in the middle • n j- S ° M ? VEBT QOOD ADVICE in Dunedin, and he wanted to give the preset aI T /m c " d Z IW ? hls aQ dience to organise and he (Mr Richardson) advised his heaters to organise. When they saw the serious effects at elections of organisations in cities and towns, and when they knew these organisations were spread£f«n?fw wln igßi g8 the ooantr y it meant that unless those organised who had the interests of peace and order at heart, who rsspected the rights of property, and who did not wish to be driven out of the country, the results would be peculiar. Where there was organisation on one side and disorganisation on the other there was no hope for the disorganised party even though they were more numerous. Speaking not in the .interests of any party in politics, but ,n the interests of conntry settler* he asked them to think over this and see whether something might not be done, so that might be taken to get men S n Se O pdl 8 S record their votes for who they thought were Thai JIT , TherewM Beat apathy shown at the last election on one side ; there was aone on the other. He gave the latter side every credit for it. The organisation was well worked up, and the men appeared to be obedient to the mandates of the leaders. At the present time one might say unionism had bowed itself down feS'S %u Ste t uibQt&lu ibQt&l im "8 c whicn Mf Ballance, the high priest, had set up, but it was only a Liberal image, and the unionists would very soon find that promises were not satisfying. They would want something more, and it was very difficult to say how things would turn ont. The Government had devoted a great deal of time to abusing tbe late administration. If the late administration was so terribly bad surely it was all the easier for them to improve upon it and show themselves the better; If the present Government only would endeavour to improve on their predecessors, and if they succeeded in improving on them, if they showed that what he had been saying that night was based on misconceptions, if they showed a record of settlement at the end of the 12 months in excess or equal to the record for preceding 12 months, if they showed a surplus instead of a deficit at the end of the year, if they showed good administration in any one shape or other, her Majesty's Opposition would be the first to acknowledge it. Mr Richardson, who was frequently applauded during his speech, resumed his seat amid prolonged cheers. Replying to questions Mr Richardson said he might have on a previous occasion expressed private views that State education was being carried too far, bat he was certain he had not promised to put his foot upon it, and in any case the time was not opportune for interfering with the system. i.v MI L J i M '^ auolllan i *n proposing a vote of thanks for the address and confidence^ the member, said that though his constituents had not entertained Mr Richardson at a banquet, they consideied he had acted the part of a man Mr Nutsford seconded the .motion, which was briefly supported by Mr J. Templeton, who stated amid langhter and applause that Sir R Stout, even if he came down to contest Mataura with Mr Richardson, would get licked. Mr J. Allan wished to add to the motion a vote of thanks to the Opposition through Mr Richardson for the gallant way they acted last session. He thought they did their duty manfully and ably, and he hoped when they came back to another election they would find the country interests better organised than! at the last election. ' The motion was amended as suggested, and earned unanimously. Mr Richardson, in returning thanks on behalf of the Opposition and himself for the vote, said, with reference to a banquet, he was very pleased indeed that the electors of Mataura had honoured him by not proposing a banquet. He wished the distinction to be drawn as wide as possible between Government by banquet and going about in a quiet way attending- to the interests of the colony, and he would not>like on his own platform addressing his own people in his own place to feel it necessary to be supported by a Premier, an ex-Premier, another Minister of the Crown, and about half a dozen members of Parliament. On the motion of Mr G. Orosbie, seconded by Mr D. Stalker, a further resolution was unanimously adopted—" That this meeting desires to to acknowledge the praiseworthy action of the Legislative Council last session in suppressing obnoxious legislation." The meeting closed with the usual compliment to the chair.