BANQUET AT WAIMATE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2456, 17 April 1901, Page 70

BANQUET AT WAIMATE.

DISAPPOINTED BY THE PREMIER AND THE HON. MR WARD. (By Our Special Reporter.) WAIMATE, April 11. A complimentary banquet, tendered to Dr Barclay, Mayor of Waimate, in appreciation of his sei vices as mayor for the past two years, was given in St, Augustine's Hall Waimate, this evening, and was highly successi ful. The hall was decorated with bunting i and very fine large transparencies of Lords Roberts and Kitchener, General French, ana Colonel Robin. There was a very nu- [ merous and repi tentative attendance, the tables being crowded. Mr J. B. Wilson occupied the chair, supported on the right by the guest of the evening, and on the loft by the Minister of Education (representing the Ministry). Mr R. Nicol (ex-mayor), lillcd the vice-chair, and among tho»e present were tho Revs. Li. Barclay (the guest's father), Regnaull, and Aubrey, and Messrs Laurenson and Barclay, M.H.R.'s, Crs Philip, Sinclair, O'Connor, and Dean, and W. Hole (mayor of Timaru). The proceedings opened with " God save the King," and grace was said by the Rev. Mr Baiclay. A capital spread was soon disposed ot, and then followed the tonsts and speeches. Telegrams were read explaining the absence ot the Premier and the Hon. Mr Ward, which was due to unlucky -unforeseen circumstances. The Premier, in his communication, promised to take the earliest opportunity of paying his long-pro-mised visit to Waimate. — (Loud applause.) Apologies were also received from Messrs Meredith *nd Caincroa=, M H.R.'s. and the lions. U. Jones and Twomey, M.L.O.'s. The toast of "'The King" was received with much enthusiasm, all joining in the Naticnal Anthem. Then Mr M. Duggan proposed " Tho Ministry," coupled with the name ot the Hon. Minister of Education, and spoke briefly, but strongly, in praise of ihe piesent Liberal administration. The toast, was drunk with musical honours. The Hon. Vv . C. Walker was applauded on rising to reply. He remarked that one or two w ords more might not be out of place in support of what had been said by the chaiiman as to the regret of his colleagues — the Premier, tho Hon. Mr Ward, and, he might add, the Hon. Mr Hall-Jones — regarding their inability to be present that evening. Fortunately for himself, the occasion had found him nearer Waimate than Wellington, and so he had the exceeding good fortune to be with them. — (Applause.) With others of his colleagues, he felt the Government were bound to make an effort to be represented, and an additional reason for this was to be found in the fact that the worthy member for the district, Major Steward, was away doing good service for this colony in Australia. It was therefore eminently proper that the Government should send a repiesentatue to this banquet. Regarding the subject of the toast they had drunk, he migiu say it was a long time since the present Government had come into office, and that it had continued there so long was owing to the fact that this and so many other constituencies throughout the colony thought it worthy of confidence. — (Applause.) Therefore the merit of any good work the Liberal Administration had done was fully shared by the people who had put them in and kept them in office to do certain work, which work they had honestly tried to do — (Applause.) It seemed a long time to look back, but it was only 10 years since the Hon. Mr Ballance came into power with his fine, honest, hard-work-ing team behind him. — (Hear, hear.) And it was a most terrible blow for the liberalism of New Zealand that their chief had been cut off so early, just as he had begun to get into work. Still, it was one of those strokes of fate to which all must submit, and party and country had to bow to the inscrutable decree whenever issued, no matter how useful, eminent, or even apparently indispensable the individual might be to the State in which he lived. As they knew, tho Government which was formed upon the demise of the late Hon. Mr Ballanco but kept on the lines of his pob"cy, and had ever since continued, under the Hon. Mr Seddon, the work the foundations of which were then laid. Then, again, Mr Ballance had been very fortunate, and they had been fortunate since, in having for many years the eminent services of the Hon. John M'Kenzie — (applause) — a gentleman who knew intimately the whole secret of the land question as it affected a young country, and who had brought -with him from Scotland recollections of the unfortunate conditions and misery that existed where land was held in large blocks by landlords who were absent for a great part of the year, and where the cultivators of the soil were not in an independent position. Mr M'Kenzie had come to the colony early enough to know the history of land alienation in New Zealand, and had in the Provincial Council done his best to regulate the disposal of Crown lauds in Ota go. Afterwards he did all he could as a private member of Parliament to mould the land legislation into the shape he thought it should assume, and so when he took office was prepared to follow certain fixed lines and prepared a land policy which, in his opinion, would work for the good of the colony and promote the satisfactory settlement of the land. The verdict of the colony upon this work he (the speaker) believed was that it had been good, honest, and true. (Loud applause.) Unfortunately, illness struck down the Hon. John M'Kenzie, and hi? colleagues lost his assistance, and the colony could no longer claim him as its Minister of Lands. Still, the work he had done lived on, and he had the rare pleasure during- his illness and in his recovery therefrom — which was a, matter for great congratulation, since it was, happily, taking place — of knowing that the people regarded the work he had done as having been well done, and recognised that it would li\c on m the history of this country. Next in importance to land came education, upon which at tksjgres^t time he slwu,kl say but little.

He now mentioned it simply to « : iy that ha deemed it second only in importance to the land question. The land policy had beea approved, and the people of this district mint recognise the advantages it conferred". No doubt tho acquisition of land for settlement had been to some extent an experiment. There had been many adverse opinions concerning it, but though it was a bold policy the Government had the conviction thai, it was the one thing necessary at the time it was introduced, and so they had given effect to it; and in the parts of the colony in which it had been enforced progress had been made, settlement had advanced, production had increased, and there existed every feature that could denote a, healthy condition of affairs. — (Applause.) Another thing which had been of great advantage to the country was that the Agricultural department had been, he might almost &ay, created by tho Hon. John M'Kenzie. Certainly it had been developed by him so as to become vigorous ar.cl effective and to increase production in the colony enormously. Of great importance to the colony was the legislation dealing with agriculture, and from' the acts dealing with noxious weeds and garden pests he hoped much good would result. Scab had been cured in this colony when such a result was deemed wholly impracticable, and ho hoped that equal success might be attained in dealing with parasitic diseases m many directions. Thirty years ago Canterbury passed a scab ordinance, and numbers of copies of it had been sent to Natal, where the people wanted to see how to keep pe=ts down. There wore a good many other thing* they had to teach Africa since then — (luugliter and applause) — and he thought if they would only tient the subject firmly, as we had done with rc.ib. all these difficult subjects would di.'appsar. — (Renewed laughter and appbu-e.) He knew the hardship that unwholesome, repressive measures were likely to inflict, but was sure that if such measures weie suppoited, as they muet be, by the good sense of the general community, then even those- who now objected would greatly benefit thereby. (Applau 3 e.) One of the most important things wo could do was, as sensible men, to fight parasitic pests, which for some reason beyond our knowledge were peimitted, bufc which it «a? clearly part of our woik as colonists £>nd Anglo-Saxons, or Celts, or whatever wo might be, to fight as we should fight all evil and all mi'iiutv. — (Applause.) Of course this na<* a mo*t eventful year, s-uch as we were rccr likely to <=co again. Karly in the year we had been called upon to Jament the 10.-s of our well-belo\ed Queen. 'Then we had uiniEssed tho accession of King Edward "VII, then tho institution of the Commonwealth of Australia; md tho Comm in wealth bad b"en bi ought into being with a great flourish of trumpet', but ie was afraid that, like eveiy otlicr b(,dv 3 all its troubles were to cjme. — (Laughter.) He hoped that it would prosper, and wa B indeed sure it would do so, but whether we a<= a colony were or were not to be intimately connected with its destinies it was at the present time quite impossible to say. Representatives of the colony were now investigating the question from every posihle point of view, and upon the rrceipt of their report the question would be considered in a more practicable way than had hitherto been possible. Perhaps it might be considered strange that New Zealand .should have gone to a certain amount of trouble and expense to be represented at the inauguration of tho Commonwealth. He, however, was not one of those who thought that great occasions should be studied from that point of view. If an occasion were great, those interested in it — and certainly we were inteiested in. the fortunes of a Commonwealth so situated — should take an appropriate part therein;' and he believed that it was to the advantage of statesmen and politicians to witness the inauguiation of the Commonwealth, of which New Zealand mia;ht become a daughtei. We had also seen the pomp and circumstance of war as represented by a section of the Imprnal troops in holiday attire, and from our own boys in Africa we had heard how they had fought, and what they had looked like when engaged in the sober, serious facfc of actual campaign, >Sti!l it was, gratifying to know from all sides how our boys had fought, and to learn from all that they wore perfectly satisfied to fight side by side with "Tommy Atkins" whenever the chancecomes. — (Applau-e.) So far as his Ministerial position was concerned, he felt very proud that the boys of the colony had turned out as they had done. They had never personally had any doubt of the grit that was in them, but still all had heard a good deal about the degeneracy of our offspring. Well, if there was degeneracy he suDposed tho blame lay at the parents' door. Still, doubts had been expressed as to whether our boya were as good men as their fathers and mother*. — (Laughter.) Well, results had shown that our young fellows were just as good young fellows as could bo when it came to hard work or hard fighting, and were quite worthy to be the succes^ois of the pioneer «ettlers of this colony, who had endured great hardships with no pioimsc of reward in sight ; for though to them this was the land of piomise, when that promise was to be fulfilled precious few knew in the eaily days. But still mcii and women had toiled on.— (Applause.) Them was no doubt our oaily colonists had toiled like heroes, and we need not be surprised that thoir cbildien, when the time came and they were called upon to show what they could do, had acted a? well and nobly as they had done. — (Loud applause.) He would ju=t like to cay that doubts had been expressed as to whether the education 1 gnen in the public schools was a good education. Well, by its fruits it should bo judged, and he maintained that if education such as the public schools gave could produce boys such as we had sent to Africa it would be admitted that we ha\e a good education system. In conclusion, the Hon. Mr Walker said he did not feel justified in speaking longer, and would only repeat that his colleagues were exceedingly glad that a. member of the Ministry should be present that evening, and that ho was personally exceedingly glad to be the one selected — (Loud apiilause.) "The Parliament" was pioposed by Mr Hole and responded to by Mes-rs Laurenson and Barclay, M.H.R.'s. The Chairman then pioposed the health of the guest of the evening. Waimate was, he said, to be congratulated upon having such' an up-to-d«\te mayor as Dr Barclay. That gentleman had proposed a lanety of measures which he felt sure would be for the ultimate benefit of the town and dishicl, and although it was possible that these mea-

sures could not be immediately given effect to, there wa3 no doubt wl alever in his mind that in due course they w ould be carried out. Dr Barclay, in reply, acknowledged the compliments paid to him, and baid that he could honestly claim that the proposals with which his name was connected had been made by him entirely unselfishly, and simply because, in his opinion, they were in the real interests of the place. He then went exhaustively into the details of the proposals, and expressed regret that fiom various reasons many persons were quite inadequately acquainted with their true effect, and were by no means conversant with the details of his schemes. A number of other toapts were drunk, including "The Army, Navy, end Volunteers," "Agricultural and Pastoral Interests," and '"Education." The Hon. Mr Walker was replying to the latter toast at 1 o'clock. In his speech, which was rather long and emphatic, ke defended the proposals emanating from his depaitment, and declared that they were in no sense designed or intended as a menace to the existence or independence of the boards of education. At 1.30 a.m. tLe toast list was by no means exhausted.