Pen and Ink Portraits.

Observer, Volume 1, Issue 19, 22 January 1881, Page 184

Pen and Ink Portraits.

No. 14.— John Bkyce, M.H.R,

An Englishman by birth and a colonist of many years standing. A man slightly under the middle height with a well-knit frame, but a weak chest, and a tendency to pulmonary complaints. A well-shaped symmetrical head ; a sallow face, sicklied o'er with the pale cast of deep thought ; large, brown, serious, deep-set eyes, under thick brows ; firmly compressed lips, and a countenance in which the superficial physiognomist would read indecision, irrosoluteness, and weakness of character, but the closer observer, patience, impurtability, determination, great powers of mental application, and the traces of physicial pain. And withal a taciturn man, with modest, unassuming, demeanour, almost approaching to shyness ; not the sort of person who would shine in a ballroom or a lady's boudoir, to whisper soft nothings, natter, talk in polite phrases, and conform to the artificial trammels of ettiquette, but a deep, serious, dry, conscientious man, a patient listener who keeps his own counsel, who gives everyone man his ear but few his voice,* takes each man's censure but reserves his judgment, and is above all true to himself. A man who would rather prerserve silence than say the thing that is not ; but shrewd, penetrative, and quick to detect falsehood or attempt to deceive. Not easily imposed upon ; not to be influenced by flattery ; not to be threatened or cajoled ; not to be driven from a course which he has once decided upon as right, Imt somewhat slow to make up Ms mind. A cold, studious, almost unlovable man, with no ambition to shine as an orator, or to court popularity. A self-taught man with the world and men for his books, perhaps not fitted bynature for a politician, but with the qualities for a successful banker. A careful, saving man, who has seen poverty and bitter days, and won a competency by temperance, economy, self-denial, industry, and integrity. Twenty years ago he was a small farmer in the Wanganui district, and during the war in the West Coast he served in the Mounted Defence Force, wherein John Ballance was ~ a cornet, before he made his first essay as a peddlar of jewellery, to rise to a journalist, and a politician. In those early days these two men contracted a firm friendship and mutual esteem which lasted for many years, until they were separated in the turmoils of politics. Even thus early John Bryce had acquired a reputation for sterling honesty, conscientousness and hard-hcadedness, and was regarded as a leader and adviser, and a man of mark. When Ballance began to wield an influence through the columns of the Wanganui Herald, he brought his friend Bryce to ttie front, gave him prominence as a local politician, backed his party in all the road board questions and discussions, and kept his name on men's lips. So, in the natural order of things, it came to pass that John Bryce was elected to a seat in Parliament, became Chairman of the Native Affairg Committee, an authority on native questions, and acquired a reputation for untiring industry rather than for any of those shining qualities which distinguish a man in the senate and the forum. During all these days John Ballance remained in the background, watched' the world and politics from the loopholes or his retreat iii his editorial sanctum, and basked in the light of his friend's prosperity. As time wore on, encouraged by the example of that friend's success, the heart of John Ballance began to beat with some secret aspirations' towards political distinction. He was known of till men, wielded the little destinies of Wanganui in the columns of the Herald, and had made his friend famous, why should he not achieve fame for* himself ? Thenceforth there was a change in the relations of the two men. From the unselfish and faithful supporter of John Bryce and the trumpeter of his fame, he became the " guide, philosopher, and friend," often the public mentor, sometimes the critic, and always the participator in his success and fyonours. They were, "like Juno's swans, ever inseparable." John Ballance was the Achilles to Bryce's Patroclus. But it was Sir Julius Yogel who set fuel to the aspiring ambition of the Wanganui journalist. He was the political Hector that roused the Wanganui Achilles from his apathy, and stirred him to buckle on his armour ana enter the fray. That armour was certain crude ideas of political economy and social ethics gathered in the course of desultory readings of Herbert Spencer, Adam Smith, Stewart Mill, aud other odds and ends of literature. Kising from the study of these, the soul of John Ballance was fired by the financial schemes of the Great Julius. Having, therefore, in the orthodox Homeric style, harangued and slanged his great opponent in leading articles, he proceeded to deeds. Here was a foeman worthy of his steel. Like Rees he was shrewd enough to discern that by matching himself against a distinguished statesman, and by connecting his name with that of a man always on the people's lips, some light, albeit borrowed light, must be shed upon his own, and the eyes of men looking upwards towards the political pedestal of the great Julius, must also behold him (John Ballace) striving to overturn that pedestal and gain the seat for himself. Perchance also he calculated on that genuine English virtue which sympahtises with and admires the weak in a battle with the strong, and, doubtless, too, he hoped that in the vicissitudes and changes of politics, as in the writhings of the worms in the bucket, the great Julius might go doAvn, and John Ballance come to the top. John Ballance had put his friend John Bryce into Parliament ; John Bryce now returned the compliment. It was mainly by his aid, and through the unpopularity of Sir William Fox's teetotal views, that John Ballance won his Parliamentary spurs at Rangitikei. John Bryce had plodded along slowly, fighting in the ranks of his party. John Ballance rushed to front of the fray. John Bryce was taciturn and thoughtful ; John Ballance delivered great, or rather long orations on. finance, and digests of political aud philosophic treatises painfully and labouriously conned over by the* light of the lamp. Henceforth Ballance became the leader and Tßryce the henchman. It boots not to trace John Ballance's political career, how he became Colonial Treasurer, muddled the finances of

the colony, quarrelled with his chief, and added a sensational Ministerial scene to the pa^es of New Zealand history, and how he faded away, after a brilliant, but evanescent career, into obscurity, sullenness, disappointed ambition, and political misanthropy, to sit on a rail — and rail, until another shift in the Parliamentary kaleidescope shall form some ■chance combination in which he may become the central figure. All this may be reserved for a fitting time and place. Our business is to follow John Bryce. When the erstwhile "Treasurer and rival of Yogel fell from his ..pedestal in a blaze of fireworks, let off by the newspaper specials, the friendship between the two men was unbroken. But anon came startling revelations. The Grey Ministry went "ont, and the Hall Ministry came in ; Major Atkinson got hold of the Treasury ledgers, struck a balance, and found it on the wrong side ; and then came Nemesis swift and crushing on the ambitious mortal who had aspired to supersede the wizard of figures, the great master of finance — Sir Julius Yogel. It was shewn that, Ballance's finance was mere amateur tinkering, not even up to the mark of an average hawker of jewellery, that, in fact, it was mere Brummagem, and that it had involved the colony in such confusion, muddle, and extremity, that nothing but the utmost skill, caution, and vigorous retrenchment could extricate New Zealand from its difficulties, and save its credit. Anon more revelations, extravagance, manipulation, jobbery, corruption, rottenness to the core, and the large brown ■eyes of "honest John Bryce" opened Avider and wider. Religious, moral, conscientious, his soul was shocked. In sorrow and travail of spirit he gave utterance to his

astonishment, and bade Sir George Grey and his friend Ballance a. political adieu. Thereafter John Bryce was found on the side of the Hall Ministry, doing what in him lay to stem the torrent of adminstrative corruption, and national bankruptcy. When the portfolio of Native Minister was vacant, the thoughts of a majority of the house turned to Mr. Bryce as a prudent, careful, conscientious man, who would draw tight the purse strings, resolutely exit oft' excresences, and tnrn a deaf ear to the appeals of the Tite Barnacles who had clustered about that rotten old hulk the Native Department. How he performed that meritorious service is a tiling of yesterday, and within all men's memory; how he reduced the expenditure of the Native Department until it is the most economical in the public service, how he rummaged the pigeonholes and turned out musty appointments to pensions and sinecures, and disbanded a small army of political loafers, amidst a heartrending chorus of commissioners, interpreters, secretaries, and political carpetbaggers, varied by the plaintive " tangi " of whole tribes of assessors, pensioners, and tatooed retainers. It was a Hercules sweeping an Augean stable, filled with the accumulated rubbish of many past administrations, and vrhich Mr. Sheehan — on whom the popular indignation, as is usual with unreasoning instinct, unjustly fell — had only inherited from his predecessors without that opportunity of reforming it, which Mr. Biyce, in the newly awakened zeal for retrenchment in the House and the country, opportunely found ready to his hand. I need not trace through all its stages the prudent, •calm and judicious administration of the Waimate question by Mr. Bryce. It is singular, however, that at the last moment, when the finishing touch was about to be added to his work, he should disappoint the hopes of his friends by displaying a trait of policy which is •so unexpected. For he was .always regarded as par excellence a man of peace, a patient, plodding worker, who would rather mnravel the Gordian knot that adopt the Alexandrian method of cutting it with the sword. It is premature, however, to sit in ?*udgment upon the causes which have led to lis resignation of the portfolio of native affairs. We must suspend judgment until the whole •ease shall be laid before Parliament and the ■country, but this much may be said in conclusion : — ln his ministerial, as in his capacity as a private member, lie has shewn the same sterling honesty, unswerving; conscientiousness, and patriotism, and in. his resignation we discern that rectitude and independence of character which distinguished all his private and public acts.

The other day a young "bachelor, carrying on business not a thousand miles from Queenstreet, received a letter addressed to him, ." A.B-, Esq.," &c, &c. He did not recognise the writing, hut thinking it was a business letter, he opened it. Horror of horrors ! it began, "My dear husband !" He blushed as red as a peony, and then became deadly pale, and broke out in a cold jperspiration, as the thought struck him that some woman was attempting to palm herself off on him as Ms wife, ' He looked at the signature, but saw that it was that of some one whom he did not know ; so he looked again at the envelope. It was addressed to him in the usual way, but at the bottom left-hand corner was the name of one of the men in his employment. He breathed ireely once more, and, calling a clerk, sent him with the letter to the genuine "dear husband."