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Observer, Volume 2, Issue 35, 14 May 1881, Page 376

The struggle to get rid of direct taxation is not yet over. No one hates such taxation with a keener hate than Mr. Orniond. He is a man of much wealth, accumulated by the rise of landed property through the great outlay on public works and on the introduction of people into the Colony. But he is reputed to care little for others while keeping a fixed eye on the way in which he is personally affected. He has known well how to take care of himself and his own interests in the past, and is too old to turn over a new leaf and care more for the interests of others in the future. Hence the mistrust with which his advances were regarded by true Liberals, who believed that they saw in his sudden hostility to the Government only the effect of disappointed ambition, and the desire to carry out a selfish policy. They followed him in his resolutions for retrenchment, and recognised the superior force with which those resolutions came from a friend of the Government, but they refused to go further or to transfer their allegiance from the tried and trusted chief with whom Mr. Ormond had so often declared that he would not work. Mr. Ormond lays stress on the support he received from Mr. Saunders and Mr. Reader Wood, but both of them were men as much disappointed, and as much distrusted by those they sought to win.