Pen and Ink Portraits.

Observer, Volume 2, Issue 35, 14 May 1881, Page 377

Pen and Ink Portraits.

No. 20.— Me. Eichard Oliver. A wicked writer some time since in the Wellington Chronicle compared the Minister for Public Works to a Yankee clock pedlar, and the description ran all through the Colony. It may be supposed the writer had Haliburton's clock man in his eye when he wrote the paragraph, but where the analogy consists it is hard to discern. The simile was not apt, although it took the public fancy. He is what may be termed a " cockey " man. He has a jaunty air and manner. When he attempts to look wise he reminds one of an English robin, with his head on one side and one eye shut — although, for the life of you, the cause of the comparison cannot be made plain. You rarely meet a man like him. If any person has seen the old print of Jack Adams, the Clerkenwell astrologer, and will carry it in his mind's eye to Hogarth's plate, where Sidrophel is depicted, and fuse the two portraits together, he will get an idea of what Mr. Oliver is like. I don't thinly any man would take him for a preacher, even if he were arrayed in clerical habiliments. Mr. Oliver has" no Doppelgauer, and therefore cannot be afflicted with what the Germans call deuteroscopia. He looks like a man who would invent a patent medicine, tell fortunes, protect companies, burn all the hair of a horse, and exhibit it as a hairless horse — a man, in fact, who would do anything but work. Such is the impression made on the observer by close observation of the outside of the man. He looks the leanest man in the Legislature, now Deceased Wife's Sister Stewart is out of it. He wears spectacles. He is not supposed to want them to look after his own interest. In the streets he generally walks alone. With his head well in the air his gait is not unlike that of a dragoon. Any one can see that he is a positive man ; at all events he has been a sue-

cessful ironmonger. He looks more like one of our race Lorn in Connecticut than in .England, and some people have not scrupled to say lie is an alien. In fact no one knows anything .about him. He was only made a Minister because he came from Otago. It is very hard to know why Mr. Oliver went into political life ; he shows no fitness for the position he occupies. Speaking seems irksome to him. He not only does not know Avhat to say, hut even how to say a thing when he is told. It is hard to determine whether his manner, or his speech, causes the greatest offence in the House of Representatives. The supercilliousness he displays in answering questions is commensurate only with the imbecility he manifests in making a Ministerial statement. Those men who heard him make the Public Works Statement last year would not, if they could help it, forego a similar treat. The General Assembly on many occasions have afforded very rare treats to visitors. But the charm in Mr. Oliver's performance was its unique character. No person had imagined such a role. It was as novel a thing as Sothern's Dundreary. Like Sothern's impersonation, there was, however, nothing in the thing until its conclusion. There Avas no money in the Treasury, .all the loan had been .anticipated, but the Minister for Public Works, like Micawber, had faith and hope in coal. Coal was the panacea for New Zealand. It would pay her debts, and kill the Opposition. It Avas in the delivery of the public statement that he told the House that he intended "to reach the multitude ;" that be told the West Coast people on the other Island that he would " keep their railway steadily in view." In fact there is no limit to the originality of the man. Mr. Oliver came to I)unedin in the early goldfield rush. It is stated, with what truth I know not, that soon after his arrival in Otago he entered into the ironmongery business — first as an employee, and then as a proprietor. His

employer went to England and left Mr. Oliver in charge of his business. When the master returned the servant bought him out. Some such au event happened. From this small commencement has grown up the business of Oliver and Ulph. It requires, however, different characteristics to conduct a business and to control public affairs. Tradesmen do not prove as a rule successful administrators ; and Mr. Oliver chose the most difficult branch of the public service to administer. Mr. Oliver thought that, as he had been in the habit of selling jack knives and tenpenny nails, he would know by intention how to control public works ; and so his colleagues also, perhaps, imagined. It was knowledge gained over the shop counter which, doubtless, induced his proposal to work railways with horses. It is understood that he engaged a private secretary before he took office, anticipating, as it were, the possession of a portfolio. With the same amount of eagerness do his colleagues desire the arrival of the time when Mr. Oliver will be fully engaged in the ironmongery line. They have given him many hints to go. He is a disappointing man. Thus, when a friend of the writer's came to Otago, in 1858, he_ brought a letter of introduction to Mr. Oliver. In the Octagon one afternoon he asked an acquaintance, "Who is that man just passed?" "Oliver, the ironmonger," was the .answer. When the man who had the letter of introduciion had a chance to get a fuller inspection of our present Minister for Works he tore up his letter instead of presenting it. Mr. Oliver gets angry in the House when his mercantile probity is impeached by implication or inueudo. He gets his nearest then to reality. He simulates the role of the patriot and the over-honest man with much effect. Those who know him, however, detect the simulation. His detractors say — and they are many — that he always keeps the Quaker's dying advice to his son in view, "Make money." As Long-

fellow's translation hath it, he lacks no hardihood in its pursuit. He displays at times a considerable amount of presumption. Once or twice he has talked insultingly about the "minions of the press," meaning by the phrase the sjiecial reporters who attend the Legislature. And yet the man is thin-skinned enough to newspaper criticism. He is not seasoned yet like James Macandrew. Why he should regard pressmen with contempt and thinic that an ironmonger should be regarded with awe, is one of the things hard to understand. It must not be forgotten that Mr. Oliver is an industrious and a meditative man. Thus he is reported to have spent a long period preparing his Public Works Statement ; and it was whispered as being a cabinet secret that he had worked and worried himself ill over the effort. What he should have done was to have employed some person to prepare his statement. If lie had felt a delicacy in asking any member, or the House, or the Cabinet for aid, he coxild have fallen back upon the Press he had maligned for a consideration. He is most disliked at the extremities of the Colony. The people in Auckland and Invercargill regard him with dislike. He sought to kill the whole traffic on the South line the Invercargill people said ; and the Waikatq coal trade got no good at his hands. A poor thing, sirs, at. the best is Richard Oliver. KONEKE.