Tuapeka Times AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. " MEASURES NOT MEN." LAWRENCE : WEDNESDAY, 26th JUNE, 1901. WHY NOT MR ROLLESTON?

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4868, 26 June 1901, Page 2

Tuapeka Times AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. " MEASURES NOT MEN." LAWRENCE : WEDNESDAY, 26th JUNE, 1901. WHY NOT MR ROLLESTON?

A GOOD deal of indignation —righteous and impassioned and with a fine touch of scorn for the greater part —is jast now being expressed in many newspapers because of the exclusion of the Hon. Mr Rolleston from a share in the tinselled honors which have been distributed from the Royal bag at Wellington. For this fresh instance of political obliquity Mr Seddon is held responsible, and, of course, very properly so as far as the mere question of responsibility goes, and it is asked why a man who has done so much to promote the interests of land settlement in the colony should not be treated in a more magnanimous and generous spirit and made, equally with Sir John M'Kenzie, a participator in the Royal honors. Now, without in any degree attempting to detract from his splendid services rendered to the colony and the people, particularly in the direction of land settlement, we cannot help saying that the comparison which is thus inferentially drawn between Mr Rolleston and Sir John M'Kenzie is unwarranted by a multitude of facts with which every fairly well informed person should be familiar, and, indeed, by the whole political history of the last ten years. The truth is there are no two public men in the colony who stand so far apart on those questions ef advanced agrarian legislation of the last half-dozan years as the two ex-Minis-ters of Lands. Mr Rolleston's contributions to our land laws belong to a day when opinions on the rights of the people aa regards land settlement^ were of a very modified and confused order, altogether different from what they are to-day. People who, in those days we refer to, had never known anything better than the barbarous medisevel land laws of Britain were not accustomed to expect much from Parliaments and were thankful for small benefactions. And it is largely because of this that the land legislation of such men as Mr Donald Reid and Mr Rolleston took such an exaggerated form in the public mind of those days, which still guryiyea amoug many old Settlers with something of the force of an article of faith. But, as everybody >. knows, the land legislation of which Sir John M'Kenzie is the author, and which includes the compulsory purchase of estates and the loaning out of money to settlers at small interest, is anathema, immoral, and a crime in the eyes of Mr Rolleston. He is now, as regards his opinions on land settlement, where he was two decades or% more ago, and would, if he could, put back the bands of the clock, undo the work of the last nine years in a number of vital features of the existing land legislation, and, as far aa it was possible to do bo, institute a gradual retrocession; if not:

by legislative then by administrative means, to obsolete and antiquated principles. Either this Is true or the vigor and determination with which Mr Rolleston fought the Liberal land legislation at every stage of its advancement counts for nothing — and Mr Rolleston is a man of too rigid principle and too high a conception of the duties ot nis position to subordinate) his opinions or his conduct to mere party advantage. But, altogether apart from this view of the question, it is absurd and contrary to precedent and to all recorded history of such matters that the Premier Bhould go outside of his party into the camp of the enemy aad recommend for distinction and favor one of the strongest opponents of a land policy on the success of which the recommendation of Mr M'Kenzie for a knighthood was principally if not entirely based* Could anything be more inconsistent than such a course ? It simply amounts to this, that one public man has re? , celved a mark of distinction for his- ser- ] vices in creating a certain system of land tenure and dissatisfaction is ex- .; pressed because the leading opponent of that system, the leader- of every, attack made upon it, has not. been equally honored! Imagine Lord. Salisbury recommending Sir H. Campbell Bannerman, the Leader of the^Opporf[i tion in the Imperial Parliament for j some; titular distinction or. Sic Wm, Harpourt, or Mr Bryce or Mr Asquith ! j The action of those who have pot forward Mr EollestonV claim is ridicu> [ lous to a degree that is very little short [ of being contemptible. If there is any- ' thing in these dignities to excite wholesome ambition among public men they ," should be reserved only for those whose political success haa been hall-marked ' by the people and of Mr Rolleston this oannot be said (