Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price 1d. MONDAY, JULY 18, 1887. The Critics Criticised.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2093, 18 July 1887, Page 2

Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price Id. MONDAY, JULY 18, 1887. The Critics Criticised.

Considerably improved in decency and tone —on which we offer them onr hearty congratulations—tbs * Observers,’ under date July 14, made a rather ponderous attempt to criticise Mr Buchanan’s Carterton address. In the first place, we have to regret that Mr Buchanan’s want of glibness and lack of lawyer-like smoothness of tongue again offend his critics. They must blame Mr Buchanan’s education for this. Had he been trained to make black look white, or twice two five the ‘ Observers ’ would naturally have liked him more. Unfortunately for the ‘Observers’ fortunately, many think, lor Mr Buchanan, he was merely trained to honest hard work and to call a spade a spade and not “ an agricultural implement.” Here, we might remark that the ‘Observers’ themselves have not always been extollers of mere fluency and volubility. On February li, 1885, the ‘ Observers ’ wrote:—

“We thought we had measured the bold effrontery—to give it a mild term—of Mr Henry Bunny, but we must confess onr mistake. After this assertion we will back Mr Bunny to draw the long bow against any person in New Zealand.”

We have never said and do not Intend now to say anything so harsh as this about Mr Bunny, but the * Observers ’ said it two short years ago, and we quote their opinion simply to show that the 1 Observers ’ once pretended to prefer solid information and simple truthfulness to—if we may use an ex* pressive vulgarism—mere " gilt of the gab.” We are sorry, however, Ur Buchanan is not a Demosthenes, though we can assure the ‘ Observers ’ there are very tew great orators and tragedians in the House and this country can rub along very comfortably without them. The next thing obnoxious to onr critics is Mr Buchanan’s plea for retrenchment. Retrenchment we are told, is not a sufficient platform. Well, we admit retrenchment seldom is a plank in the Democratic platform. So-called Democrats are the most expensive patriots conceivable. In democratic America, fraud, jobbery, and corruption ride triumphant. Nay 1 we may look nearer home and perceive in New Zealand what costly patriots those Democrats, Messrs Stout, Ballance and 00. have proved to this unfortunate country. But the Observers, though finding fault with Mr Buchanan lor proposing reduction, are not precisely opposed to it—Mr Bunny means to retrench token he gets into the House. The objection to Mr Buchanan is that he did not retrench in the past six years. Do the Observers think that onr member centres in his own person the whole House; that he is omnipotent and has only to say: “Let there be retrenchment,” and there will be retrenchment ? Oh 1 dear, no I Mr Buchanan is not omnipotent To say, however, that he has not done all that cne man could do to advocate reduction and economy is absurd and untrue. How about his votes! He voted against the District Bailways job, the wild borrowing schemes of Sir Julius Vogel, lor the reduction of members and in favor of other curtailments. He could not, single-handed, oust a Government, but he recorded his votes against their insane extravagances. Had not the Opposition done so, Messrs Vogel and Stout would still have been urging on the mad steeds of reckless prodigality, and whatever else Major Atkinson may have done or not done, the country owes to him a deep debt of gratitude for having successfully opposed the financial follies and worse of Sir Julius and his infatuated colleagues. The Observer critics refer to Mr Buchanan’s proposal to reduce the salaries of Governor and Ministers, as if such an idea were criminal. But, if retrenchment be ne cessary and should not proceed from the top of the tree, whence should it proceed—from the bottom? Would Mr Bunny and the Observers dock the wages of the Government laborers and discharge, as in the case of the unhappy Mr Vickers, well tried, highly useful and economical public servants, in order that a useless gubernatorial state, annually costing many thousands, should be maintained in mock dignity ? Mr Buchanan says and truly that in the impoverished condition of out finances useless expenses are profligate, and thereby Mr Buchanan offends the Observers. Well, he will survive that. Then Mr Buchanan is accused of “ trying to shirk and evade a positive expression of his real sentiments (on protection) because he thought they might prove unpalatable to some of bis hearers.” Ate the Observers omniscient ? It not, how do they know what passes in Mr Buchanan’s mind andjif they do not know, by what right, as honest men, do they ascribe base motives ? Slander is no argument. Any intelligent person who knows onr member knows that bis occasional hesitation is not the outcome ?1 any shirking. Even his political opponents admit his straightforwardness. Mr Buchanan ponders well both question and reply thereto because he is conscientious, because he will not make rollicking hep-hazard promises simply to tickle the ears of his hearers, and because he is one of a nation of men who, whatever else their faults, neither lightly pledge nor lightly break their word. But, Mr Buchanan does not believe in rabid protection. He does believe in fostering native industries when it can be done with real benefit to all concerned. He does not, however, believe in class legislation. He docs not believe that the settler small or large, or the professional man should be more severely taxed simply for the benefit, real or supposed, of the artisans and mechanics; nor does be believe that rabid protection would really benefit those classes, though it might benefit a few manufacturers. Protection, just now, is being hawked about as an universal nostrum warranted to cure all diseases of the body politic—a kind of political John Balance's bolus, but few really believe in it, and some of the loudest el these patent medicine vendors believe in it least. There is no real issue before this country of Protection venu* Freetrade, such is only the political parrot call of a few people blue-mouldy for office and of a few others who accept the smartness of snob papers as the Sydney Bulletin for a more than divine gospel. Mr Buchanan’s critics are sadly annoyed because he will not endorse Mr Bunny’s ingenious project el removing taxation from tea tmd sugar. Until Mr Bunny can show—and he has not shown it yet—from what other source the same important revi ue can be obtained, this objection demands h’tle notice. Taxation on tbo unimproved value of land would not bring in one fifth of the lost revenue. If Mr Bunny means to put the tax on the value of improved land, then lv means to put a direct tax, an ironstraight-waistcoat, on industry. If he means this, then let him state his “ bursting-op” poiioy without further circumlocution and in all its hideous and naked deformity. Mr Bunny's “journalistic” friends Lave heretofore held up Mr Buchanan to opprobrium as a haughty, avaricious, lioated squatter, feeding on the poor man’s labor, and lavishing bis ill-gotten thousands in the debanoheties of Europe. We do not mean this has been stated in so many words. H“d it been, the Wairarapa would have killed the staters with its derisive laughter. No, but these things have been hinted, insinuated in a hundred mean ways. A stranger leading the rubbish mlgb l have supposed Mi Buchanan was some Wairarapa antcj;? l who knouted his serfs every morning to gain an appetite for breakfast, bucu delirious drivel could only have been conceived by some unwholesome and maudlin mind that had been nourished ou ‘ penny dreadfuls’ or Reynolds’ Newspaper in iis foulest days. What are the facts'? Mr Buchanan came here a poor man who had tabbed bard work wherever he met it. He bought lan’d—bought it cheap. Was that his fault ? Ue improved bis land, be put brains and labor into it. Ha succeeded. Would he have been mote estimable had he failed ? But, towueoibii wwHbMtompulw

airs of a plutocrat 7 Has he forsaken and neglected bis district and failed in his duties as a man, a friend, a neighbor 7 Gas he not 'been ever the same—simple, frank, and natural—going in and out among his neigh* bora of all degrees and doing his best for all ? When did he waste those thousands in London? Have not his-debaucheries been confined to an interest in meat freeziag and dairies ? Has he not spent the money made in his district in that district ? Has he not fostered and assisted in every way the most important industries in the district ? Has he ever acted unjustly or broken faith with his brethren 1 What discharged flunkey twaddle has all this been about “Squatter Lords" and the rest I Men who know better should be ashamed to countenance it. A lazy, useless, privileged hereditary aristocracy is despicable, but the man who by his own honest industry, sobriety, perseverance and strong right arm has successfully wooed the fickle jade fortune is worthy of honest men’s confidence whether be be saint, squatter, or shoemaker.