A DUNEDIN DEMOCRAT.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 483, 27 March 1869, Page 2

A DUNEDIN DEMOCRAT.

At the declaration of the poll, when Mr Thomas Birch was elected member of the Assembly for Dunedin, the other candidate, Mr J. G. S. Grant,made a eharacteristic speech, which only the Sun newspaper attempted, or was able, to report. Grant said:—All those who call themselves the upper crust of society had been very busy all day, working dead against him. He would not do them the injustice to suppose that they considered Thomas Birch to be a better informed man than J. G-. S. Grant.—(Laughter.) But, unfortunately, he did not preach the slippery doctrine of Provincialism. He did not believe that 12 Govern* ments, with a Maori Government added, were conducive to the interests of the Colony.—(Cries of " Shut up!" and "Do you suppose anybody does?") He went to the poll that morning, believing, really, that before the sun set, the death knell of Pro* vincialism would have been sounded.— (Laughter.) But for the immense in* fluence that had been at work against him, it would have been so.—(Laugh* ter, and " Nonsense, man.") He believed at heart he was the popular candidate. (Laughter, and "Of course you are.") "With all defereHce to the editor of the Times (Confusion.) Well, he did not plume himself upon being a Sydney, Botany Bay, corn-stalk, throwing contempt upon everybody here ; and if the editor of the Times chose to insult him, by calling him a mountebank, he could only reply to that editor, that the socalled mountebank held honors—high honors—and could go through a competitive examination with a whole shipload of such miserable pieces of vapid imbecility (Laughter, hisses, and confusion.) He (Mr Grant) was pretty much disgusted, after 14 years. People had done a good deal to crush him down—to knock him into the dust; but this he would say, if he had a beer barrel at his back, he would now have been elected.—(" Hear, hear," laughter, and "Aye! beer's the thing, Grant.") Unfortunately, all the in. fluence he possessed was under his hat, —(Laughter, and "It's a very bad one.") It was not such gaudy headgear as that of the editor of the Independent or the Times ; but, mountebank or no mountebank, there was a vaster amount of knowledge under his hat, than there was under the hat of that miserable self-inflated, Botany Bay, Sydney, blue gum of a (Interruption.) He might not be a man of position, in the Colonial acceptation of the term ; but it could not be said of him that he was a liar, a drunkard, a defaulter, a (Laughter and confusion.) Had he acted a politically selfish part, he would now, aye, emphatically be at the head of the mushroom aristocracy of New Zealand.— (Laughter.) Unfortunately, he hai got a knack of speaking and writing the truth —(laughter)—and, it was no use blinking the matter, the truth wag not palateable in Dunedin. He looked forward to the day when the blush of scorn —if it had not died away ere it crossed the equator —would drive such men as Ure and Sibbald forth to dwell and loaf amidst the spoils of the dead. —(Hisses, and confusion.) It was time now to be in earnest. The country was emphatically going backwards. (Laughter.) Nobody was prospering but His Honor and his parasites—men who abused and ran him down at first, but were now glad to crouch behind him for the sake of £6OO a year, billets in "Wellington, £1 a day, and all that sort of thing.— (A Voice : Ah! that's what you wanl> my boy." —Laughter.) It was a di grace that Dunedin should be represented by men of such imbecility.— i (Loud laughter.) Did anyone mean to insult the understandings of the electors, by telling them that Thomas Birth was a better informed man than James Gordon Stuart Grant ? (Confusion.) "Was it more ignoble to sell a book, the production of one's own brain, than to sell a pot of beer ? (Laughter.)