Wellington Independent SATURDAY, 16th AUGUST.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3885, 16 August 1873, Page 2

Wellington Independent SATURDAY, 16th AUGUST.

"A7i! mon (jargon," as Balzac says somewhere, n il faut se defier des belles actions autant que des belles femmes," and, we may ask, is not beautiful rhetoric also to be numbered among the things that are as a rule to be avoided. Those who remember Mr Walter Johnston's maiden effort in 1871 — his speech on the Education Bill then before the House — can remember the sentiment that pervaded it on his resuming his seat, that here, at last, we had a rising orator of genuine power ; and we are far from saying that the sentiment has proved erroneous. Mr Johnston, however, runs much risk of seeing his audience cloy of his eloquence. Atrabiliar denunciations of a Premier remarkable for the thickness of his hide, for delinquencies real or imagined, which, at any rate, the experienced leaders of the Opposition either openly regard a*s excusable, or at least look upon, as better subjects for chaff than for invective, are not likely to be made more acceptable to the House than they would be otherwise by the grandiloquent rotundity of the periods in which they are couched. The result of Thursday night's debate on the Tariff Bill showed how little of the sympathy, even of the most sensible section of his own party, the member for Manawatu carried with him in his indignant protestations against what he apparently regarded as the diabolical perfidy of Mr Yogel in introducing the new tariff" with the announcement that it was not intended to bring in an increase of revenue. There was some capital unquestionably to bo made out of the blunder. In view of the fact that it was open to such easy correction, it was a singular one, to say the least of it ; but at the same time, in \ie\v of the same fact, it was a comparatively innocent one. It is utterly impossible to believe that the Premier could have really meant to mislead the House by a statement the correctness or otherwise of which could be tested in half an hour by anyone possessing an adequate knowledge of the elementary rules of arithmetic.