THE LATE AND PRESENT VICTORIAN MINISTRY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 8, 21 June 1873, Page 10

THE LATE AND PRESENT VICTORIAN MINISTRY.

_ , V Advocate') It was never doubted that when an impartial judgement could be obtained on the means adopted for displacing the Duffy Ministry, it would be unfavorable to the party who resorted to them. At the time the onslaught was made upon the Treasury, sectarianism was rampant, and the (pint of faction ran so high that few public men were really in a condition of mind to form an unbiassed opinion on the political question at issue; and it was at the time foreseen by those who were not so prejudiced, that the hasty decision then arrived at, with regard t© the fate of the existing Administration, would be reversed by the judgment bf many of our ablest men. This change is how cdming to pass, and it is already even more evident than it taretofore was that the country is quite prepared to listen to a condemnation of the means by which the present Ministry attsiine<] to oflle*. Representatives and candidates may now renounce them wifchn-it- v Uk of censure. Wliero, in two instances, this was done recently the speakers were warmly applauded. It was so at Ballarat on Saturday night last, when Mr Joseph Jones addressed his constituents. He said that the Duffy Ministry had, been ousted from office merely for the purpose of getting possession of the Treasury Benches ; and by men who had themselves avoided all reference to the Education question, the late Administration had been attacked for omitting it from their programme. And Mr Higinbotham, whose opinions in some quarters have no little weight, in his speech to the electors of the East Bourke Boroughs on Monday evening, also condemned the means by which the late Ministry was ejected from office. Opinions of this kind will multiply as time elapses, and it will not be long before it can be said on good authority that the judgment of the English press and the views of the people of this Colony are identical.