The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1884. The Member for Wakanui.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1249, 9 May 1884, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1884. The Member for Wakanui.

If New Zealand cannot boast of possessing at the present moment among her Parliamentary representatives of the people many politicians of commanding intellectual stature, there is at any rate no reason to complain of a lack of variety. During the past few weeks the newspapers of the colony have contained little else but reports of speeches of M.H.R/s of every calibre, and althpugh the subjects treated of are necessarily for the most part identical, it is not without interest to note the different points of view from which the same questions are looked at. We have the memberwho, following in the footsteps of Sir George Grey, tells his constituents to study great abstract questions of policy, and not concern themselves with petty details, and again there is the antipodes of this class who regard the proper working of the parish pump as of more importance than the nationalisation of the land, national insurance, or any suchlike fads. Between these two extremes, there are so many different kinds of politicians that it would be impossible to enumerate them. There is the statistical member, who pelts his audience with figures until he mystifies both them and himself; there is the red-hot reformer, who is ready with a constitutional form of Government that will give every mm what he wants without the trouble of working for it ; then there is the vituperative representative, who indulges in strong language which hurts nobody and proves nothing, and a host of other classes it is needless to particularise. It would be difficult to determine exactly in what class of politicians the member for Wakanui, as he showed himself in his speech of Wednesday last, should be placed. He may perhaps most appropriately be described as a “ hotch-potch ” member, for the reason that his views appear to have been gathered from the utterances of legislators who had spoken before him. His figures were borrowed from Mr Macandrew, his panacea for the depression from Mr Holmes and Mr Fish, and for the inevitable poetical quotation, without which no political address is to be regarded as complete, he was indebted to a Dunedin paper, a debt, by the way, that was gracefully acknowledged. Those who were present on Wednesday and had studied colonial newspapers of late, must have experienced a feeling akin to that of one who is listening to a plagiarised opera, the music of which is familiar, but it is impossible to determine at the moment where one has heard it before. Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, but we doubt if those members whose speeches have been laid under contribution will value MrjlvESs’s attentions in this respect. Some of them, we suspect, will exclaim with Sir Fretful Plagiary—‘‘Steal’—to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children, disfigure them to make ’em pass for their own.”

There is little room for criticism in the speech itself, for the reason that the ideas promulgated were merely repetitions of views? the fallacy of which has been pointed out times out of number. We all know the arguments for and against a progressive land tax ; our ears have been pitilessly dinned with such 'subjects as the maladministration of our railways, the reasons of the present trade depression, as they appear to different classes of politicians, and the federation question. All these things did Mr Ivess discourse upon, and in no single instance did he add an iota to our previous knowledge. As to his statistics, of which he was at times so extremely lavish as to make his audience yawn, these were, as we have said, mostly borrowed; but in one instance he may fairly lay claim to the merit of originality. The member for Wakanui had made a calculation that the House sat for 432 hours during last session, from which he arrives at the stupendous fact that each member was present on an average hours every day. This wonderful effort of arithmetical genius is about on a par with the memorable exploit of Quintus Fixlein, who wasted some years in discovering how many a’s there are in the Bible, but we never learnt that anybody ever derived much benefit from the knowledge. It is at any rate a poor consolation to those members who stuck well to their duties to know that their attendance only went to swell the average of less zealous representatives. The only other original point made by the speaker was when treating of the new Bankruptcy Act, which in the main he appears to approve of. He sought, however, to fix the stigma on the Government of having perp. tra'e 1 a job, on the ground that a son of the Colonial Secretary had been appointed as so'icitor to one cf the Official Assignees. Anything more petty than this it is not easy to conceive, even if. the electors of Wakanui cared one straw for the matter. It might naturally be expected that wb|n Mr Ivess came to

speak of local affairs be would have been more in his element, but it can scarcely be said that he cut a striking figure. This was, perhaps, hardly his own fault, as when he came to seriously consider what he had done during last session he must have recognised how infinitesimally small his services to the colony and the district he represented were. It was only natural that he should make the most of these, but the record is certainly not one to be greatly admired. He tried to pass a measure to amend our electoral laws and failed, and his Roads through Private Properties Bill met with no more favor in the House. This want of success he puts down to the fact of his being a member of the Opposition, and therefore personally obnoxious to Major Atkinson, but it is doubtful if most people will see in this a sufficient cause for failure. Indeed, Mr Ivess, probably unconsciously, when speaking of the part he took in regard to the grain tariff in 1882 and in connection with the Mount Somers railway extension, gave his audience a far more likely reason for his non-success, namely, the fact that he has absolutely no influence in the House. In the matter of the grain tariff, he had, according to his story, the wisdom to allow the member for Kaiapoi to take the question up, and after securing a promise from Mr Johnston in respect to the Mount Somers railway that Minister took no further notice of it. To give the member for Wakanui his due, the speech of Wednesday showed this improvement on previous efforts, he did not indulge in that virulent abuse of men opposed to him in politics we have been accustomed to hear from his lips. With the exception of an attack upon Mr Wright, which that gentleman can afford to treat with silent disdain, and which a considerable section of the audience showed their disapproval of by hisses, the address was characterised by an almost lamb-like mildness. Perhaps, however, it lost almost as much as it gained by this. Mr Ivess’s eloquence loses not a little of its savor when the salt of personality is absent, and if he has became more decorous in his utterances he has assuredly also become more dull. To this was probably due the fact that an audience, which at- first was unquestionably well disposed towards their member, were so wearied out by the speech that they only recorded him a vote of thanks, unsupplemented by the usual expression of confidence.