ON TOUR.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1880, 14 October 1913, Page 6

ON TOUR.

The five members of the "Liberal" party who went to Ealmerston last evening to further the cause of AntiReform no doubfc did tho best they were capable of doing. It might be considered a. little unfortunate that tho party should havo been forced to again rely on the tail end of their following to voice their views. But all five can talk at great length—as they havo so'recontly demonstrated —and all have a certain glib fluency; and they are all so obvioußly talkers and nothing els© that it is difficult to think of any election which could be made whicli would more trulv convey to the good people of Palmerston the empty the Opposition policy really is. There- does not appear to have been even the slightest glimmering of a new idea in, any of the speeches made. It was tho same old,' threadbaro denunciation of tho Government; the same old promises of perfection "when the 'Liberals' returned to office." Mr. Russell, tho most experienced of the party, was quite pathetic in his pleading: Put us back, he said, and we will take up the old policy whero wo left it when wo woro thrown out of office. We have an impression that in its last moments tho Continuous Ministry had a policy which consisted of a determination to cling to office. In order to attain that end it showed itself ready to promiso anything under tho sun. Its policy was really .a policy of lOU's—a promise to pay everybody anything they might ask for. Unfortunately for the Ministry it had to deal with an intelligent public. The average man or woman knows that when he or she is offered the moon tho person making the offer cannot hope to carry out tho undertaking. It may sound big and generous, but no one is really deoeived by it So when our friends of the Continuous Ministry came forward and in a last desperate endeavour as a death-bed repentance everything tfiey could think of that would please, and called it a policy, no one was really , deceived. lOU's from' bankrupt political parties. are of no. more value than similar promises to pay from impecunious spendthrifts in private life. The member for Avon had better go farther back. He might tell his next audience that the party 'will take up the reins where Mr. Seddon dropped them. Ho should •try and help the public to forget the unhappy years of "Liberal" vacillation and incompetence that have since intervened.