POLITICAL NOTES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4016, 5 June 1884, Page 4

POLITICAL NOTES.

By "Quis." By the time these notes are in print the cannon will have boomed in the Empire City announcing the opening of our Parliament, and so the last of the pre-sessional addresses will be over for the year and this Parliament. Some of the later utterances have been good, and in that respect Mr Sutton's speech will bear comparison with the great bulk of addresses delivered to the electors. At Clive on Saturday he had a capital audience, and repaid those who wore present to hear him by giving them a capital speech—a better delivered speech than I had considered him capable of. On reading the report the most striking thing noticeable is the straightforwardness in which he sets forth his views. He did not mince matters, concealment there was none, apparently he had nothing he wished to conceal, and so he opened his mind thoroughly to the electors. His views on the question of unearned increment and protection must have been instructive to those who heard him. He showed conclusively how any tax on land dealing with unearned increment would be ruinous to Hawke's Bay, and forcibly pointed out the injustice of such a tax in that the man who would now be called on to pay the tax was not in most instances the original owner, but the man who already had to pay full value for that unearned increment. In other words Sir George Grey would ask a man to pay eight per cent, on a loan, of which the principal had already been paid, and that interest should be paid in perpetuity, for which no consideration had been received by those called upen to pay. The speech all through is well worth careful perusal, which doubtless it has received from tho electors of Hawke's Bay. Like many more Mr Sutton hopes that the general election will result in returning to power a new party, men in whom the colony has every confidence, and when that time comes there can be no doubt as to where Mr Sutton will be found—at their back supporting them. Of course the speech will not please everyone, there are some who cannot be pleased, and there are others who dare not be satisfied, for reasons which I need not specify, as they will at once suggest themselves to the reader. Dictionaries have been in some demand since Saturday, and men are busy- turning up the definition of working man. I am afraid what the dictionary says on that point will not ba satisfactory. Time after time it has caused sore heart-burnings in two colonies, in rowing circles, as an amateur, according to one, could not be a working man. That was so far satisfactory, but then the query arose, what was a working man. One side said a man who took a crowbar and forced open a drapery case in a wholesale warehouse was a worldng man, and therefore he could not be allowed to row as an amateur. For some years the wordy warfare continued, and the point was never settled. If we said a man enjoying short hours was not a working man avc would exclude from the title the bulk of those who are generally considered working men, and would at once admit the longhoured men, such as lawyers and newspaper men. I think the prophet Gardiner must be my ideal of a working man. He works, but he does not want to ; he would prefer to get his expenses from harder worked men than himself, for showing them how not to doit. I have known before to-day a man write capital letters to a newspaper who delighted to pose as a working man, and yet never did a real day's work in his life. Now the query is, can such be a working man ? lam not going to answer, and lam afraid I must finish this paragraph as I began it—in doubt as to what constitutes a working man. The Rev. Mr Green, who happens also to be M.H.R., has been catching it in the South. At one time I thought Mr Green would have been a success, but I have dropped that idea. The man who would influence men's minds must do more than preach, and that is exactly what Mr Green can't do —he must preach or " bust," and I am afraid his political life is just about to bust. He has been tackled as to using his railway pass for private business. Now is there a man among them who does not, and why should Mr Green be specially singled out? Mr Macandrew, in his address, said 160 bills had been introduced last session, onehalf of which passed into the law and the other half into the waste paper basket. He is not at all sure but it would have been as well if they had all gone to tho latter, for he says New Zealand is the most law-ridden country in the world, and then, as a grand climax, suggested a return to a simpler code—the Ten Commandments. I wonder how many of our members could at a moment's notice repeat that short code of laws ? lam afraid some of them would be like the member for Falkirk Burghs, who knew a good deal more about the merits of a Derby horse than tho Lord's Prayer, _ and who once in an argument bet Mr Baird— who afterwards left half a million sterling to the Presbyterian Church —a sovereign that he (Baird) could not repeat that prayer. The latter took the wager, repeated the 23rd Psalm off, and when he bad finished Merry promptly paid the sovereign and expressed his astonishment at the other's ability.