The Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1865.

Evening Post, Issue 191, 18 September 1865, Page 2

The Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1865.

The Northern compact muat have seen by this time that they have utterly miscalculated the temper of the House, in which they have sat almost since the commencement of the Session, and whose leaders they have aspired to be. The repeated and studious efforts they have made for the purpose of casting dismay and depression in the ministerial camp, and of prostrating Mr. Weld and his colleagues, has irrecoverably recoiled upon their own heads. After every effort had been made to secure the support of hon. members, and paving the way by a season's deluge of constitutional sophisms in the local prints, the chieftains of Auckland are in the unenviable position of finding their pet measures laughed at and their advice disregarded. The measures introduced by them were local, and the arguments used in their support eminently so — local from the dogged determination by which they refused to be led away from their pet questions, from inflicting the House with a hearing of their grievances, but, above all, from the chivalrous feeling which it evinced to endorse with cordial emphasis the policy of the Ministry and the majority of the House./ In vain the Peace Maker strained the gamut of his sensitive casuistry while advocating the cause of his beloved Rewi — in vain the exquisite Russell endeavoured to set himself right with his constituency by a withering display of incomprehensible platitudes while advocating the cause of Separation — in vain Field Marshal Robert Graham gesticu-

lated and bellowed with a physical intonation which would have drawn an envious admiration even from his leather-lunged namesake while demonstrating that Auckland should be the port of call for the Panama mail steamers. /But the honest members nevertheless refused to be bamboozled from the purpose for which they were returned to Parliament. Not local legislation, but legislation that affects the colony as a whole, is the business of the General Assembly ; and the House of Representatives have so far felt this to be their duty as to throw out the selfish measures introduced by Auckland members solely for the aggrandisement of the ancient capital to the prejudice of the remainder of the colony. To secure the best interests of the entire community ought to have been the chief object of the Auckland compact ; but it was not, and because they chose to pervert the trust reposed in them, they hare been humiliated, shorn of the little influence they had in the House, and are now impotent indeed for good. After their late defeat on the Separation question, like children when denied the much wished-for toy, they resolved, by way of obtaining satisfaction, to retard the progress of public business as far as lay in them. Thus defeated in the attempt to regain for Auckland that which she lost in some measure through the foolishness of her members, they are now bent on making themselves more ridiculous before the public, by uniting to oppose the progress of public business. The approval which this policy will meet with may easily be anticipated. It is to be hoped that on second thoughts one and all of them will sec the folly of pursuing such a course, and the necessity of assisting in the despatch of parliamentary business, to the benefit not only of their constitue nts but the community at large.