AN APOLOGIST

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2147, 24 March 1870, Page 2

AN APOLOGIST

At a recent agricultural dinner at Prebletown, Canterbury, the bon. John Hall, iu replying to the toast of tho General Assembly, is reported to have said :—lf he were to shirk altogether any allusion to the political action of that Assembly, it might occur to some gentlemen that it was because he was rather ashamed to do so. The political action of last session resulted in his being turned out of office; therefore it might be suggested that he was afraid to refer to it. Not at all. He stood there, .as Mr Weld would call it, a beaten cock—(laughter)—but if a beaten cock took time to put his feathers to rights, lie might again be brought up to the scratch, and if a beaten cock took his beating tolerably well, he was generally found to be a tolerable bird, (Laughter.) He could only say with regard to' the Stafford Ministry that he believed the fact of its being turned out was a very good thing. He was sure it was a very good thing for the members of that Ministry, In his own ease he had never enjoyed himself more during the last 11 ve or six years than 'he did during the last six months. “ Svvoet are the uses of ad-ver.-ity” to _ Ministers as well as other men. He thought it was not only a good thing for the Ministry but for the colony, because he thought it would teach a few lessons to the people ; it would teach them to recognise that tho great cardinal difficulty the native rebellion and the effusion of a great deal of blood and treasure—was not tho result of the management or mismanagement of any one particular set of men. He believed that well-meaning colonists were beginning to think that. He thought the experience of the last few months had disabused the minds of colonists of that feeling. They had seen the Ministry of which he was a member, havipg “übefued the rebellion op quo side of the North Island, had left to their successors only one-half of the work, and, although they had been supplied with plenty of money with which to carry on operations against tho entfmy, they had not done more, possibly not so much, he ventured to think, towards the suppression of that rebellion, as their predecessors. It had I.ecu asserted that the failure of the present Government to repress this rebellion had been rather a matter of satisfaction to their predessors. Nothing could be further from the truth than this. No person could deplore more than he did, and he was sure his late colleagues did, the failure of the efforts of their successors, and no one could be more willing than he and they would be to promote their success, but at the same time he thought it was not unfair for them to point to the experience of the past few months as an answer to the frequent charges that were made against them, that the evils he had adverted to were the result of the mis-manage-ment of Ins colleagues and himself as con-

stituting the Stafford Ministry. Experience had taught what perhaps no arguments could have taught, that this evil was an exceedingly difficult one to deal with ; that it should not be one of mere party strife ; that a question which affected the Colony so very nearly, so very seriously, should not be made a party question, but that, on the contrary, they should all unite in overcoming a danger which threatened results so disastrous on the Colony at large.