LAWRENCE.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2477, 24 January 1871, Page 2

LAWRENCE.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

In my last I gave you a slight inkling of the nature of the Great Southern League, with pen and ink portraits of sundry prominent members. The mask has been thrown off since then, and the Reform Association stands confessed as identical with Mr Donald Reid’s Committee. The manonivre was cleverly conceived and boldly executed, but, alas, the result was not commensurate with the amount of general gassing and particular button-holing expended. To read the report in our louai' Inodel of journalistic ipurtesy, moderation, and elegance, one would imagine that a numerous audience was sufficiently crazed to vociferate for “Brown! Brown !” to give a specimen of that oratory which has so often shaken our Colonial Parliament—with laughter. The simple truth Jg that the “meeting” consisted of about ■eight or mope electors, and about an equal number of enthusiastic roussabouts. whom a pint of beer would convert to bellow 'ip honor of any man with sufficiently welldined pockets to afford another shout. Mr Brown’s mild and young-lady-like colleague opened the ball by what I presume he intended for a hurst of indignant oratory. It wasn’t any thing of the kind, hf %t it reminded me strongly gf the bleat of a heroic bell-wether jammed into a corner by the sh,epherd : s dog. One assertion, almost the only attempt to substantiate Iris assertions by reference to facts, has been so open repeated and so often contradicted that it furnishes an admirable instance of the vitality of. a lie. It is that Sir Macandrow signed the lease for Bellamy’s run some months after he entered upon pffiePj the fact bemg that the lease of" the very lifst station (Tpvipt run) to be brought under the new regulations was granted thrpe days before Sir Slacacdrow’s term commenced, I cannot dismiss the subject of the bogus meeting without a corapl meut to the c(V”’ aae of Mr Duucau Campbell, who, iu spite V the ovenvii:,’ niaßs of talent , arrayed against him dared to raise his voice in favor of Maeandipw ; Bastings frowned, Brpwu fidgetted, Ferguson attempted to look majestic, and the garrulous Tolcher groaned at this instance of human depravity. Mr Campbell foitunately. survived, but won’t “ we ” give it him in the columns of the celebrat'd journal whose subset ptions are “payable in arrears.” 1 have just time left to remark on the good feelmg, good taste, and high principle of Mr Monat, who not only allowed falsehoods he could easily have contradicted pass without notice, hut also continue, while nobly refusing to do so, to sjibw himself’a partizau of the great Doualdites, 1 ‘ 1 i • . t ;