The Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2761, 22 December 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1871.

Two members, returned from Wellington, have addressed their constituents, and given their impressions of the past session. Both went up to If lament for the first time : one from Balclutha, the other from Waitaki. Both were in many points opponents of the Mm-isti-v Mr Steward on preconceived political grounds, Mr Thomsos on personal prejudices; the one has in a manly manner acknowledged himself convinced of error in his ideas on Native policy, and has, on grounds toi which he gives good reasons, given a general support to the Ministry : the other has nursed his opposition, ant returned no wiser, nor better than he went. No one can read the report ot Mr Steward's speech without arriving at the conclusion that he has an intelligent observer, and that there is a frank candour running throughout, that would lead him to fearless opposition to whatever his judgment condemned in the conduct of a Government. No one can read Mr Thomson s speech without instinctively feeling that the puling caution of his remarks is an evidence ot narrowness of intellectual giasp. is not subjects that Mr Thomson deals with so much as the man who intioduces them to Parliament; it is not the Ministry that he condemns so much as “ the Treasurer.” Just as a ball is excited to rage by the waving of a red rag before his eyes, is Mr Thomson roused to wrath by the awful vision o “ the Treasurer.” In the Provincial Council, in the House of Representatives, and in Bark’s Hall, Balclutha, “ the Treasurer” seems to have been the three-headed giant that Mr Thomson would like to have annihilated. He used to snarl at him in the Provincial Council, he snarled at him in the House in Wellington, and he snarled at him at Balclutha. But the Treasurer keeps his seat in spite ot the puny efforts of Mr Thomson and those who have voted with him, to diag him down, Mr Steward gives a good reason why, in his description of the Opposition. He tells us it was “ weak, “ unmanageable, ill - tempered, am <£ sour,” without a definite policy, and without, as far as he could see, any “ pronounced ideasit was a “ heterogeneous assortment of some “ nineteen men, remarkable only foi “ their loquacity, their bitterness, and, IC so far as some of them were cou- “ cemed, their utter inanity.” Mr Thomson, as one of our Otago members, is not of course included in the utterly inane: we could not stand that : not even Balclutha, though it did reject a man. who knew what lie was about and returned Mr Thomson, would send one of that class. But let anyone who has patience, and wishes to become acquainted with a man s character through his utterances, glance at the report of his speech, and he will see at once a set of common-place, stereotyped condemnations of measures, in phrases almost identical with what have been heard in the Provincial Council session after session from the .same lips. “ Skeleton speeches, variable to “ suit circumstances,” prepared by Mr J. W. Thomson, M.P.C., M.H.R., for hie own special use in Parliament, in Council, and out of it, might form part of his programme ; to which might be added Philippics—Vogelics would not sound classic not on the model of Demosthenes, for special occasions. We need not waste time in refuting the fallacies of Mr Thomson regarding the Brogden contracts, the railway scheme, immigration, and taxation. His panacea for all the ills of the Colony, is “settling people on the “ waste lands.” A pig in a stye, a cottage full of bairns, and a cow feeding on the natural grasses, do not constitute our idea of a prosperous well to do land, although it may suit our bucolic members to have men so situated at their beck and call to help to plough, harvest, and shear their flocks. Wc want to see consumers as well as producers ; well-ordered mining and manufacturing establishments, sustaining fifty times as many people on a few acres of land as all the farms in the Province could employ. This cannot bo done without cheapening production, and as we do not want to see wages fall, every appliance that modern science has contrived must be availed of. To this fact the Government is awake ; this fact men of the Thomson j class cannot realise.