POLITICAL AMENITIES IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Evening Star, Issue 2841, 27 March 1872, Page 3

POLITICAL AMENITIES IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

We should think party rancour and personal malevolence have rarely asunied a more offensive form in these colonies than that •wiiich they have taken during the general election new drawing to a close in New South Wales. In the abuse which public men have heaped upon each other, there has been a singular absence of that wit which is said to redeem grossness. When Sheridan, in reply to the elector who remonstrated with him for having snubbed the importunate voter, and exclaimed, “Didn’t I give you my countenance at the last election,” promptly rejoined, “and a d d Ugly countenance it was,” the humor of the repartee atoned for its coarseness ; but in the scurrility of the candidates in New South Wales there is no such mitigating element. This, for example, is how Mr Buchanan speaks of Mr Parkes : “He would recommend Mr Samuel to put Mr Parkes into the Treasury, because, he being there, if a loan were wanted, he was a man to borrow money—to borrow it, too, on a new and improved principle—that of never paying it back again.” And this is what Mr Parkes says of Mr Buchanan “ They had been told by Mr Buchanan that he would rather lie in the gutter than be in his (Mr Parkts’s) position. It would not be the first time that that gentleman had lain in the gutter. (Prolonged cheering.) He had actually been carried out of the gutter into the watchhouse; and when that gentleman went home to England to get admitted to the bar, he implored him (Mr Parkes) not to let the authorities of the Temple know that he had ever been in the watchhouse—(cheers)— once in the Insolvency Court, and once expelled from Parliament. (Applause). ” What an edifying spectacle for a free people, that of two candidates for the jexalted office of law-makers and administrators, demonstrating their incapacity to subject their speech to the law of reason, and proving their iucompefcency to govern others, inasmuch as they have not yet acquired the art of governing themselves. Mr Bowie Wilson, a former colleague of Mr Parkes, expressed himself in this wise of his old friend “He felt assured that, in a monetary transaction, no merchant of this city would take Mr Parkcs’s word, his bond, or his oath. (Cries of ‘Not tine.’) He did not think that lie could traduce Mr Parkes. He had heard of one party to whom Mr Parkes had gone to ask him to accept a bill; but when afterwards asked, be said that the bank had impounded the bill. Inquiries were made at the bank, and it was found that the bill had never been presented. Mr Parkes in the meantime had succeeded ip swindling to double the amount of the bill.” As a matter of course, Mr Parkis has something to say on the subject of Mr Wilson, but it resolved itself into a Hiug at his obesity “ His late colleague, Mr Wilson, who was pleased to say some very severe things about him—(A voice—‘Give it to him’) but as he did nob hear the remarks which that gentlemen made, and as he was of no weight in the community, except physical weight, (laughter and cheers), he should pass his observations by.” If Charles Lamb were alive now, bp would begin to fancy that there was something more tjiapplesantry in his speculations upon the habits and character of the people among whom his friend Baron Field had cast his lot. —A uslralasiiui.