The Evening Star TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 3018, 22 October 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1872.

Had Mr Stafford given utterance to expressions justifying the opinion that so many entertain of him, we should have felt much better pleased in recording our approval of them than in commenting upon the foolish exhibition of sordid selfishness that his words betrayed when speaking on the Railway Bill. For our parts, we have always considered his judgment unsound. Whether it be a defect of mental constitution, or arises from some other cause, educational or extrinsic, he never appears to be able to do or say the right thing at the right time. His notions are not well defined ; his measures are not adapted to circumstances. One would imagine he had been brought up in a Tory family, and having been trained in Tory stagnancy, Tory intolerance, and Tory hauteur, had learned nothing from conflict with the world. His whole idea of saving is somewhat like what was so happily hit off by Mr Vogel, keeping “an old stocking and a teapot” in which to deposit tiic proceeds of the scrapings and gleanings of the public estate. By such a course, as there is no risk of failure, things may be maintained at a certain point ; but there, is no reproductive investment—no progress. As Mr Stafford’s expressed determination to wind up his affairs and leave the country was announced in Committee of Supply, it may not make its appearance in Jln.nmrd, and therefore the public are indebted for the record of so melancholy a deathblow to the hopes of his party, to the reporting skill of one whose ability in that line is beyond question. .Mr Stafford’s idea is truly a ludicrous one. One would really imagine that he had pored over the debit side of the country’s liabilities, and forgotten to look at the credit. His notion seems to be that railways are not constructed for use, but for ornament, and apparently he anticipates just as little profit from them as from spending so much money in building churches or ornamenting mantelpieces. They are all dead capital, seemingly, in his eyes. He apparently imagines that while the money is being spent, there will be plenty of work ; and when that is done, there will be utter ruin and stagnation. This is just such an idea as many cld fogies have of the application of science to cheapening production. Knight, in his work on “ Capital and Labor,” says:— The mode in which accumulation of knowledge influences the direction of labor is, that it furnishes mechanical and chemical aids to the capitalist for carrying on the business of production. The abandonment of those mechanical aids would suspend production, and not in the slightest degree increase, but greatly diminish, and ultimately destroy the power of manual labor, seeking to work without those mechanical aids and the workmen on all sides, experiencing in their fullest extent the evils which result from diminished production, would all fall back in their condition, and day by day have less command of the necessaries and comforts of life, till they sank into utter destitution.

Mr Stafford lias not got so far as to desire to abandon the little advance tlio Colony lias made and to go back to Maori barbarism, but he wants to stop where w r o are, or if wo move at all, to crawl where we ought to walk. But it appears that he has had other views ; according to the revelation ho has made of his plans for private emolument, ho wishes to subordinate the interests of the Colony to them. He docs not care who fmkfy if he only swim lie has

been trying to keep up the value of estates or whatever industries he may be engaged in, until he can let somebody in for it; and when he has met with a gull and pocketed his money, he will clear out. We thank Mr Stafford for this exposition of his political code, and we trust it will not be forgotten so long as he remains amongst us. The o # y , greatest punishment we desire to see inflicted on him is that he should find persons immediately willing to relieve him of his troublesome investments, being well assured that unless he quits us for a better world, the mortification would await him of seeing that Colony whose progress lie had tried to arrest to serve his own purposes, so far advanced in material prosperity as to give a handsome profit to the man or men who occupied the place he had so selfishly and ignorantly abandoned. We are not surprised that he entertains the ideas he has expressed. They are quite in accordance with the narrow views of the school to which he belongs. Had he not told us, we should have suspected those were his notions, from the course of action he has adopted. It is impossible any community can prosper that places the guidance of its affairs in the hands of persons of such a cast of thought ; and men of all shades of opinion on other matters must feel relieved that he has no longer the power to tamper with the public interests, to the end that his plans, which are to “ take two or three years to complete,” may be successful, and then, having used his public position to forward his private schemes, it may become A matter of indifference to him what became of the Colony, as he should have ceased to have any connection with or interest in it. Very contemptuous this of Mr Stafford, but the world can meet contempt with contempt. Out of his own mouth he has sealed his own doom as a public man.