MEMBERS OUT OF PARLIAMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 3071, 21 December 1872, Page 2

MEMBERS OUT OF PARLIAMENT.

MR CREIGHTON AT NEWMARKET. Mr Creighton, M.H.R., addressed his constituents at Newmarket, Auckland, on the 2nd instant. His speech, which occupies ten columns of the Herald , is teo long for us to republish, but we give below a few extracts from the report:— THE SUPERIMTENHENTAL COMBINATION. I understand the meaning of those resolutions (those first proposed by Mr Williamson) to be simply this, and they were so explained afterwards by Mr Curtis, that the whole policy of the Public Works and Immigration Acts of 1870 and 1871, which made the General Government abso utely responsible to the country for the expenditure and for the control of the works, was to be set aside; and that while the nominal control should remain with the General Government, the absolute control and pa- j trouage was to be handed over to the gentle- ] men I have named. To the credit of the 1 Government, be'it said, they set their faces against that demand ; and if there was no other act which should entitle the FoxVogel Government to the confidence of the couiit-y, it was their courage in telling those gentlemen—from North and South, friends and enemies— 1 ' We will not have anything to do with yo ir resolutions ; we shall treat anything approaching to them as a vote of want of conlidence, a;'d we stake our political existence upon the issue.” If, however, the Government had been plastic, we should hj ive heard nothing of the charges of extravagance and corruption subsequently made. The Superintendents would have gone into partnership with the General Government, and evtrtbing would have been right. Those gentlemen to whom I have alluded went to work in a very prudent way. The .Superintendents having resolved upon their own line of policy, held provincial caucuses. Ido not know what took place at auy other caucus than that of the members from Auckland, which I remember very well, as it made a vivid impression upon my mind. At that caucus the Superintendent introduced the business by placing before us very miserable details of the financial position of this Province. “Wewe e fast approaching to utter grief ” I quite believed that. Then the question was, how were our failing finances to be recuperated ?—how were we to have another lease of Provincial vitality ? And here came the panacea for all our Provincial ills—the resolutions which I bare read. A vote was taken at that caucus, and of the whole of the Auckland members, except Mr Mumo, who was absent, myself and three others, were the only men who declared against those resolutions The other geutlemmfro i the Auckland Province whorefused to support them, or anything approaching to them in the House,, were Mr W. Kelly, of the East Coast, M- Kateue, and Mr Charles O’Neill, and 1 have reason to believe that Mr Mumo, if he had been there, would have taken the same view, it transpired, I believe, at la it—l was told by a gentleman who was actively engaged in furthering the resolutions—that forty five, members were pledged to support them, and in a madified form they we e placed on the notice paper by Mr Curtis, the Superintendent of Nelson, and moved. The government met the motion by a direct negative; they staked their existence upon it . and when the Superintendental party found they could not carry it they put forward two supporters of the Government to withdraw it—Mr Macaudrew and Mr Fitzherbert—the latter of whom moved “the previous question.” In what i beli ve to have been a mistaken moment, the Fox Government accepted the previous question. If they had not done so, Mr Stafford, Mr Collins, myself, and a Fne number of gentlemen who usually voted with Mr Stafford, would have crossed the floor of the House and voted with the Government, ami the Fox Government would have been in office until this day.

After stating that he agreed with Mr Stafford’s condemnation of the administration of public works, Mr Creighton proceeded to comment upon

NA'IVE AFFAIRS The native policy was not at all impugned. Mr. .Stafford pointedly excluded the Native Minister from the condemnation which was being passed both by himself and by the House upon the Government. I am sorry to find that a gentleman who was present on the occasion, on Saturday evening last, took upon himself to sneer at the expense of native affairs under Mr M‘Lean’s management. I assure this meeting that the Assembly unanimously recognised the necessity of Mr M'Lean continuing as the manager of native affairs; and although it may have cost L 384.000 during the last three years to keep the natives quiet, it cost the Colony and the Imoerial Government over seven millions of money in the same time to tight them, and they were not able to beat them. I think, at all events, that Mr M‘Lean’s administration and expenditure can l>e favorably contrasted with the expenditure and administration which brought about that result. CONSTRUCTION OF MR STAFFORD’S GOVERNMENT. We were told that Mr Waterhouse would most likely join the Government. Mr Waterhouse did not do so ; bat I was very much surprised in the course of a day or two, or tlie next day, to hoar that Mr Wo well had been offered a seat in the Ministry, and had accepted office at half an hour’s notice—in fact, at a minute’s notice —and was sworn in as a member of the Ministry. I was especially surprised at that, as I heard more than one, but certainly a very eminent member of that Government declare on, one public occasion, and frequently in private, that “ Sewell was enough to damn any Ministry.” I also beard very disparaging remarks concerning him from other members of that Government, and I am inclined to think that Sewell was enough to damn the Govrment, and 1 am also very much inclined to think that he was particularly instrumental in condemning Mr Stafford’s Government. (Cheers.) At all events, as an Auckland member, I was very much dissatisfied with that accession. I could not forget, in the session of 1865, the scandalous attack which Mr Sewell made in his place in the House of Representatives, as a Cabinet Minister, upon the inhabitants of Auckland, when he characterised an unhappy expression of a gentleman who is now no more—used in the heat of argument in a Crown prosecution in one of the minor courts in Auckland—as being the “Auckland vernacular.” (Cheers.) I heard that gentleman praised to the electors of City West the other evening. He was held up as a paragon of perfection—a gentleman who would turn a subject round in all manner of ways and never make up his mind. There is one faculty, however, which Mr Sewell possesses, and that is the fmulty of making up his mind in a single instant, whenever office is at stake. (Laughter and cheers.) Mr Sewell, 1 am quite sure, never inquired into the policy of the gentleman he was going to join. He simply sought office, and when it was offered, accepted it with surprising alacrity. There we have an instance of the pliancy and subtlety of his miudj he was willing and ready to adapt himself to any circumstances, and to any policy. I took occasion to express my dissatisfaction to more than one member of the Government, and of the party, with that choice. On the day on which the Government was formed there was another Ministerial caucus. At that caucus Mr Stafford and other Ministers went at length into their policy, but what was my surprise when, towards the close of the proceedings, the Minister for Lands and Immigration, Mr Fitzherbert, assured the Southern geatlemea, that, although the Goyeraajeat

had power under the Public Works and Immigration Act to resume possession of the waste lands of the Crown, yet so long a* he was a Minister, and things were allowed to remain as they were wiihout separation, he would practically allow those clauses of the 'Ct to remain a dead letter, and that the lands of the Middle Island should continue to be administered under the existing laud laws of the various Provinces. I felt that that was an entire departure from the principles of the leading members of Mr Stafford’s party in 1870, as expressed in the debate on my resolutions, in the House, and as reiterated by Mr Stafford on more than one occasion in the House, and to his constituents at Timaru. And I had not heard from any single member of that Government, who had taken the same view in former years, any recantation of those principles until then. That statement was made by Mr Fitzherbert, in the presence of his colleagues, to the entire party that supported the Stafford Government, as one of the fundamental principles of the policy of the Government, and it was quite open to any man, who was a member of that party, and who did not believe in that policy, to retire from the party, and to express bis dissent from principles to which he objected.