PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHES.

Evening Star, Issue 3304, 22 September 1873, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHES.

“ Peregrinuß,” in the Hawke's Bay Herald, devotes a chapter of his “personal sketches on Parliament” to the Treasury Benches, and from it we make the following extracts :

Mr O’Rorke, I believe, in his private capacity, is an unusually amiable and popular man, but on the Treasury Benches, however, he is really no better than a nonentity, if so good. His deliverances during the present session have scarcely extended beyond the announcement that he begs to lay on the table “the following correspondence between the Government and the AgentGeneial,” or something else of a similar!} unexciting character. His colleagues don’t appear even to let him bring in and pull through the Bills connected with his own department. His aspect is much the reverse of Ministerial, if in that epithet anything of dignity can be hel Ito be implied. Together with a brogue which, while it marks a nationality possessed in common with many of our ablest statesmen, is in its broadness an indication of imperfect culture, it conveys to the spectator a vivid impression of insignificance—an impression which is, of course, rendered much more striking by the disparity between the present position and the man.

Mr Reynolds, it must he admitted, is a few degr<e> better. He is generally credited with having some opinions of his own, and with the capacity of sticking to them in a dull, plodding, obstinate way that is frequently more effective in bringing about their realisation than more brilliant but less persevering advocacy. There is another characteristic about him which is, no doubt, so much in his favor. Though the fact of his having become a Minister is one which forms an inexhaustible source of wondering contemplation to everybody else, it is one which has certainly not made the smallest difference in him. If he is inwardly elated with his newly-obtained honors, the fact is not perceptible. Perhaps that may be due in part to the circumstance that there was little room left to begin with for an increase of self-assurance to make itself apparent. He was never remarkable for blushing modesty. On the contrary, he had always a method of conducting himself in the House which showed him to be above the weakness of caring much for any* one elso’s sentiments in reference to him. Groans, cries of “question,” cries of “ order,” a general stampede even, would never have been sufficient to bring him to his seat, once he was on his legs. If the House had emptied itself to the last member, he would have gone on deliver, ing himself of his views with stolid complacency to Mr Speaker and the Sergeant-at-Arms. If they had cleared out at last in sheer despair, the empty benches would not have escaped the fag-end of the oration. It thus happens that the House is in some respects a gainer by Mr Reynolds’s promotion. He can’t fallow out bis natural bent for playing the bore to so full an extent as he could if he were a private member. His colleagues would be apt to remind him that it would not answer. Then, too, he has opportunities of taking it out in the Cabinet, which rumor says he makes the most of. With reference to Mr Richardson, the Public Works Minister, these is little to be said, but what little there is, to be correct, must be complimentary, and both partisans and antagonists give him the credit of being as efficient and hard-working a public servant as any that the Colony has ever possessed. His forte is not debate, though this is probably as much owing to the fact that his voice is not adapted for public speaking as to any other cause. There is a general feeling that what he says may be taken as fact, and that there is no double meaning or mental reservation behind it. In a Public Works Minister, one of whose main duties it is to solve parliamentary conundrums, this qualification is one of no small value. Coming at last to Jupiter of our Olympus. 1 come to a political!, the delineation of whoso characteristics has, in the past, occupied in an unusual degree the attention of newspaper correspondents, my own among the number. This, however, to a less extent than might be expected, renders further personal portraiture a Mr "Vogel, in 1873, in name, head, and, in truth, life and soul of the strongest of New Zealand Governments, is a very different sort of being from Mr Vogel even in 18/1, a man of recognised ability, no doubt, but

not a man who could be said to command anything like universal confidence. The light comedians often describe for us the wonderful transmutation which matrimony produces on the ma'e animal of the genus homo —how the creature that was but a few days before so submissive and so conciliatory takes, all of a sudden, to quite a different line of action, becomes decisive and dictatorial, not to say arrogant. Perhaps, after all, his mate likes this style of thing the best. At any rate their relations are probably no worse than they were before. If anything like a similar transmutation has taken place in or Vogel, the last feature hold good. The decisive directness of the Premier is, 1 believe, even more acceptable to his audience, now thoroughly broken in, than the apologetic conciliatoriness of the Treasurer of past years. That something more or less like it has, as a matter of fact, taken placq I think anyone will feel satisfied who will compare, say the Financial Statements of 1870 or 1871 with that of 1873. Take the prophetic passages in each, for instance, and compare them, you will find the keynote of the first given in some such phrases as this, “It is nob altogether impossible to suppose,” or “We will not, perhaps, be going too far if we anticipate,” while in the latter it would more likely be, “I have the best reason to believe,” or more briefly, “ I expect.” I have neither statement before me, and do not say that these precise words were actually used in either. I merely give them as conveying a general impression of the tone of each. Similarly, in former years, the replies which the most virulent personal attacks elicited were edifying illustrations of Christian patience, of those soft answers that turn away wrath, and what is still more important, put the wrathful individual in the wrong. Now, though they would, no doubt, be calculated so as to fulfil, if possible, the latter condition, it is highly improbable that they would fulfil the former. An intimation of want of confidence in any statement, even though but a trivial one, is met now-a-days by some such retort as, “ If the lion, member does not believe it, I have no doubt, at any rate, that all the members whose opinion 1 value do.”