EDITORS TREATED BY MR WEBSTER, M.H.R.

Evening Star, Issue 3325, 16 October 1873, Page 3

EDITORS TREATED BY MR WEBSTER, M.H.R.

Mr Webster, the member for Mataura, ia regarded as the funny man of the Opposition. We have carefully perused his speeches as recorded in ffmsanl,, but have failed to defect any wit in them. Even' that extraordinary speech he made on the evening he returned from Government house in a “ festive garb,” as Mr Jmckie felicitously described hia condition, reads dull in the official record, because it has been Judiciously toned down, and the interruptions omitted. The Independent , however, publishes Mr Webster’s utterances on that occasion, and they were as follow : Mr Webster thought that, with the exception of the Native Minister, no one knew one iota about colonisation. It was given to that happy class who, with that self-fiattery so common in this country, took to what they called literary pursuits, that was writing to the newspapers. --(Laughter.) They had had instructions from the editors, not only in regard to the heroic work of colonisation, but in regard to the best method of shipping goods, and other such like matters. This Immigrants Lands Bill had been constructed by one of these literary gentlemen It was unpractical. The Premier thought that out of a ship load of immigrants not more than one-tenth would be agriculturists. I here would be tradesmen of all kinds. I here might even be editors. Juat imagino giving an editor twenty acres of land to cultivate I hey might get a good washerwoman out, and if they did, he would back her against any others, even the editor, —(Laughter.} He meant, of course, an

ordinary editor; not those leading thunderers —“ busters," as they called them in their part of the country. These persons who thought that the wool growers, who occupied the back country as wool-growers, wore cumberers of the ground. They even said that of himself. — (Laughter.) Why, there were some of the wool-growers who employed a largo number of people, who actually kept in existence a newspaper and an editor. To hear the way the goldfields representatives talked, one would think they were hard working diggers. On the contrary, if they were to trot out the goldfields representatives in a row, they would sec that there were not a more rotund, obese class of persons in the Colony.—(Loud laughter.) He saw some gentlemen in the House who had been pioneers of civilisation before the Premier had the frills off his breeches.—(Laughter.) In reference to the despach which had just been laid on the table : the idea that forwarded it appeared to be that it condemned the Agent-General for not having at once broken with Shaw, Saville and Co., and supported the claims of the New Zealand Shipping Company. He did not know the Agent-General, but ho knew that the present Ministry were a few years ago on the benches just as his mouthpieces. Ho was a man of historical position. Was it to bo expected that he would accept patiently impertinent letters from men of local reputation, accidentally shunted on to these benches ? He thought the attack on the Agent-General rlie-wecl animus. He fully shared the Premier’s holy horror of monopoly, hut he maintained that Shaw, Saville and Co.’s trade was not a monopoly. It reminded him of the old story of Moses and Aaron. Aaron had a serpent that swallowed up all the other serpents. Did hon. members recognise the parable?—(Laughter.) The new monopoly would swallow them up, and what better would they be? There was a monetary monopoly as well as a shipping monopoly. Ho did not like to see private arrangements entered into in such matters with members who had considerable influence in the House.