The Evening Star. FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1876.

Evening Star, Issue 4127, 19 May 1876, Page 2

The Evening Star. FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1876.

Ip there is anything more wonderful than the leading articles of the 1 Otago Daily Times’ it is the letters and telegrams of the regular correspondents of that journal. The spirit which moves these gentlemen seems to be that embodied in the well-known advice given by a Scotch laird to his son relative to the acquisition of money, and as the laird exhorted his offspring to accumulate wealth by good or ovil moans, whicheverservei], so one might imagine a monitor - standing in loco ixwcnii*

telling the before-men Honed conviipoti-1 '• ■ '•> ‘OOU -' . .' Hit of t.] was afloat, and it' tueie was ajClvally no news stirring, to make some.” Now, in a snail Colonial town, startling events do not occur ewry day, and while it is long since New Zealand politics showed aught like stagnation, they olten exhibit periods of duluess which must be very aggrnva- • . •- Co ting to tho newspaper correspondent who thinks his panic duty is to surprise tho public. Hence he drifts naturally into the regions of fiction. A sweet collection of poetical fancies might be culled from the columns of our contemporary’s issues, say, for the past twelve months. We remember that at the time when Sir Julius Vogel was about to return to the Colony, and the mode of transit which he proposed to adopt had not been definitely announced, one literary genius, writing from the extreme North, solemnly declared in his monthly epistle to the ‘ Daily Times,’ his firm conviction, based, of course, on the veiy best authority, that the Premier intended to astonish the natives by secretly taking passage in the mail steamer, and might indeed be expected to arrive by the next boat. What possible object was likely to be attained by this Jim Cuow arrangement the ingenious scribe neglected to say, and as the Premier soon after left England in a more prosaic fashion, the subject was judiciously dropped. Recently again, another well-informed correspondent telegraphed from Wellington that three particular members of the Civil Service, whom he specified, were to be the Commissioners for visiting the Provincial Governments, but as neither of the gentlemen mentioned was Mr Gisborne, Mr Seed, nor Mr Knowles, it may be inferred either that somebody had been “ taking a rise ” out of the correspondent, or that he had evolved a triad of Commissioners out of the depths of his inner consciousness.

Longum est dicere fabulas ; but the general inaccuracy exhibited in this direction creates a reasonable hope that the report, that Mr Eolleston is likely to be appointed Under Sec? - etary for the Colony in place of v Cooper, who has been made a Commissioner of Audit, is untrue. We should be very sony indeed to think it was correct. Mr Eolleston would be simply selling himself to the Ministry. It would probably be put into polite language, but that would be the gist of the transaction. Now, Mr Eolleston has been Superintendent of Canterbury and a member of the General A ssetnbly for many years, while lie had previously held office in the Provincial Executive, and during the whole period he has never, to all appearances, done a single act to disentitle him to the appellation of an honorable English gentleman. He is a man of birth and education, who has always kept himself aloof from dirty jobs and a miserable hunt for office. Although a fair speaker he does not possess that copious flow of language which attracts mobs, and in the House his influence has been weaker than it ought to have been by reason of an extreme conscientiousness which leads him to see too much of both sides of a question, so that he makes a bad party man. Hence he is less known to the public outside of Canterbury than many other men of far less desert; but the country could very ill spare him from Parliament at the present moment, even were his retirement accompanied by circumstances which left his personal honor untouched. Did, however, he surrender his political position for the sake of acceptiug a post in the Civil Service, given by a Ministry whom, on most questions, he has hitherto thought fit to oppose, it would be shocking to public morality. This is a matter above party. Amid the crowd of professional politicians who seem to be springing up all over the Colony, hungering for place and pay, and regarding politics as a means of filling their own purses, the public naturally look to those men of both parties who are animated by better principles, for help in its present difficulties. They may not be immaculate—it were unreasonable to expect them to be so—they may differ fundamentally in their ideas of how public affairs should be administered ; but still it is the public welfare which they seek, at all events to some extent, and not solely their own private and pecuniary advantage. It men like Mr Eolleston depart from the ways of political virtue, and act in the same manner as those hangers-on of party whose vote is open to the highest bidder, the people at large will inevitably lose faith in its rulers, and abandoning all patriotic ideas, become itself a degenerate and self-seeking community.

W “Damon and Pythias,” with Mr and Mrs Byers and Mrs Hill in the leading characters, was played at the Queen’s Theatre last evening, “Richard 111. ”is announced for to-night. At the Port Chalmers Police Court this morning, before Mr Mansford, R.M., Win. Cowan and James Duncan were each fined ss, with the usual alternative, for drunkenness. A Wellington telegram in the Australian papers says that “an influential New Zealand proprietory is being arranged to extend the capital of a local company with a view of acquiring M'Meckan, Blackwood, and Co.’s fleet.” More stack fires. One occurred at Trotter’s Greek, near Hampden, the night before last, whereby three stacks of wheat, the property of Mr Henderson, settler, were destroyed. The ‘Evening Mail’ says:— “It is supposed to be the work of an in csmliary, as it would seem quite impossible that the stacks could have taken firo in any other way. Two swagmen have I ten arrested on suspicion.”