Our Wellington watchman

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 140, 2 June 1887, Page 2

Our Wellington watchman

Wellington, June 1. The Vogel-Stout combination potatoe is cooked. Major Atkinson having carried his no-confidence motion, the question which now agitates the public mind is : "What will he do with it ? " Probably no one is more dismayed; with his own -success than th& . Major niiaself,. for he must know that the country, unless it suffers from a spasm of acute lunacy, will not again entrust itself to his governance. At the same time the Financial Proposals appear to please no one, the- Government having over-estimated the feeling in favoi of Protection. The only way out of the difficulty seems to be a Vogel-Stout Government with -^ Yogel left out, or at least with. an r other Treasurer. But who is to be the happy man?" Simple arithmeticis not the Premier's forte, and the future of this country does not depend upon polysyllabic pedagogues so much | as upon men who have recognised the 1 eternal truth that two and two can ' never represent five. As you will have learnt ere this reaches you, the Government has been granted a dissolution, by the Governor and will ask the House for six months supplies from 31st March, and if these are granted will go te the country under the new Representation Bill, but should supply be withheld an appeal will be made to the people under the existing Representation Act. The general feeling: — so far as it can bo ascertained at bo short an . interval — is that the country would return a majority of supporters of the present Ministry, not because they have been ""a success, but because there is no other party able to form a Go- \ vernment so good. "Bad is the best' r is admitted by many ostensible supporters of the Government. . Pity 'tis- * for New Zealand it should be so. Ministers are enduring their defeat with great apparent equanimity. Sir Robert Stout looks quite rosy and smiles with all the infantile innocence of a lawyer whp has won a case. He has evidently forgotten his wish to be a Caesar and die for his bleeding country. True he has a remarkably good trade to fall back upon, and work in his peculiar line is always brisk, and therefore he can afford to bear the slings and arrows of political misfortune. He professes the greatest indifference to office, but hangs on to. it like a Bailor to a weather earing in a gale of wind. He -"-doth protest tbo--much, methinks," for he is fully alive to the fact that those who do not appear anxious for a thing frequently have that thing thrust upon ; them. However, Sir. Robert is all right which : ev»r way falls .the coin — heads he wins, tails somebody else loses. Sir Julius Yogel appears anxious and ill. Mr Ballance keeius contented, and these really are the Ministry. Th« ♦■' leaders of the Opposition on the other hand, crawl around as if they had stolen a couple of Ministerial beuches and did not know where to "plant; the e\vag." Some victories are worse than defeats, and Major Atkinson and "Iris embryo Ministers are sufferings, an embarmsscmmt des riches. A rumor is current that the Representation Bill will encounter troubles ill its passage through the Legislative: Assembly, and that sumo of the venerable waxworks iv that Cnauiber of Horrors will insist upon the inseitioa of a clause reducing the numfier of ' representatives. That would indeed ' be a Roland for an Oliver — a neat tv quopie for those hon: gentleman of the inferior House who have threatened the. total abolition of fossils. It will be seen therefore that some fun is yet possible ere the situation is finally straightened out. ' . A most scandalous story is in circulation regarding certain methods employed to induce one of the Maori members to vote on the," fight side,'" or rather to obfuscate him so that he might not know on which side hevoted. If the Maoris judge the Nalionai character by what they see of it in the House it is no wonder they deem us a mighty mean people. Some protection should be afforded to these Native members, who left to themselves and. sober are quite as competent to form political conclusions as any white man in the House — though that's not say~ ing a great deal, either. Let us turn from matters political, for a breathing space. It has lately dawned upon a few great minds in this metropolis that'what the average New Zealander is withering uway for is Kulchaw spelt with aK. It was. borne in upon these aesthetic young persons that there was in Wellington at least a great and a growiug demand for tone, sweetness,^ and light. No» doubt, theoretically,' they were right, hut practically there is sufficient tl Kulchaw" in a nigger-minstrel entertainment, aud high art in a circus to satisfy all the aesthetic longings of the average Wellingtonians. With a view, however, of filling, the gaping; void supposed to exist, a few yoUng I persons lately took a hall and plunged w with the usual amateur disregard of consequences into multitudinous advertising. AMr Smith, or Brown, or Jones — a distinguished amataor— was to recite "Enoch Arden," and the intervals— while Enoch was eating: : his youthful pap, indulging in calflove for Annie, marrying her, become ing looney^ou an uninhabitated island . 360 nautical degrees from no whwre^ and eventually returning home to find, like the whaling skipper, thut seven new children had been born duriug. his unavoidable absence— these intervals, I say, were to be filled up with various amateur shrieks, vocal and, instrumental. This high-toned enter- ' tainment was to he succeeded by other similar shows, and it was' under the patronage of the Governor, and carriages were to be ordered at sea. The night arrived, and the -self -sacrificing amateurs ia white chokera ajad swftl*

low-tailed bergees grouped themselves around the doors to take tickets and scoop the pool. But the dunderhead «d Wellington public did not eventuate, at least not in sufficient numbers to swear by. The papers reported the exhibition trs highly f.-->m an artistic ; >oint of view, an I declared the audience vms a very attentive one. So he was — so fearfully and unnaturally attentive that had any enterprising undertaker come along he would have measured that audience for a white-wood travelling trunk with brass trimmings. The gifted amateurs now admit that a Wellington audience ia not intense enough for Enoch Arden and' so they have bought several copies of the book of Ethiopian jokes and are anxious to discover whether lampblaok or ..burnt- cork washes off the quietest.