A NOTABLE VICTORIAN

Gisborne Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1367, 31 January 1905, Page 4

A NOTABLE VICTORIAN

Everybody just now is hearing something about Mr Bent. No man in Victoria, no man in Australia, understands the art o£ self-advertisement so well as the Premier of the State on the other [side of the Murray. Most people know that he was knocked down by tho boom, that ho took a long timo to rise again, the one or two attempts endod disastrously, and that still pushing himself upwards ho got on his feet, sprang into a Ministry, and in two years was at the hoad of it. Mr Bent is one of the institutions of Melbourne. A short, broad-shouldered man, he leaves hardly room enough for anyone to pass when he trudges down Collins-streot. Ho has no oratory, but ho has wonderful astuteness. "What is more, he understands men, and knows how to so play on their weaknesses, to tickle their vanity, to gratify that peculiar craving of mankind to be on good terms with the politically mighty. People in Melbourne laughed derisively when he becamo Premier. They predicted that he would never see a general election, much less pass successfully through one. But he has done both. By pure force of natural ability he has made himself master of the Victorian Parliament. He may leap too far one day, and fall. The immediate outlook doesn’t lie that way. For he is a gonial, accessible, goodnatured person, sometimes blustering and arrogant—and that more by design than by accident —and somehow he appeals to the popular imagination. In Melbourne everyone except his Under-Secretary, calls him “ Tommy.”