'THE DEVIL’S OWN COUNTRY.”

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2135, 18 July 1907, Page 2

'THE DEVIL’S OWN COUNTRY.”

STRONG LANGUAGE BY \ “LORD.”

(Special to Times.)

AA ELLINGTON, last night. Hie lion. Air. Scotland who is always very downright in his Legislative Council deliverances, in a speech on tlie Dominion question yesterday said tlie Prime Alinistor had most decidedly failed to revolutionise the Colonial Office and talk over tlie Mother Country to preference, No doubt, therefore. Sir Joseph said ti nimseli: “I must take back something to New Zealand. AYcll now. 1 have got a nice little toy that will amuso them and take their fancy. I 11 sweep away tho old name of col-, onv, and New Zealand shall glide loitil as a- Dominion and" become equal in station to Australia and Canada. A mere bauble! Yet ho. Air. Scotland, was not astonished that tho people caught at it sogreeduy for we had for years past been a community of blowers proclaiming to tlie world that this was “God’s own country.” When he looked at the crime prevalent he was led to call it instead “the Devil’s own country ’’ A man who would call New Zealand •God’s own country” must he either an unmitigated fool or an unmitigated humbug, and one who would advocate calling it a Dominion could have no sense of the ludicrous. As to our expected big population a hundred years hence' he did not believe it There was no room for it. The cream oi our land was -already gobbled up by land sharks, leaving only the skim milk and the inaceessable mountains for the others.