REFORM OR SEDITION?

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1406, 17 August 1878, Page 3

REFORM OR SEDITION?

Commenting on a lato speech of Victoria's Ministerial baronet, the " Australasian " The true Sir Bryan O'Loghlen broke out on Wednesday night in his speech on the Government Reform Bill. Sir Bryan, if need be, i* prepared to become a rebel to the backbone and spinal marrow, He sketched, m with the point of a shillelagh, tha consequences that are to. er,3ue if the base Saxon which sils at "Westmaster dares to reject Ihe Bill which those loyal subjects, Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, Sir Charles Duffy, and Mr Berry, are to homo for acceptance. In the case supposed it might become necessary to arrange, so said the senior law officer of the Crown in Victoria, " the deportation of the

members of the Council over the Murray, or, it might be, to invite the Governor to go on board a steamer in the bay." " Had," Sir Bryan asked, " hon. members ever looked before them ?" Perhaps it is becoming time that the country should put a similar question to itself. la it looking before it at tho future to which it is being conducted by a crewof of political adventurers? Is the colony of Victoria prepared at the call of Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, Mr Berry, Mr Lalor, and their colleagues and allies, to ship home the last English Governor, and set up a separate establishment under such guidance ? And all for what ? In order that Mr Berry and his three-hundred-pounders may abolish the last check on their administration of an annual revenue of five millions and a half of money. Sir Bryan O'Loghlen has stated the case candidly and fairly. It is impossible that any sane man can expect for a moment that the Imperial Parliament will accept the grotesque revolutionary abortion Mr Berry is going to carry homo. Ministers cannot expect it—we do not know that they want it. And now Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, with Irish want of reticence, has blurted out what they mean to do when their measure is rejected. True enough, Sir Bryan O'Loghlen wants peace. His aspirations for peace were expressed in a tone of the fiercest belligerency. But if a slavish English Legislature denies him peace amid the ruins of our institutions, then lot it beware. The Legislative Council will be bundled across the Murray, and the Q-overnor sent home by the next ship. Mr Berry will inn ediately occupy Government House, and a br inch of the Treasury Department will bo opened in that building. There are good times yet in store for sound Liberals, if the B ritish Parliament but throw out the Bill. We trust the people of Victoria like the prospect before them.