MR W. JOHNSTON AND THE GOVERNMENT.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1633, 15 May 1879, Page 3

MR W. JOHNSTON AND THE GOVERNMENT.

[Press Special Wire.] WELLINGTON, May 14. Mr Walter Johnston, M.H.R , on Monday night, in his capacity of chairman of the meeting for promoting the establishment of a free public library, made a speecli of a political character. Ho has since been taken to task very severely by both evening papers for his covert attack upon the present Govornment as being ill-timed, irrelevant to the business in hand, and altogether in very bad taste. The following extract from his speech is probably the portion referred to:—He thought that here a public, which had an opportunity of studying in a free library how our liberties were gained and which was penetrated with a sense of their value, could not easily endure that anyone should make encroachments on them ; so that if at any time hereafter a Government should arise which showed a disposition to reinstate such an order of things (if it wero possible to imagine it)— a Government wbich would, supposing Parliament passed a Bill to deal with the public estate in a particular way, endeavor to thwart the will of Parliament—a Government which, supposing Parliament desired to extend the electoral privilege to the bone and sinew of the country, and passed a measure to carry out what it desired, would tear up that measure in the face of Parliament—if such a Government could bo found, and he hoped such a Government would never be found, which would doal with public revenues in a way not contemplated by Parliament—if such a Government as tins should ever exist, then a free people instructed in the record of their journey towards freedom, would not submit to such an invasion of their rights. But to come to matters which were nearer home, he would say that the general elections to corno off next year and the grave questions suggested in the newspapers to be then or speedily thereafter solved, brought strongly homo to his mind tho immense importance of giving facilities to all electors to read up the political questions brought before them. Even in the comparatively trifling matter of the war cries of aspirants for their suffrages, it would not he thought, should a candidato come before them with such phrases as the " rights of man," "posterity," the "human race," " friend of the people," and so forth, be uninstructive to read in the history of the French revolution, that some of the most prominent leaders were constant declarants of the rights of man, that one was called the "apostle of the human race," and another asserted himself as pre-eminently the friend of the people.