VICTORIA.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1649, 3 June 1879, Page 3

VICTORIA.

[from oub own correspondent.] May 22

We have had some little stir in politics within the past week or two, but not much, and it has all been made by the Opposition ; or, rather, it would be more correct to say, in Opposition, for the bitterest defeats that the Government had to sustain has come from one of its erewhile warmest supporters. This gentleman, Mr Munro, in addressing his constituents of Carlton, showed, in the most conclusive and merciless manner, that the Embassy has utterly failed, 'and that upon its success the future of.’tho Ministry rests absolutely. He (Mr Munro) and the party generally had given Mr Berry a blind and unreasoning support in the faith of their achieving Parliamentary reform, and that hope had come to depend solely upon the obtaining of an “ Enabling Act” from the Imperial Legislature, which the Chief Secretary has expressed himself certain to get, which he had gone to London to seek, and which he was coming back without! Why, then, any more of the Berry Ministry ? Why indeed ! No one can tell why, but Major Smith will endeavour to explain its raison d'etre at Ballarat this evening, when he will give an explanation of the Ministerial situation and intentions, goaded thereto by the taunts of the public, who have lately been loud in thair cry that Ministers are dumb dogs that would not bark ; and not without reason, for they seem to have been holding themselves in check ever since the ill nows re the Embassy arrived, as with a view to the leaving of the ground clear for Mr Berry, that the man who has been chiefly instrumental in getting the parly into its present sorry plight is the right man to try and get it out again. However, the Major has at length taken heart of grace, and will now break ground, and other Ministerial and opposition orators will follow in brisk succession, so that we are going to have a rather lively time of it so far as dull speeches can liven things up. But to return to Mr Munro. All through his address there were to be detected symptoms of revolt against the Berry rule in his heart, and as he is in some sort a typical man, his defection points to a more general one at early date. It was amusing, though pitiful, to hear him (Mr M.) declare that he had “ religiously and fearlessly voted for the Government right and wrong, and the Government had done nothing whatever for either the party or the country,” but in his complaint we find the heaviest charge that can be brought against the Ministry forcibly epitomised. Never had any Government that the colony has seen the same opportunities to do good, and never did any Government do so much Muohief.

A notable incident of the past week was Mr Serviced address to the electors of Maldon. This gentleman occupies a very prominent position in our political world, and withal a peculiar one. He is very able, has his heart in his work, and in many respects possesses the qualities necessary to the success of a party leader. But he does not possess them all. He has not much power of self* abnegation. He is not so much the leader of the Opposition as James Service, merchant and Bank director, and member for Maldon. Consequently he gives undue prominence to his own individual opinions, which are sometimes mere crotchets, and since there are a dozen or a score of prominent politicians on the constitutional side quite as capable as himself, it follows that he is a leader who has in no very numerous, united, or confiding following. In his denunciation of the Berry Ministry and its doings (at Maldon), he gave a masterly summary of their iniquities, and all on his side of the political hedge followed him through three or four columns of trenchant and often witty animadversion and criticism with unmixed pleasure. But when ho came to suggest a remedy for the sore evils that affect the body politic, then the case was different. Our thoughtful and sober minded public men regard “ finality ” as a mere figment of the imagination—a delusive and misleading aspiration, and Mr Service is all for finality. Representative Government is essentially a compromise between contending forces, and to render it “scientific,” or confine those forces within rigidly drawn lines, would|be to play the deuce with it. Given two parties in two Houses patriotically desirous to benefit their country, and their unanimity is not necessary, nor is it desirable. The frictions that will ensue from the honest expression of divergent opinion on important public questions, tends to their proper settlement in the end, and is a thing not to be got rid of without great injury to a country’s best interests. Why, all human affairs are more or less settled by compromise. In the domestic circle, between partners in business, in every relation in life in which difference of opinion can come, people must do the best they can, and take what they can get—in politics it is exactly the same thing, except under the rule of a despotic sovereign, or a despotic mob, which is still worse. Where there is freedom and enlightened rule there can be no finality—no hard and fast line at which discussion must absolutely stop short. Then, Mr Service would adopt the Norwegian scheme, and bring the two Houses together to vote in common, when they could not otherwise agree, which would only bo to render the Upper House a party to its own humiliation in such cases as the expedient should be resorted to, for such a majority as Mr Berry has at his back, or had, could swamp the whole Council, together with its sympathisers in the Assembly. Our sounder constitutionalists are entirely opposed to those fantastic schemes of reform, and I fear Mr Service’s adhesion to them will seriously damage the cause. Mr James Lorimer has been elected for the Central Provincialisb Opposition a great triumph for the law and order party. At the last election for the same constituency Professor Hearn beating the Ministerial candidate by so large a majority, that this time they did not venture to put up a man at all. Besides, it is a slap in the face for Ministers to see elected the gentleman who, quite recently they excluded from the Harbor Trust, where he was doing very useful work, purely on factious ground. Following on the insolvency of Mr Joseph Aarons, of the Academy of Music, came the stoppage of Mr Zox, one of our city members, as a natural consequence. Now, as a further consequence, the collapse of the Provincial and Suburban Bank, one of the most ridiculously insignificant bank failures ever recorded in ancient or modern history. The institution’s paid-up capital was £45,000, and its note issue about £BOOO. Nobody was surprised when it closed its doors, nor was anybody much the worse. It is understood that the shareholders will be the only sufferers; that the depositors and note holders will be paid in full, or nearly so, in time. That wretched Kelly business is just where it was. The miscreants are still at large, and a largo body of police in search of them, suffering some hardship and costing the country a great deal of money. Meanwhile an enquiry has been going on respecting the proceedings of one Monk, a saw-miller in the Wombat ranges, who, it will be remembered, was subjected to some annoyance in consequence ot his having aided the police in their search for the bodies of their wounded comrades. One man is now in prison for sending him (Monk) an anonymous threatening letter.

A new morning paper will be started in Sydney within a few weeks from the present time. It will bo a penny paper, and an outcome of Victorian enterprise ; also, it will be an exposition of Victorian literary ability and journalistic experience. It is understood that the necessary capital will bo supplied by a few Melbourne citizens, among whom Mr J. J. Francis, Mr Angus Mackay, and Mr J. J. Casey arc the most prominent. Its editor, sub-editor, and principal reporters will bo drawn from the ranks of the Melbourne press. The enterprise comes partly of a desire on the part of Victorian moneyed men to hare a stake in the more promising free trade neighboring colony, and partly of a certain plethora of newspaper talent with which Melbourne is now, and nearly always, afflicted. Well informed people are of opinion that the new venture has an excellent chance to prove successful, the “Morning Herald,” while most estimable in most respects, being

a little inert and slow, while there is no other morning paper published in Sydney, I wish it every kind of prosperity, and all the more that it will he free trade and constitutional in its principles. There is among us a literary man, Mr Marcus Clarke, who wields a free lance and strikes at anybody and at nothing. When ho has a bitt< r word at the tip of his tongue, or the end of his pen, he has no power to withfold it, but utters it without regard of consequences. Consequently he has enemies, and among those is the “Argns,”not without good and sufficient reason. Well, some time ago he wrote a [dramatic trifle entitled “ Baby’s Link,” which was acted here, when an “Argus” correspondent was immediately down upon him with the charge that his play was a crib from one of Miss Bradden’g novels. To this he triumphantly replied that he had not stolen from Miss Bradden, but had gone to the original source, and drawn his inspiral ion from the author to whom she also had been indebted. Now ho has seen Ids chance to be revenged upon his censor. In a recent issue of the “Argus” there appears a very pleasantly written article on the “ Infamy of the Melbourne Stage,” and this Mr Clarke immediately claims as his own, it having appeared in the “ Colonial Monthly,” a magazine, owned and edited by him, in 1868. The identity, or nearly so, is not denied, but the editor of the “ Argus ” refuses to publish Mr Clarke’s letter—naturally enough, since it was insulting and intimates that he “ quite satisfied with the explanation afforded by our contributor.” Then the correspondence appears in the “Ago.” Then comes a letter in the “Argus” signed “The writer of both articles,” stating that the original contribution to the magazine had been gratuitous, and ha (the writer) considered himself justified in using the same materials over again, after the lapse of so many years, which raises the question—ls a writer entitled to sell hia wares twice over, or even to use them twice in any way without explaining the facts ? I think not; and that the “Argus ” was slightly had in the matter under consideration. The affair is not very important, but I mention it as a samjie of the materials of which Melbourne talk largely consists in dull times.