THE GLOBE. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1879.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1777, 31 October 1879, Page 2

THE GLOBE. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1879.

Although affairs are now settling down into a quieter groove, there is no doubt but that the four Auckland members who turned the scale in the favor of the Government have bad a somewhat lively time of it. Ever since last Friday, the time of the House has been taken up mainly in listening to the fnlminations of the pseudo-liberals against their quondam associates. The most appalling charges have been brought against them; Auckland has been promised £1,200,000 ; and so on. It was of course no use for the accused to state that no compact bad been made beyond that Auckland shall bo treated in exactly the same manner in which other provinces are treated. Any amount of protestations would weigh nothing with the rabid gentleman who bayed so furiously on the Opposition benches. The Greyites have not the happy knack of listening to those who happen to run counter to their programme. Even when Sir George Grey’s amendment that all correspondence between the Auckland members and the Government be produced resulted in proving that there was no correspondence whatsoever. Sir George was not to he shaken in his melancholy declaration that what had taken place “ had actually shaken his confidence in his fellow men.” Because Sir George refuses to believe what is told him in the plainest terms, he is now stranded on the rock of unbelief in his fellow creatures, and his firm faith in the perfectibility of the human race—a faith which has borne him up through so many stumping tours —has at last given way. But if Messrs Wood, Colbock, Hurst, and Swanson have reason to grieve that their action has caused so much mental inconvenience to the late Premier, that must ho as nothing in comparison with the feelings that must have moved them when on Friday last they were attacked by others of their late associates. It was made clear for instance that they had totally lost the esteem of that burning patriot Mr Yincent Pyke. Mr. Moss was quite unable to trust himself to say one half of what ho felt in the matter—like the pictured Agamemnon, he hid his face in his mantle, and the public could only guess at the tremendous agony depicted on his countenance. Mr. De Latour said that every member, as representing a constituency, ought to hold aloof from them (the four members) and neither to speak to or know them outside of the House. Mr. Tawhai, who, say the Opposition journals, made a most powerful speech, nearly every sentence of which was cheered to the echo by his party, declared that the Auckland members had heads like rats, because the food of his ancestors teas rats. And in this strain the game of denouncing these delinquents was carried merrily on. And whatwore the feelings of the Aucklandfour on the occasion P It can he inferred from the graphic description of the scene by the “ own correspondent of the ‘ Lyttelton Times.’ ” This gentleman states that—“after many years’ experience of the proceedings of public bodies—from Imperial Parliaments down to Vigilance Committees at the limits of civilisation—ho had never witnessed so humiliating a spectacle as that presented by Mr. Reader Wood when shamelessly making his shameful confession.” The spectacle boat everything that this modern Ulysses had hitherto come across. “ The House was appalled.” “ All men turned their eyes towards Mr. Reader Wood”—a curious phenomenon, seeing that ho was making an important explanation—at least all men except Messrs. Hall and Swanson, both of whom sat most of the time with their hands shading their eyes. Mr. Swanson’s emotion is described as painful in the extreme. As his eyes were covered it is probable that convulsive twitchings of the nose or the lower jaw betrayed him to the searching eye of tho “ own correspondent of the' Lyttelton Times.' ” Indeed these poor gentlemen are not to he envied. They will no longer enjoy tho esteem of Mr Vincent Pyke, they have

destroyed Sir George Grey’a childlike faith in the human race, and they are likely to lose for the future the charm of familiar intercourse with Mr. Delatour, Mr. Shrimski and other gentlemen, whose social qualities have rendered the pleasure of their society almost a household word. They will miss, morever, the charming evenings spent in the company of Mr. Macandrew, when offers of port folios and other trifles were wont to ho handed round with the filberts. The only slight satisfaction they will have gained in exchange for all these solid advantages will have been the knowledge that they have acted up to their convictions and that they have put a stop to a deadlock which was threatening to do a serious injury to the country at largo,