MR READ SB WOOD’S SPEECH.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1937, 10 May 1880, Page 3

MR READ SB WOOD’S SPEECH.

AUCKLAND, May 8. Mr Reader Wood’s meeting with his constituents last night must have been new experience for him, as bis speech on the occasion was tho most unsatisfactory ho has ever attempted. For a straightforward plain statement Mr Wood has few superiors ; for misleading or hoodwinking his constituents ha is as helpless as an infant. About 150 persons were present, and it was soon made apparent that a large minority of them were not friendly listeners or disposed to keep their disapproval of his public action to themselves. Unfortunately, Mr Wood tried to pacify the smallest, though most noisy portion of hia audience, by proclaiming some remarkable inconsistencies in his own views and practice. Ho spoke with no uncertain sound of the fatal effect of Mr Sheehan’s champagne and jewellery Native policy, and of the ruin that must have overtaken the colony if Sir George Grey’s financial bungling and Mr Maoandrew’s reckless expenditure had continued a little longer. But with strange inconsistency, he tried to charm tho angry Greyites by asserting, without reserve, that if Sir George had continued to lead in this plain road to ruin, he would have been willing and anxious to continue to support him. He clearly stated that ho had made no unqualified promise to support Sir Qcorgo Grey or any loader, and that his first duty was to seek the interests of his constituents and the colony. And yet ho was prepared to support a reckless expenditure, a vicious Native policy, and a blind headlong incapable financial administration if only led by the late Premier. His account of the much talked of “ Auckland compact” was very simple, and must have astonished those who came to hear of its iniquity. Ho alluded with good effect to Mr Ballance’s horror of such atrocities, and took the opportunity to show that Mr Ballanco had not a horror of complete in 1877, when he secured himself a seat in tho Cabinet and £I2OO a year at the cost of over-throwing the Government he was so zealously supporting to all outward appearances. That was something that called forth no indignation from Mr Ballnnce. But when tho rc presentatives of a district made their support of a Government contingent on justice being done to their own districts, Mr Ballanco thought tho action was so gross that the Legislature should at once be called on to make such compacts impossible. A vote of thanks, proposed in a speech of censure, was carried with only two dissentients. A vote of no confidence was lost by about two to one, and a vote of confidence carried by no very largo majority. Mr Wood himself asserts that he never made a worse speech in his life, and it is probable that he will see the necessity of no longer professing his willingness to support a leader who has by his own admission led the colony into such difficulties.