MR. SEYMOUR AT BLENHEIM

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1951, 26 May 1880, Page 3

MR. SEYMOUR AT BLENHEIM

[By ThLEORAPH.] BLENHEIM, May 25. A luncheon was given to-day by the Mayor and councillor* in celebration of the opening of the railway into Blenheim. The Mayor and councillors of Pioton, Mr A. P. Seymour, and Captain Kenny, M.H.R.’s, were among the guests. Mr Seymour, in concluding a congratulatory speech, said it might be thought that he owed an explanation to his constituents for not having addressed them, but the time had been so short, since every possible question been discussed and argued out, and it appeared to him that what he had foreshadowed six months ego had been pretty well fulfilled. He had then explained[thit the party to which he had allied himself would come into power. He bad said that nobody in the House could be the leader of one party but Sir G. Grey. Ho must either bo the leader of the Government or the Opposition. The Opposition had deposed Sir G. Grey, and his party had fallen to pieces. He (Mr Seymour) believed that he had fulfilled the pledges he had given to the electors. Ho held in his possession a letter from the Minister for Public Works, informing him that instructions had been given to the Public Works Department to make a survey of the extension of the Awatore line, and when that was done the contract should be carried out to the amount of the vote. This was an earnest that the railway would be carried out. The present Government was one that said little, but did much. They all knew that this Government had passed several measures last session which the late Government had spent a couple of years over. In the offices previously occupied by the late Ministers was found a copy of the Triennial Parliaments Bill, which provided that the new condition of affairs should not have effect until after the present Parliament had come to an end. The Hall Government had made a most liberal low, by which the electors would in two years’tim 3 be again called upon to return a member to represent them. The Government had placed their shoulders to tho wheel, and they asked the colony to assist them in placing the finances on a satisfactory footing. Hitherto it had been customary to put the amount of the revenue and tho loans into tho same pocket, and spending both. It was tho intention of the Government to separate tho loan accounts and the revenue derived from the sale of lands, and to make the current expenditure meet the current revenue. This was a reasonable course that must recommend itself.