MR ANDREWS ON SEEDINESS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1986, 6 July 1880, Page 2

MR ANDREWS ON SEEDINESS.

, The recond member for Christchurch, | says the Ashburton “Mail,” has shown I himself very innocent indeed and veryparticular in the matter of the property tax asaeasmeiit. He had been waited upon, he said in his speech the other , day, by a seedy individual who was an assessor, and what he would call “ a half-pint man,” and that individual questioned him an to the value of his property and its burdens, and carefully noted down his answers. “He had no hesitation in saying that for a few shillings he could have got out of this individual whatever information ha might require.” As to Mr Andrews’ confessions of property to the seedy party, it is only to be said that the honorable member showed himself ignorant of the provisions of tho law against which he was declaiming. On real property he might he questioned, but on that, as Major Atkinson pointed out, anyone could obtain the same information by examining the register. As to any other property, Mr Andraws was a goose if ho made any statement to his enquiring friend. But it is on the question of seediness that the honorable member should be more seriously taken to task. Here is a people’s man, a person whose soul is superior to clothes, who is sent to Parliament in a great measure on the seedy ticket, so to speak, standing up and expressing abhorrence of a seedy man, solely on account of his eeedinesa, adding, moreover, an expression of opinion that this condition of raiment had, not only intimate connection with half-pints, but was an indication of untrastworthinsss ! Truly change of circumstances effects wonderful alterations in people’s sentiments. What more effectual argument could be found wherewith to controvert Mr Andrews’ position than his own dearly cherished habit ? Why, if everyday eeediness of vesture is a guage of the consumption of half-pints, the honorable member for Christchurch' can do litlls else than consume them! We can only hops that ho was not on the occasion referred to doing j ustice to himself, and that ho abandoned his genuine principles for the sake of trying to make a very paltry point against the Government. Certain it is that a year ago there was not a man in the House or the country who would have more scornfully condemned tho same sentiment from another. It is hard to believe that in so short a time the sterling Sam Andrews, who has been constantly held up as a standing proof to working men that manual labour was no bar to political utility, should have turned his back upon himself and all his former professions in so startling a manner. A sadder instance of the corruption of naturally good instincts and views by unhappy associations we do net remember to hare met with in modern history.