THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1881. BRYCE VERSUS SHEEHAN.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2150, 15 January 1881, Page 2

THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1881. BRYCE VERSUS SHEEHAN.

The “ Lyttelton Times,” in its retrospect of last year, was good enough to give the world some very peculiar ideas on the value of the present Ministry, both with respect to its Native and general policy. As to the latter we shall make no remarks, but with regard to the former, our contemporary has been so extremely erratic, that it will be well not entirely to pass its lucubrations over in silence. Until just lately the “ Lyttelton Times ” has been absolutely candid respecting the doings on the West Coast of the North Island. It was fain to confess that a great work was being done, and was being done well. This was an extraordinary admission in a Greyite journal, but a spirit of absolute fair play seemed, for a change, to have seized upon our contemporary. But not for long. The temptation at the end of the year for a one-sided retrospect was too strong for it, and again was its writing infused with the old venom. Indeed, when Mr. Bryce resigned, the Gloucester street organ, quite forgetful of the line it had taken up not long before, declared him to be the worst Native Minister, except Dr. Pollen, that had ever filled the office. Our contemporary appears to have quite fallen back into the Sheehan-worship which once characterized it. The “Lyttleton Times ”s Mr Sheehan is quite the old fetish again. He has such knowledge of the Native character —that is the Alpha and Omega of the creed. Nobody for an instant doubts that, but a number of individuals have a wonderful knowledge of human nature, but would still make shockingly bad administrators. A Bow street detective knows perhaps as much of the black and white sides of the human character as most men. But he would be little likely to be a successful Prime Minister. Mr. Sheehan is well up in the black and white sides of the Maori character, —perhaps too well—but the idea of comparing him with Mr. Bryce is simple preposterous. Mr. Bryce’s worst enemies cannot but allow that his views were ■wide, and his action energetic, Mr. Sheehan’s policy, if it ever existed, was so terribly tori nous, that it never came to the front. He was a sort of backstairs Minister, who was not respected by the Natives, and not even feared, except in so far as he happened to hold the office that gave him his power.