MR. MONTGOMERY AT AKAROA.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2238, 4 June 1881, Page 3

MR. MONTGOMERY AT AKAROA.

Mr. Montgomery was very mild at Akaroa on Monday. He came in like a lion two years ago, hut he seems inclined to go out like a lamb. Two years more of the cold shades of the hack benches of the Opposition have had a sobering and saddening effect on him, and there really are some hopes now of his realising, what everybody else realised long ago, that he is not of the smallest importance either to his party or to the country. His speech was very long and very thin, and there is a flavor of weak water-gruel about it that is rather exasperating to the mentally healthy or convalescent. It contains nothing new, which is not much wonder. Mr. Montgomery never had anything original in him, while his scanty stock of acquired knowledge of political subjects has done duty so often that it is very difficult for him even to keep up appearances with it now. It was rather smart for him, though, to read long rigmaroles from Rathheno (Query— Who is Rathhone ?) and “ a Philadelphia report ” on higher education. It had a smack of superior respectability about it that was very imposing, and as not a single soul present could by any possibility contradict er criticise Rathhone or the Philadelphia reporter, it was much safer ground than any within the range of Now Zealand politics. Mr. Montgomery quotes very fairly, when he has the extracts copied out beforehand. Mr, Ballance taught him that useful accomplishment, and on the whole he does credit to his preceptor. Then there was nothing particularly true in this Akaroa oration. Anybody who reads it with any care, and then compares it with tho actual history of the events it professes to narrate, will find it wanting in accuracy at every stage. Yet Mr. Montgomery would probably like to he veracious if he could. Ho does not make intentional mis-statements, hut does so through feebleness of character and muddlement of ideas, combined with an egotism and self-sufficiency of which every one is thoroughly tired. But whether new and true or stale and shuffling one thing is certain—it does not signify in the least. We may make our mind easy that no living creature will he influenced by tho speech in the remotest degree. It must have been a dreary deliverance indeed, unrelieved by anything save the hope of a coming local allusion—“Or where, pet chance, gome slumberer’s nose Proclaimed the depth of hia repose.” Had we thought the speech of any importance we should have noticed it before. As it is, we only do not leave it altogether unnoticed because Mr Montgomery is an old friend of ours, whose feelings we should he loth to wound by too cutting neglect. We know how he loves to he made a little fuss about, and we like to indulge his whim occasionally. By the bye, there is one matter in Mr. Montgomery’s speech that is amusing, if not otherwise interesting. We moan his labored repudiation of Sir George Grey as leader of the Opposition. Here is the passage we refer to —“ Sir George Grey is no more the mouthpiece of the Opposition than Major Atkinson was the Government when advocating limited religions instruction in schools. Sir George Grey is an able speaker, hut not leader of the Opposition. I have not been a follower of Sir George Grey since he resigned the leadership of the Opposition, and as far as I can see, it is not likely I shall ho.” We wish some elector with an enquiring mind had asked Mr. Montgomery kindly to state who is leader of the Opposition, if Sir George Grey is not. Last year about this time Mr. Montgomery figured prominently at Sir George Grey’s meeting in Christchurch, on the platform by the great man’s side. This year, we fancy, he will take good care to he out of the way.— Press,