THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1872.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1142, 26 March 1872, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1872.

There are two classes of public speakers whose utterances deserve to be fully and faithfully reported by the Press. One of these is the speaker the originality of whose thoughts or the eminence of whose position makes his speeches of peculiar interest to the public. The other is the speaker who by sheer impudence on his own part, or by the countenance he receives from ignorant or indiscreet friends, ventures to come before the public, and to outrage sense, propriety, or grammar, or all three combined. The mediocre speaker, usually by his very modesty, deserves to be gently dealt with by the professional reporter, and to have his speeches as fairly represented as the " space" of the news-sheet or other circumstances may permit. No reason, we imagine, need be given for the full reporting of the speaker of originality or enineace. The reasors. will suggest themselves to anyone. But it may not be so easy for some to discover why newspaper columns should be occupied by the utterances of an arrant twaddler or of a speechifier who, in his public appearances, aims at the sublime ana achieves oaly the ridiculous. The excuse is simply that such men have in too many instances, by the leniency of the Press, and by the expenditure of much " midnight oil " on thepart of its representatives, enjoyed a fictitious reputation, and, by the public being misled as to their real merits, have often been pushed forward into positions of honor and power. Whenever a person of this kind is discovered, it should be the aim of the Press, in the interests of the puhlic, to do its duty faithfully as a recorder of passing events — to give the devil bia due. The process may not be a pleasing one, or characterised by much compassion. There is nothing more cruw than to . pillory a man on one

of his own speeches. The severest sarcasm fails often to compare with it. But the class so pilloried deserve no compassion, and satire or sarcasm is < lost upon them. One of the most satis- 1 factory and successful instances of this faithful discharge of a disagreeable duty was recently afforded by the Nelson Colonist, and we need not say that it is not in Nelson alone that such opportunities occur. The speaker was the member for the suburbs of the City, Mr HSlph Richardson-— a gentleman who, by the suffrages of the suburban residents, enjoys the honor of sitting and voting in the House of Assembly, and, while in that situation, looking, no doubt, " wondrous wise." He had the temerity to address his constituents the other night ; and the Colonist had the tamerity and the wisdom to report the Bpeech as the speech was made. Tho result was the production, for the information and entertainment of the public, of two columns of print containing passages which none of Mark Twain's caricatures could excel. Delivered apparently in Dundreary style, and exhibiting the power of reasoning which that distinguished gentleman is presumed to have possessed, the speech degenerates sometimes into that amiable drivel which Mrs Sairey Gamp was best capable of expressing when her head was by the mantel-shelf, and there was on the mantel-shelf that cordial of which she partook only when she was " so dispoged. " •To form any correct conception of the sort of men which "suburban" constituencies occasionally return to Parliament, the speech must be read as a whole, but we shall make a few simple extracts showing its general character, and the class of -speaker who, we think, should at all times be fully and MMully reported. "Of course," as Mr Richardson himself would say, he was an Oppositionist, and it is in these terms in which he explains why he was an Oppositionist, or why he went to the House, or both, or neither — it is hard to say which of the four things he means : — I will first explain the reason why I went to the House— that is to.say, after a few days —in fact, from the first day— and firmly adhered to the opposite side of the House. I did so because of the state of the revenue and expenditure, which required a great amount of care. It was absolutely necessary to make the one meet the other, and it required a very great deal of care and a very great deal of circumspection. Prom this prominent word Mr Richardson launched himself and his hearers — they numbered seventeen — into a much troubled sea of figures— figures which, as the Colonist remarks, it is perfectly impossible to add, substract, or divide. How he flounders through these figures will be pretty plain when it is mentioned that in one sentence he says " Our liabilities in June were £81,000 or £810,000/' and in another, " Of course, against this is to be put the revenue of £180,000, or £810,000, or thereabouts." Figures, however, are not Mr Richardson's forte. Extracting himself from the mental mazo in which he felt himself with numerals, he animadverts upon the once contemplated Board of Works, beginning in the Dundreary style, and ending with " bage insinivations" which, in conception and diction, "HTB — w ux vlij — *r«.lj — -C-.U, o ■ro.mvUiy^Sairoy Gamp : — There was mother little scheme of the Board of Works, in which there were to be a number of Inspectors— was it Inspectors? Yes, I think it was Inspectors ; and there were also to be Sub-Inspectors, some eight or ten more, with about £800 a year each ; and the holding of seats in the House was to be no disqualification for these offices. Of course, I should be the last person to suppose any gentlcmau would be influenced by that sort of thing, you know, and these offices- 1 would not say that at all. Of course, as the session came to an end, the Board of Works was dropped by the Government. I don't say these Board of Works was dropped by the Government, I don't say these Board of Works Inspectorships influenced any one. I have explained it to you, of course, and I leave you to draw your own conclusions. From Gampism he drifts again into Dundrearyism, assisted by his friend, Mr Arthur Collins, in the character of " Brother Tham :"- Mr Bichardson : The Payment to Provinces Bill gives payments to Road Boards, and there are classes one, two, and three. Class one gets an equal share of the money that is raised, 'number two gets a double sum. Mr A. Collins : Number two gets twice as much as number onr£ Mr Richardson : Yes, that's it, gets twice as much as number one ; and number three gets twice as number two. Mr Collins : Number three gets four times as much as number one. Mr Richardson : Yes, number three gets four times as much as number one. It is certainly very puzzling and very hard to understand, but when you do understand it it is all right. Having delivered himself, a to Dundreary, of this indubitable deduction, Mr Richardson refers to two other subjects, thus : — Mr Richardson. : There was also a Contractors' Debts Act, which was for the benefit of men that were working for contractors to get their wages. Men working contracts for people who had taken them from the first contractors, could sue the original contractor by applying to the Resident Magistrate's Court, if the other ~ what's his name ? A Voice : Minister of Pnblic Works. Mr Richardson : No ; not the Minister for Public Works. A Voice : It's sub-contractors he means, if they don't pay. Mr Richardson : Yes, that|s it. If the sub-contractors do not pay, the workmen can get their wages from the principal contractor before he pays anything to the subcontractor, which I think is a very good thing. (Hear,. hear.) Ido not think there is any other subject. Mr Collins : Immigration. Mr Richardson : Oh, yes, to be sure, immigration. Well, if we import the proper set of men quickly, and settle them at once on proper country, it would be a good thing, if properly done ; but as for the Scandinavians who are brought to settle on the West Coast of Otago, that is a different matter. However, I do not express any opinion on the subject ; I leave all these things to you, and allow you to draw your own conclusions. . Mr Flowers : Are you in favor of Scandinavian immigration ? Mr Richardson : No ; that is to say, I do not thinkgßO. I. believe the Scandinavians make very capital settlers, very good settlers, and very excellent settlers ; but there are a great many of our own countrymen who are poor and anxious to get out and cannot come out bi' themselves, and I think we ought to help them and stick to our own blood. (Hear, hear.) Subsequently Mr Richardson "sat down amidst cheers" from his seventeen listeners, though we auspeqt there wa

more jeering than cheering on the part of the intelligent minority of the said seventeen. Among this minority Mr Arthur Collins was not, for he " agreed with every word" of the speech, the occult prescience which enabled him to pluvnb the depths and scale the giddy heights of its surprising rhetoric being only discoverable, as the Colonist remarks, on Dr Hahneman's principle of similitude. Of other parts of the same memorable speech of a member of the Assembly of New Zealand, the Colonist remarks: — "Passing from figures, and also passing the mass of ' other things' alluded to by that gentleman, things far transcending our comprehension, we come to two direct statements in the speech, which in themselves are diametrically opposed to each other. Mr Richardson, in reply to one question, said he voted for the tax on cereals not as a protectionist, but for purposes of revenue, ' because the principle of the Opposition was that if the revenue did not meet the expendihire, we must raise more revenue' In reply to another question, put twe minutes later, he said he voted against tho stamp duty 'on the ground that we would cmisentto no further taxation being laid on the country.' It is as impossible to reconcile these two statements as it is to comprehend the other parts of the speech, of which, in the experience of speakers, high and low, during a quarter of a century, we have read or listened to ho parallel."