SKETCHES OF PARLIAMENTARY MEN.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1312, 12 October 1872, Page 3

SKETCHES OF PARLIAMENTARY MEN.

In his speech against the Stafford Ministry, Mr Yogel introduced, among its many serious statements, a few pleasantries, of which the following is a specimen: — Commencing with the Premier, he would not say that he was a mere shadow of himself, but he had long forgotten a ! good deal of what he had learnt. It was I possible that there was a good deal •of ; work in him yet, but he wanted another course of training. They were now in a position not very dissimilar from the position of a few years ago, when the friends of the hon gentlemen cried " Vote for the resolution, and do something for Stafford."' That was the position now ; members had to vote for the resolution, and do something for Stafford. Next he came to the Minister for Public Works, and was it not too absurd to ask the House to consider the member for the Taieri an improvement on the hon member for Clive, a gentleman who had made the most able and most exhaustive speech that had ever been made in that House. If the hon gentleman had been made Commissioner of Customs he would not have considered the mistake so great, because there was at the head of that department a gentleman of great ability and very efficient staff; but to place him in the capacity where some administrative capacity was required was too much for the good sense of the House. The thing ▼as altogether absurd. The PostmasterGeneral was a most amiable gentlemen, but with just as much mind as they from a boarding school. Independence of thought or action was a thing they would never look for or expect to find in the hon gentleman. He then came to a gentleman who was not present in the House, the hon. gentleman who represented the Government in the Upper House, and in respect to him it was well known, not-

withstanding the rumors that had been circulated, that the alternative was presented to him by the late Government either that he should resign or thfct every other member of the Cabinet should. He could only look upon his accession! to the Ministry as an insult to the common sense of the House. To express the characteristics of the Colonial Treasurer was best accomplished in the usa of six letters— Tyrant. The hon. gentleman's peculiarities had already been discovered by his constituency, and notwithstanding that the hon. gentleman had told them he had been returned by the votes of a great number of people, he never would* be returned again, even as Superintendent of Auckland. Between the hon. gentleman and the Colonial Secretary he could well imagine the scenes which must take place at the Cabinet meetings, and if a Select Committee were appointed to examine into the matter it would, he suspected, be discovered that they bad a hard time of it. The people of Auckland, in electing their Superintendent, reminded him of the short-sighted gentleman who once saw an extremely handsome young lady at an opera house. She had beautiful curls, pearly teeth, and a figure of most exquisite symmetry. The old gentleman managed to scrape an acquaintance with the lady, and, to make a loDg story short, he married her. On arriving at the wellordered house which had been prepared for the reception of the lady, the old gentleman found the beautiful curls hanging up, the pearly teeth were lying about, the exquisite symmetry was also Banging against the wall, and, after comparing notes, the gentleman discovered that he had married his grandmother. That was £ust the case with the people of Auckland. From a short-sighted view they had married their grandmother, and they were not likely to do it again. The Minister for Land must be considered by all Middle Island members a standing menace, for with the hon. gentleman's ideas on the land question he could not be considered otherwise. In addition to this, his seuse of justice was not such as the country approved of. It was not to be expected that he would administer the public works policy in any other way than the one which would afford the best pickings for his own Province. He would not refer further to the hon. gentleman than barely to allude to the suggestion made by the hon. member that the late Ministry should have been tried by a jury of matrons, and in making that allusion he would merely say that if the hon. gentleman were tried by a jury of matrons they would quite approve of him as one of themselves, if they were only sufficiently old.