The Chronicle. PUBLISHED DAILY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1911 SIR JAMES CARROLL'S. ADDRESS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 7 November 1911, Page 2

The Chronicle. PUBLISHED DAILY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1911 SIR JAMES CARROLL'S. ADDRESS.

The stirring speech delivered in Levin Inst right by Hit- James Carroll was of a quality that stirred to enthusiasm the large audience which assembled to ihear him. Jt was an address that cleared the air, .so to speak, and showed up in their true colours those politicians who use terms of opprobrium and personalities, instead of specific arguments. He showed a turn of ready -wit, and an aptness of retort, thfiit disconcerted his intcrjectors, and eventually aroused Iris audience to demonstrative approval of his crushing retorts to unreasonable interjectors. His masterly exposition of his native land policy must have been astonishing, as well as informative, to those who bad accepted as correct the airy allegations about "taihoa" which Opposition critics have bandied about. It was a clear-cut challenge that he issued ,when he asked the critics to indicate one individual block in the settlement of which no progress had been made. Who will accept it? As the Minister said last night, there are only three millions of acres of native land now being held by the natives, and there will be little or none unsettled in another year's time. Yet there wore nearly eleven million acres of native land when the Government took office in 1891. He might have added, also with truth, tliaffc by abolishing the harassing stamp tax. which was levied by all previous Governments whenever Native land transfers were dealt with, the present Government had assisted very materially in facilitating the settlement of Native lands. Facts like these—as our Scottish friends would phrase it—"are chiels that winna ding," and if those electors who possess open minds perpend tin's information they must resolve to bo misled no longer by sophistries concerning this matter. The Government, as Sir James Carroll told his hearers last night, "has been retained in oflico for twenty years, not by its own will, but by the will of a. majority of th epeople of this country ; and, conversely the Opposition has been kept in the. cold shades similarly.'' He did not believe, ho concluded, "that there were any symptoms yet that any great body of the public was favourable to a change." We are inclined to agree with him; not because we approve of all the Government has done; nor yet because we approve entirely of its policy. To be frank we must say we disagree with several of its planks. But we add, just as frankly, that the only other option—that of accepting such "a party as that of Mr Massey as an alternative to the present party—is unacceptable to a.ny man of Liberal tendencies.