The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 1878.

Kumara Times, Issue 408, 16 January 1878, Page 2

The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 1878.

The contest between the Lower and Upper Houses in Victoria, or, to speak more cornptly, between the Berry communists and the squatters, has reached a stage beyond which it cannot go without involving the Colony in revolution—a bloodless one, it is to be hoped, but none the less a revolution. As most of our readers are doubtless aware, provision for payment of members was, contrary to the expressed wish of the Legislative Council, made in the Appropriation Bill; and as the Council cannot alter nor amend such a measure, it had no alternative but to reject it altogether. Then came the tug of war: neither side would give in, the Governor will not interfere, and the result is that something very like anarchy reigns from the Murray to the sea. In a vehement harangue at Beechworth, in December last, Mr Berry intimated that the railways would cease to run, that the mails would be stopped, and the public creditor would be left unpaid. Society, he said, would be dissolved until the obstacle was swept away. At first it Avas thought that this was all part and parcel of the rhodomontade of which the member for Geelong West is a master ; but subsequent events have proved that the proverbial begger having got on horseback is fast riding to the devil. And all sensible men in Victoria, would wish him a rapid journey, were it not that he is taking the colony with him. When things have arrived at such a pass that prayers are publicly offered in the various Churches for the wiveß and children of hundreds of civil servants, cruelly discharged in order that the ends of a few scheming, selfish men may be attained, one may well ask "What next f and anxiously await the answer. There-is just this one consolation in the matter, that the 'more the country is at the moment made to suffer, the more improbable does it become that the' instigators of the mischief will ever be permitted to attain Political Power again. Perhaps Mr Graham Berry and his seedy followers know this, and are determined to rule with an iron hand while they may.