MR. DOMETT ON THE CONDUCT OF THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT TOWARDS NEW ZEALAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 189, 12 August 1870, Page 2

MR. DOMETT ON THE CONDUCT OF THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT TOWARDS NEW ZEALAND.

'' The conduct of the Imperial Government" is the designation given to two lengthy and exceedingly interesting debates which have recently taken place in the Legislative Council and the House of Representatives, resulting in the former of these two bodies in a series of the most tame and cringing resolutions that could possibly have emanated from the legislat ure of a colony so maligned and ill treated as New Zealand has been by the Home authorities. Mr. Domett's remarks on the ■ milk-and-water decision at which (he Council ha 3 arrived are so true, so much to the point, and yet so stinging and so severe, that we feel sure they will be read with interest by the Nelson public to whom their author is so well known that they will be well able to appreciate them, and to imagine for themselves the infinite gusto with which they wer6 most undoubtedly delivered. They are as follows : — "If my honorable friend the mover had only put into the resolutions a little of the fire and energy which animated his speech, it would have been better; but to that speech the resolutions form a most , lame and impotent conclusion. Ido not understand how the honorable member, who can roar so lion-like in his speech, can be content in his resolutions to ' roar us as gently as any sucking dove.' Many honorable members have attacked the Minister of Justice for assuming that England desired to get rid of us ; but no one has disproved it, and the longer we debate the question, the more clearly it comes out that the English Ministers have plainly told us to go about our business as fast as we can. As far as I havo heard, not a single person has disseuted from the opinion that Lord Grauville's famous or infamous despatch was most insulting to the Colouy. Aud what is the answer we give ? Sir, we are kicked, and how do we retaliate ? My honorable friends will recollect Burkes description of the English country geutleman who made a trip to Turkey, how, as he strutted along the streets of Constantinople in his independent jaunty style, 'a malignant aud a disturbed Turk,' indignaut at the swaggering coolness of the infidel, crossed over the street and gave him three lusty kicks on his seat of honor. The Englishman at first thought of kuocking him down aud retaliating in kind ; but considering iv what a country he was, he changed his mind, made his adversary the most polite bow he had at command, begged him to accept his assurance of high consideration, aud resolved to pocket the affront and 'assuage his bruised dignity with half-a-yard square of balmy diplomatic diachylon.' My honorable friend asks us to take very much the same course in his half-inch square of balmy resolutions, which seem written in whey and water, when vitriol would hardly have been bitinc enough to retort the insults of Lord Granville and our calumniators. I dissent from the resolutions, then, as being tame iv the extreme, but I shall content myself with voting against them. There is one thing which I wish the honorable member had left out, and that is the reference to the miserable guarantee of the Home G-overument to the million loan. I think that proposal is putting a climax to the indignity which we have received. Honorable members cheer me loudly for what I am saying, and they do so whenever anything of the kind is advanced, but as soon as it is put on paper they refuse to have anything to do with it. I suppose the guarantee is meant as a sop and a conciliatory measure, and intended to be misconstrued by us as an indication of returning feelings of regard for us. I consider Lord Granville aud Mr. Gladstone, in agreeing to that guarantee, have acted on the old adage that ' Hungry dogs eat dirty pudding.' They treat us as dogs, kick us out of their parlor, and when we exhibit a disposition to bark they quiet us with the little 'dirty pudding" of their contemptible guarantee. We threw away, two or three years ago, two or three hundred thousand pounds on a point of honor, iv which we were right, aud now we give upourhnoor to save twenty."

The following important telegram was received by us ( Wanganul Chronicle) this week from Martou : — " Court day — no magistrates — doctor — Militia — malicious fit." Bishop Patterson, who was obliged to visit Auckland a few months ago on account of the state of his health, has, we understand, sufficiently recovered to be able to return to his duties at Norfolk Island. ArrLES. — The Tar ana Jd News is endeavouring to persuade the settlers to undertake the growth of apples there in order that the Province may be supplied with that useful fruit without importing from Nelson. Captain Tilley, of the Mission schooner Southern Cross, deems it his duty to administer the followiug caution to masters of vessels trading to the islands of the New Hebrides : — "ln consequence of the information we have lately received respecting the mode in which some of the natives of the South Sea Islands have been taken off by trading vessels, I deem it my duty, through the medium of your paper, to caution the masters of vessels about anchoring at any of the islands of the Banks' Group or the New Hebrides to which they may be in the habit of resorting 1 , as a very hostile spirit has been roused in many of tie islands." The Rev. William Taylor. — The Melbourne Dalit/ Telegraph contains the following notice — The Rev. William Taylor, of American, Africau, and Australian renown, is intruding upon a peculiar, special, and particular field of our own. He is critcising the ladies of Victoria, over whose dress, morals and manners it has been our pleasing privilege to exercise an exclusive guardianship. Addressing a Beechworth audience the other day, the Rev. gentleman ventured to remark that he had never seen an American woman intoxicated — (hereby broadly inferring that his eyes had beheld many Victorian females in a condition of inebriety. Regarding the women of America we know nothing. Sir Henry Barkly once made the observation at a festal occasion on the Melbourne cricket ground, that he had never seen a drunken cricketer ; but the popular explanation referred to a lack of discernment on the part of His Excellency, rather than to any universal prevalence of sobriety amoug the "wieldersof the willow. Following an illustrious example, Mr. Taylor may Lave placed his bliud eye to the glass with which he viewed American society. What we are concerned to find is that his vision is now particular keen, and that he is vigilantly watching the Victorian female, taking note, like another Hamlet, how nature having given her one face she makes unto Lerself another ; making record on his tablets — to be printed hereafter — of her jigs, her ambles, her lisps, and her ■wantonness. We doubt not he has his eye upon the ugly facts upon which we have animadverted before. If he actually publishes, he will assuredly tell a wondering world how he did see a great many women intoxicated in Victoria, how here no waiting-room is complete without its slide door to the bar, how no theatre is popular without a ladies refreshment-room, and how no physician can hope to be fashionable unless the first article of his creed be that the systems of all women are low, and to be kept up only and solely by alcoholic stimulants. We are actuated in this reference by no mean jealousy towards Mr. Taylor. We hope he will associate himself with us in the labor of reforming the sex, rather than proceed to trumpet abroad the fame of their misdeeds. Our hands wax heavy in the prolonged strife. We would be glad to perceive in the revivalist preacher an Aaron to hold them up. For remainder of News see Fourth page.