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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4982, 12 March 1877, Page 2

It has been claimed as a merit on the part of Mr. Travers, that he spoke on Friday evening from a few rough notes, while Mr. Hutchison, when he addressed the electors, delivered a carefully prepared speech. It was meant to bo thus implied that one candidate is full of ripe political wisdom; but that the other is so raw a politician that he cannot talk until he has thought out what he desires to say. There are people who can be influenced by the babble of a man who is supposed to be so full of all knowledge, that any kind of stream can be tapped instantaneously, and will then flow on for ever. There are others who think that to call together 200 or 300 people to hear an exposition of political views, and then, without preparation, to utter just what comes readiest, is very much like insulting the listeners. Mr. Travers’s speech affords much evidence of the inconvenience resulting from political chatter ; or, viewed from another point, it evidences the convenience of talking what will bear several interpretations. Mr. Travers wanted to be very decided, or to appear to be very decided, on the question of Public Works, especially as bearing upon the speedy completion of railways in the Wellington District. But what he said proves how little he had reflected on what he was saying—how heedless he was as to the scope of the phrases that were gliding from him ; and it may also bo shown to prove that that which he said he condemned in connection with the scheme is the same thing that he claimed credit for having clone and intending to continue to do.

“The only objection,” says Mr. Teavees, “ I have ever taken to any part of the Public Works scheme initiated by Sir Julius Yogel was that to a certain extent it was used as a political engine. That’s all.” Clearly, Mr. Tkatehs does not mean that the use of the scheme as an engine was part of the scheme as initiated. He says that; but in order to get any meaning out of the quoted sentences, it must be assumed that the intention was to say that he objected to the employment of the scheme as a means of influencing votes. If this view be correct, it remains that Mr. Teavees did not at all object to the scheme as it ,T/as introduced in 1870: a point on which some folks will still doubt. But the scheme, says Mr. Teavees, was to a certain extent used as a political engine, and that was objectionable. What meaning Mr. Teavees attaches to his phrase, he does not state. It is fairly assumable that he intended to complain that, for the sake of getting votes, the Government of the day consented, or did not enough object, to the construction of “political railways,” as they were called. If there was involved anything in the nature of corruption, Mr. Teavees is right in complaining. But he was addressing Wellington men ; he protested fervently that he had worked, and would work, unceasingly to secure the quick completion of railways meant to connect this city with its great and valuable back country. But he forgot, or ignored the fact, that it was with respect to these very railways that the cry of political engineering was first raised: that members from the North and members from the South joined in condemning the Governmenl for consenting to include these railways in a certain schedule, and vied with each other in imputing corruption to members for the district, who were said to- have bought that consent with their votes! If the Wellington and Masterton was not the line first christened a “political railway,” it long held that name. That all this abuse was undeserved, we throughout asserted. Mr. Teavees should join in the assertion; for whatever demands our members made on the subject, however they pressed the Government, they were strictly, as ho says, within their duty in being “ clamorous,” because they wanted nothing more than the rights of the district. Was thdre any force in the complaints about “political” railways^or the use of the Public Works scheme as a “political engine ”? We have shown that the complaint most persistently urged in the House cannot be used by Mr, Teavees : his talk to the electors shows that he thinks the glory of duty done under most trying conditions should be attributed to the Wellington provincial members in the last Parliament—not the infamy of corruption which it was attempted by some contemporaries to fasten upon them. Men from the North and the South denied that there were resources in this province worth opening up, or that there could ever be settlement that would make the proposed railways pay interest on their cost. Wellington members were earnest, and all but unanimous, in asserting the contrary. Mr. Tbayees says they were right in so asserting. But is Mr. Teavees bold enough to say that though'the allegations as to political engineering were false as regards Wellington members, they were true as to all or any of the members from other provinces who were similarly, though less energetically, abused in those exciting days of 1871 and 1872? Is Mr. Teavees satisfied that Taranaki men (say) were corrupt; that they did not as thoroughly believe in the resources of their province, and the advantages of railways from a broad colonial point of view, as ho now professes to believe with respect to Wellington ? Will Mr. Teavees explain why he selected the “ political engine,” business to stand as the only thing about the Public Works scheme to which he ever objected; and also what he really means by the words he used 1 __