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Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1017, 24 July 1879, Page 2

It extraordinary what some politicians will do U> ®rdi«r to gratify political animosity.. We re ad that Sir F. JD. Bell made nsc of the following expressions in the Legislative Council yesterday :—The natives were quite juatitied in resisting survey.*, consider-' tuij the promises xo&i* by Sir ' onald M'Lt'.iu and -Mr. Statturd. The I'lains will never be occupied v.-ithe»tit Uuoushed." Sir F. l>. i'ctt w acting in a maimer which v.-ill either restore confidence in the fraud Te Whiti, or, what would be jttsi a3 bad. create confidence in the other fraud. Sir F. D. Bell who. one might be pardoned for thinking, has rawed himself C|> as a Maori idol in the stead of the disgraced Maori prophet. When if. w asserted that there has Wen wkiw tampering with the by the cn.xi:.* of tfae present Uovtrntnttr.. the sccwswiioii ss ro .,t vith the stoutest dejii.it, .-.tthough tlx : 4 : ->«'s.;v>-r* know r.s well r* thc:r .•u.vksi.ts that the charge b bttt tooecrrect. New wo tiud a -lactaber of the Upper House that branch of Parliament which claims for itself the virttto-of .being the regulator of Governmeat and the prereativc of hasty legislation

—doing the very same thing in a manner and place which are calculated to give to his remarks some weight, at least in the native mind. "Wc find Sir Francis Dillon Bell adopting this means of making himself equal with his opponents, and we cannot help a feeling of lie p regret that ;;uch a man should have acted in a manner so damag'iig to his I character ior good sense and the interests of the Colony. If his professed views of the ; question were correct, it would have been | mo.-t impolitic to have expressed them thus | publicly. But they are not correct; nor do jwe think that he believes that they are. Sir K. I). Bell would not, of course, bo reckoned a black sheep amongst politicians even if he did not quite think that all he said yesterday was go.-ipel : ami no one would have blamed him for indulging hi 3 imagination for a few hours, if nothing more came of it than the boring of his auditors. lie says that there will be bloodshed. Well, it will evidently not be his fault if there is not. Xot that we believe that he would relish the occurrence of such a disaster in order to prove the utter brtdnca.* of the Grey Government and the wonderful aceurary of his predictions. lie ha*, perhajw, spoken under the intlueiicc of powerful antipathies thoughtlessly. No one else thinks that bloodshed is likely to result from tho present rupture. If it does arise, the present Government will be less responsible for it than arc those other Governments that have preceded it, and some of whose pledges w.ere made under the conviction that they would never be carried out by themselves, with the idea of maintaining peace during their terms of office —even at the expense of the country's progress—and the saddling of their successors with opprobrium that should havo begn theirs.