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Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1276, 10 May 1880, Page 2

The l?ew Zealand Herald says of Mr. Speight, in an article commenting upon his late address to his constituents ; " He does not hesitate to charge an experienced public man like Major Atkinson with exaggerating the bad condition of the finances, and quotes Mr. Ballance as his authority. Why, despite his worst anticipations, the Treasurer finds himself in difficulties. If there is one thing which is truer than another it is that the late Administration deserved to be impeached for its scandalous mismanagement of the Treasury." Major Atkinson experienced ! "Well, perhaps he may be. He certainly knows what it is to bungle a budget and to pay the penalty. The " Treasurer finds himself in difficulties" does he, and a hot journalistic partisan acknowledges it, "Would it be too much to ask it to inform us when the " Treasurer" ever found himself otherwise. But the Herald's logic is by no means sublime. It; says that the Grey Administration should be impeached for financial mismanagement. Supposing, for the sake of argument, we admit this, what should be done to Major Atkinson for committing the same sin. We suppose that it is just as unpardonable to make an error of several hundreds of thousands of pounds in an .e§timq,te of the Colonial revenue as it is to be guilty of "■scandalous mismanagement." What would be done to a mariner who snatched the wheel from a helmsman on the plea that he was steering towards shoals, but who settled any doubts that there might have been on that score by landing apiongst the very dangers he professed to dread ? This is what Major Atkinson did, and that according to his for once unskilful champion—the Herald—which, however prejudiced may be its political vision, would surely not be guilty of the iujustice of making flesh of one and fish of another. The late administration is not the only one that should be impeached.