The Telephone. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, THURSDAY, JUNE 19.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 161, 19 June 1884, Page 2

The Telephone. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, THURSDAY, JUNE 19.

When Parliament goes to the country, which cannot now be more than a week or two, it will be interesting to know what particular ticket candidates are likely to go for. In Poverty Bay we have what is called the “ Liberal Party ” and the “ Conservative Party ”; but we do not think any one in ten of the electors has any definite idea as to what is understood by the cry. It was only yesterday a very warm politician, who hails for the Liberal Party, was asked what was meant by the term, when he turned upon the questioner with a look of astonishment at his lamentable ignorance. “Well,” said the enquirer, J‘ I know that it is all very sad and humiliating to be so benighted upon such a simple expression; but still I should like to know your definition. What it is that is meant by the Liberal Party ? “ Sir,” was the reply— The Liberal Party is—is, well, you know the Liberal Party is—why, hang it all, the Liberal Party is the Liberal Party, and that is all about it. What more can a man want to know ? The Liberal Party is the Liberal Party and I go for them, neck or nothing. There is a red - hot, go -a - head politician—a worthy boniface, living in our midst, who has no such hazy views as to what is meant. “ The Liberal party, sir. What is it, you say ? Why the Liberal party is Sir George Grey, and no one else. He is the Liberal party all in one. Any one who don’t go with him is not the Liberal party.” We confess the same haze is generally prevalent as to what is to be understood by the term “ Conservative party.” We presume that candidates, when they come before their constituents, will have to state what measures they propose to go for, without any respect to which party such measures may belong. The substitution of a land tax in the place of a property tax, may come, we imagine, alike from Conservative or Liberal; and so also may it be the case when remedies are proposed for easing the financial pressure upon the country. The truth is there was no special policy advocated in the House last session. Every member was for a road, or a bridge, or a railway, or something in land or money for his own special district, regardless of what might be required, however urgent, by districts outside his own. In the good old days when we had giants in Parliament, the Fitzgeralds, the Fitzherberts, the Dometts, and others of the like stamp and mould, New Zealand was legislated for as a whole. It was then considered that Government should be general and not local. That what benefitted one section of the colonists should benefit the whole. Now the two islands, so to speak, are legislated for in sections. Every man for his own constituency and the devil take the hindmost. We are quite in accord with a Dunedin contemporary, who tells his readers that the political field of New Zealand at present appears to be in rather a state of confusion. No one seems to have much notion of how parties are constituted, or how leaders are to be chosen or followed. We have Major Atkinson on one side—and we have some suspicion, moreover, that he is going to stay there and weather the storm, after all, for he is hardly the man to let slip the advantages offered him by the nature of the situation. On another side, or two other sides, we have Sir George Grey and Mr. Montgomery—and, somewhere else, stands Sir Julius Vogel. We have, in short, a superabundance of leaders; but the question is which leader is to have the majority of followers.