The Telephone. WITH WHICH IS INCORTORATED THE POVERTY BAY STANDARD. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, SATURDAY, AUGUST 16.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 211, 16 August 1884, Page 2

The Telephone. WITH WHICH IS INCORTORATED THE POVERTY BAY STANDARD. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, SATURDAY, AUGUST 16.

After wading through a host of exchanges, we fail to find a single section of the press which gives anything but a shadowy show of praise or which seems to have any more than the most forlorn hope that the Vogel Ministry is at present constituted will hold together sufficiently long to do any business or assist the country out of its depression. The New Zealand Herald says:— Mr. Stout is a mere debater, with a lot of revolutionary, political, and social fads in his head, quite sufficient to incapacitate him from being a practical legislator. To overcome some personal objections, and to meet certain local susceptibilities, Mr. Stout has been made Premier, but it will surprise nobody if the same fate overtakes him which overtook Mr. Waterhouse. But let us look at the rest of the team. Mr. Richardson had the credit of being a good Minister of Public Works. He obtained this reputation easily, for while he was in office he had as much money as he liked to spend. As for Mr. Montgomery, who has been thrust upon Sir Julius Vogel by Mr. Macandrew, this is the first time he has ever been in office, and he will make a very poor show as a Minister. The next on the list is Mr. Macandrew—who is constantly groaning over the way in which the South, and especially Otago, has been plundered by the greedy and selfish North. Mr. Macandrew goes far beyond even Sir Julius

Vogel in his enthusiasm for getting into debt, and would create 'health with a printing press and a bale’ of paper. Then we come to Mr, Ballance and Sir G. S. Whitmore. Considered in relation to its personnel, the new Ministry is miserably weak and incongruous. The Daily Times of Tuesday says:—lf Sir Julius Vogel’s party agree to follow Mr, Stout, and an Administration is formed on the lines mentioned yesterday, we shall be prepared to give it every opportunity of proving itself better than our expectations of it are. The Wellington press is unanimous in condemnation. Tuesday's Post says:—“ A Ministry presided over by Sir Julius Vogel, with Mr. Stout as his lieutenant, must be a fairly strong one, even though the remainder of its component parts be altogether satisfactory ; but a Ministry in which Mr. Stout should hold the superior official position would, we think, be very unlikely to last long, or do much good, however the other seats might be filled. As to the names of the other Ministers proposed in the present case, we do not feel by any means satisfied with them. Touching the situation the Auckland Telephone says : —Having ranted from the Liberal programme by which it claimed public support, and gone over to the camp of the enemy, it has played the game of a marplot in politics, and lent all the weight of its influence to emasculate the Auckland party in the House of Representatives. Set by the nose by a selfish oligarchy, and prostituting its own judgment at the shrine of advertising patronage and bank chaperonage, it has abandoned definite principles, and drifted blindfold and muzzled into a policy of intrigue and entanglement. The Napier Telegraph writes :—The Ministry that Sir Julius Vogel has named is one that is not likely to receive the confidence of the North Island. It is almost wholly composed of the invertebrate off-shoots of the Grey party, and it has not the merit of having Sir George Grey to give it substance. The country has been demanding the reform of public administration and economy ; it demanded a wise and prudent Government capable of lifting the Colony out of its difficulties. Instead of this we are offered a fireworks policy, tempered by the Freethought of Mr. Stout, and the Separation views of Mr. Montgomery. It is decidedly not good enough. These extracts will give a very fair idea of what public opinion on the new Government really is. It is perhaps hardly fair to condemn them unheard, but knowledge of their past carreer and acts tends to the belief that if the life of the present administration is merry, it will also be exceedingly short. In Thursday’s -V. Z. Herald we find that that nothing can show more clearly the straits to which Sir Julius Vogel felt himself reduced than his consenting to undertake the responsibilities of government with a Cabinet whose composition actually challenges the distrust of the country and of the House. The principle on which its construction is based is not only politically vicious, but is directly at variance with that which at one time he announced as the only one on which a Ministry for this colony should be selected. When, on the defeat of the Stafford Administration in 1872, he was called upon to undertake the construction of a Cabinet, he made use of the following remarkable words : —“ We propose that the Cabinet shall consist of eight Ministers holding portfolios, and that the Government departments shall be re-organised, so that they shall be divided amongst those Ministers. We propose that there shall be an equal number of Ministers for each Island, so that there shall be no reason for jealousy on the part of honorable members on account of one Island being more represented than another. Of course, I cannot give an absolute pledge that such shall be the construction of the Cabinet, but I desire honorable members to understand that we shall endeavor to work up to that result.” We must do Sir Julius the justice of saying that, on that occasion, he not only endeavored to work up to the result referred to, but also realised it to the letter. But what a change has come over the spirit of his dream since then I The impartial principle he then enunciated as the one which ought to regulate the construction of a Cabinet appears now to have been utterly forgotten. At all events it is impossible to conceive of a more complete contrast than that which, in view of that principle, exists between the Ministry he then formed and the one he has now chosen. Then his Cabinet did consist of four members for the North Island and four for the South ; now the one proposed by him includes five members from the South Island and only one from the North, with the possibility of a second. No one can for a moment look on this picture and on that without being struck with the immense distance to which men may remove themselves from the theories they profess, or being forced to inquire whether it be the theories or the men that are at fault. These extracts are taken indiscriminately, and no attention has been paid to selecting from papers of any particular section. They may therefore be looked upon as a true reflex of public opinion.