THE COLONIST. NELSON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1858.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 120, 14 December 1858, Page 2

THE COLONIST. NELSON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1858.

Before proceeding with our review of the proceedings at the late political dinner, we beg to state that when we penned our previous re" marks we had not seen the very elaborate report of the orations of the Chairman and the two distinguished guests, which we find in the Examiner of Wednesday last, upon the perusal of which, however, we are happy to find that we have not misrepresented anything which fell from the worthy Chairman, nor in substance omitted noticing tlie main points of his address. With these preliminary observations, we proceed to notice the address of the Hon. the Colonial Secretary. After expressing his gratification of the manner in which they had received him in his new character—which the confidence of those present had mainly contributed to enable him to assume—he observed that he " gladly embraced the opportunity thus afforded him of giving a short outline of the principles on which the public policy of himself and colleagues was based—the more so as those principles had been often misunderstood, and still more so knowingly and intentionally misrepresented." Whether justly so or not, his own conscience can best determine. At the same time, judging him by the prototype which has ever heen considered the beau ideal of British statesmen—namely, Mr. Pitt—it would be a vexed question to decide whether such conclusions were or were not correct, seeing that " that great statesman," —" the pilot that weathered the storm" after a long political career—declared it as his conviction that it was very difficult for a politician to be an honest man, and equally so for an honest man to be a politician. Having had some insight into the conduct of public men, and the fleeting character of popular applause, we recommend the hon. gentleman to fall back on the sound and consoling assurance that— One self-approving hour whole years outweighs, Of idle gazers and loud hurrahs; — and we have no doubt when he has had a little more experience in the tactics of political partizanship, he will attach less importance to party abuse than he appears to do at present. He then goes on to say—" Whether in office or out of office they would he found to agree on the principle of the unity of the colony, that they have no faith in a system of scattered republics; still less did they believe in the right of small communities to assume the position of the independent and sovereign States of America, and to talk of a federal compact. Such talk was, to borrow an illustration from that country — mere talk a la Barnum!" Had we space, we could borrow some illustration from the past history of that country which would lose nothing when placed beside the one above. But to proceed. We know it has been said, and said truly—notwithstanding the boasted wisdom of our ancestors—that the " wisdom of one generation is the folly of the next;" and had we a file of the Nelson Examiner of former days at .hand, we could, if we mistake not, refer our Colonial Secretary to a period in the history of this comparative handful of population, to whom certain would-be-thought politicians of that day talked " a la Barnum" by-the hour, in support of the very absurd ideas which he now so vehemently decries. He will tell us, perhaps, "tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis," —that is to say, the times are changed, and so have we. Indeed, upon reference to the speech of the worthy chairman (his godpapa), he has renounced his old ideas and confessed that on his first bursting into political life as Superintendent of one , x of, those little Principalities, he was so intoxicated with that exalted station, that he had done many things of which he had afterwards repented him, thereby acknowledging that part of the confessional wherein it is said, " We have done those things we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things we ought to have done." It must, however, he recollected that it was not until he found himself lifted up into the third political haven that we ever heard of his miraculous conversion. Nevertheless", giving him credit for the sincerity of bis conversion, we may be allowed to express our suspicions whether it is not owing to the example of his former conduct that much of the mistaken policy of the Superintendents of some of the other settlements may not trace their origin; and, therefore, the condemnatory remarks upon the faults (if they really be such) of others who may not have been so lucky as to recover from the intoxicating influence of their fancied importance were at all events uncalled for; for, in commenting upon each others failings, we should not lose sight of our common nature : and we would remind our readers that men who suddenly change their doctrinal creeds, whether in politics or re-

ligion, always display an outrageous zeal for the new.child of their adoption, and are proportionably severe upon those who adhere to the one they have forsaken, which is very forcibly illustrated in a passage in the reminiscences. of Jack Ketch, wherein he says : "Before succeeding to his father's office I had ofteu read in the newspapers the many arguments against taking away the life of man, all of which I then fully coincided with. But I vow ivhVcted'that'-I was an interested person, and beg-m lo look at the question ia another point of view, and like all persons when they get into place, soon found substantial reasons for changing my previous opinions. Like these men, too, I bounded from one extreme to the other, and very soon after being in office persuaded myself that there was not half hanging enough. '' Neither is the difference between the office of Jack Ketch and a prime minister so great as at first sight would appear. The first, it is true, disposes of men individually, whereas the latter sends thousands to death and glory by the waive of his hand. The one enforcing the decree of justice—the other the fiat of thwarted ambiiipn or offended despotism. After this digression let us see what is the line of policy by which he purposes to work out the resuscitation of his sick patient—Qtneral Government. He tells us amongst the first questions which had occupied the attention of the Government was the manner in which the Law was to be maintained and administered. It was their earnest wish to assimilate the administration of Justice to that of Great Britain, and thus preserve (Which, Law or Justice?) among its future inhabitants that respect for the Law which had become an hereditary sentiment of the Anglo-Saxon race. Now we sincerely hope that the honorable gentleman and his colleagues will pause before they plunge these islands into the whirlpool of the noxious vapours of the English system of jurisprudence, where ninety-nine out of every hundred of the unfortunate suitors who are drawn within its vortex are irrecoverably paralysed, and whence it is very rare that the fortunate exception escapes with a rag to his back. And how do they propose to accomplish their ends ? Why, as has been before observed, by jumping from one extreme to the other; and, as their worthy godpapa very humorously observed, as regards the administration of law, we were all at once to be emancipated from a frightful derth into a perfect glut of wigs, slyly remarking that he presumed the nximher of the new judges had been calculated with a view to the future wants. And there he stopped. Had we space, we could hazard a guess as to the nature of those wauts, and the quarter from whence they would arise; but more of this anon. We next come to the subject of postal steam service; and here we may observe, "It never rains but it pours," for instead of little Miss Tasmanian Maid, we have no less than twelve leviathan steamers, with two aristocratic Lords at their head. Here, however, we must do'the hon: gentleman thejustice to observe, that even his sanguine temperament would not allow him to accept the cheering noise and smoke which his announcement called forih ; for he observed, this was perhaps running into the opposite extreme, as compared with their late destitution, involving as it would do, the expenditure of nearly one-fourth part of the present general revenue of the colony, and might eventually cause the land fund "to evaporate in smoke ;" and he might have added, go nigh to blow the handful of population of Nelson into Blind Bay, which being merely a bank of deposit, we presume the hon. Colonial Treasurer would decline the treasurership of. We next come to the subject of the Inland Postage Regulations, which, we are told, will now be conducted as it ought to be, the fact being, that it has been found that the handful of the population of Nelson was unable to supply any one with sufficient brains to enable him to discharge the duties of clerk to either the Post Office or the Custom House, so that the hon. gentleman was obliged to have recourse to the intelligence of Taranaki to fill the place of one in the Customs, and to Auckland-for that in the Post Office. After this, who will accuse the hon. gentleman of forgetting his friends at Nelson? Well, then, it appears that for the present the disposal of the Waste Lands, subject to the contingency above referred to, is to remain, during pleasure, as, they were. As regards the gold-fields, they having passed into the hands of the General Government, we shall only congratulate the important district of Massacre Bay on their fortunate promotion. The hon. gentleman then sums up his very interesting harrangue with, '•' so much for the charges of undue interference, which has been absurdly enough raised in some quarters, and which rested upon about as good a foundation as the charge that had been hazarded to the effect that he desired to grasp all power to himself." This reminds us of the reply of Lubin Lob, in the play, when he offered the guard of the coach sixpence between himself and the coachman, who re- ! turned it to him, saying "he should not like to rob him," upon which Lubin replies, " yes, you would if you could." How far the simile will hold good, nous verrons. Here our 'space cornpells us to defer our notice of the strange gentleman till our next.

turday night to undergo a sentence of three months ' imprisonment. with hard. labor, inflicted by- -the Collingwood magistrate for. stealing, a red shirt from the store of Mr. R. P. Outridge. A singular circumstance arose from this. On searching tho prisoner at the Collingwood lock-up, a bill for refreshments was found upon him, receipted in the name of F. Berry, a publican there, some of the items of which shewed that grog had been supplied to prisoner. Information was laid against Mr. Berry for supplying grog to a native, and.the prisoner sworn as a witness, arid he having proved the spirits were supplied to him, the defendant was fined £10 and costs. This should operate as a • caution. It seems hard that a man who is "so commercially exact in his accounts should suffer therefrom, but it should also remind him that in doing so he has run counter to a strict but necessary ordinance. The Dun Mountain.—A meeting of the Shareholders is advertised for Friday next, the 17th" instant, at 7 p.m. The local committee of management are also expected to attend. We hope something will be elicited that will do away with the present adverse appearances, and put the credit of the mine upon a better footing than it has lately enjoyed.