POLITICS AND PRECEDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 42, 15 March 1909, Page 4

POLITICS AND PRECEDENCE.

ANOTHER VIEW OP IT. Under the heading of up a Dust," the Wellington Post refers to the "polities and precedence" hubbub as follows:—"It is quite respectful to refer to the Hon. A. W. Hogg as 'the Road Hogg,' for he is Minister for Roads and Bridges. He was helped to sample the quality of a Taranaki road the other day by Mr. J. B. Hine, member for Stratford. Politically, Mr. Hme is not of the ' right colour,' when view-, ed through Ministerial field-glasses. Somehow, when the Ministerial caravan was rattling over the dusty track from j Stratford Jo Toko, Mr. Hine found that no seat was reserved for him near the gentleman who is now the apple of the eye of deputations eager to conjur roads end bridges out of the general taxpayer's rapacious pockets. But Mr. Hine did not sit by the wayside and sulk in impotent state. He got him into a light vehicle, and it is said that he " forged ahead' of the Ministerial party. His. horses were frisky; they seemed to enjoy stirring up the suffocating dust.j and soon the rearward Ministerial party, which was the 'right colour' »i the outset, was decidedly the wrong colour. Mr. Hine took the shine out of the well-groomed faces and hats behind him. At musical Whangamomona the Ministerialists, after they had laved the dust from themselves, sat down to feast, but the viands must have surely stuck in their throats. For Mr. Hine was absent, and who knew what mischief he might have been devising? Was it feared that he was mining under the hall of revelry, ready to flash a match into four and twenty barrels of gunpowder just when the guest* were tuning up to sing ' For He's a Jolly Good Fellow,' about the other fellow? It may be satisfactorily explained how Mr. Hine came to be left out of the Ministerial chariot, but in the meantime Mr. Hine has the pleasant memory that he made the party repent in ashes."