The Daily News. MONDAY, JUNE 30, 1913. THE NEW LEGISLATIVE COUNCILLORS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 25, 30 June 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, JUNE 30, 1913. THE NEW LEGISLATIVE COUNCILLORS.

The five appointments that the Reform Government lias made to the Legislative Council are a curious mixture of "this and the next," and they have created, in some respects, quite a flutter of amusement in political dovecotes. Even in an age of purely party politics no exception whatever can be taken to the elevation to the Upper House—if it is an elevation—of Sir William Russell, Mr. John Duthie and Mr. C. A. Hardy. Sir Win. Russell should have been called to this particular state of blessedness long ago, for in the days when it took the Conservative Party all its time to keep decently warm in a political temperature that was many degrees below zero he always played the game with all the heroism of an Antarctic hero,"and all the courtesy of an English gentleman. He played the game so strictly fairly, indeed, that the then Opposition was compelled to replace him as leader with a man who was not quite so particular to "break clean" in the .political prize fight. Mr. John Duthie, too, lias done yeoman service, for his party, and in the strenuous battling against the forlorn hopes of a decade ago he was one of the few members of his side of the House who was always to be found in his place, ever ready to conduct a stonewall or to step into some diplomatic breach with that shrewd, canny Scotch criticism thai was always tempered with a quick appreciation of opportunism, and which, while inevitably bitter, was never virulent and always sound. He was, in fact, a man who created hostility more by his manner than his matter. Mr. C. A. Hardy, the exOpposition Whip, known iii the House as "Silent Selwyn," has won his pro- , motion from his faithful placidity to j his faith, and he is the direct antithesis !of Mr. Duthie. He has always been a genial and peace-loving politician a jinan who has temperamentally played > the Fat Boy in the political Pickwick. But when we come to the other two appointments, after the first spasm of amazement, it is taking laughter all its time to' hold both its sides. The appointment of Mr. Wm. Earnshaw as an alleged sop to the Cerberus of Labor can only be regarded as the joke of the year. Years ago, before organised labor was hardly out of its swaddling clothes, Mi 1 . Earnshaw was elected for a seat in Dunedin in the Labor-Liberal interest, and he displayed some little ability and vigor i as an industrialist legislator at a time 'when the Fishes and the McKenzies I were throwing pickle-bottles about as convincing arguments in political controversy. It was only after a difference with Mr. Seddon on a question of fidelity to Party that the sturdy Prime Minister, who would brook 110 choleric word, let alone mutiny, from his rank and file, pushed him gently out of the House, and saw to it that his repeated attempts to secure re-election should be a series of successive failures. Since then Mr. Earnshaw has taken no further part in either political life or public life. So far as the Labor Party of modern moments is concerned, he is a past number. He has had no association with the Party for years, and he knows as much about its ambitions and its organisation as a cow knows about trigonometry—perhaps hardly as much. His appointment, in brief, is a comic opera interlude in our political life that would be an insult tothe Party were it not so supremely ridiculous. As for the Maori representative, Mr. Wirenfu Kerie Nikoru, or "Billy Xicholls,' as he is known in the vernacular in the precincts of his stately home at Paeroa, .his claim for selection appears to rest upon the fact that he is a "good fellow," who has never done anything save lend support to the "Reform" Party, and if there is such a thing as a Maori protoplasm, one of them might with equal judiciousness have been selected for the position. If Mr. Massey has any explanations to offer for these appointments, the country will await them with interest. In the meantime, it is disposed to be more amused than edified.