EULOGISING VERY!

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4621, 26 October 1883, Page 2

EULOGISING VERY!

r A Sydney paper thus flatteringly refers to our representatives, who are to attend the Annexation Conference in Sydney next month:—"'Major Atkinson and the Hon. F. A. Whitaker are to be the New Zealand representatires at the, Sydney Conference next month. The latter was an astute lawyer and singularly a-wide-awake statesman. In order to get the •• bulge " on him it would be necessary to .Arise and go unto your father hours before night's candles were^bnrnt out and jocund day was observed sitting cross-legged on the misty mountain tops. - In big land speculations and the unrevised text of the • eleventh commandment' he is open to back himself against the world—always barring Major Smith of Ballarat. The latter boasts that ' Whitaker whipped creation, and I whipped Whitaker.' The other N.Z. plenipotentiary is known as the 'Majah' among his people, just as Wellington was known par excellence in I jndon as ' the Dock.' There might be other 'Majahs,' just as there are other ' Dooks,' but they are only small fry whitebait, 'prone trash' alongside this three-decker. It was during the last row in Taranaki that he came to the front and remained there. He commanded the '^bushrangers'—a determined body of : local troops made up of men most of whom had a stake in the country. __ This corps did good service in the description of warfare unsuited to the highlydisciplined regular soldiers. At the same time it must be- noted that the New Zealand colonists hare never done justice to the regular troops who cleared the Waikato Valley for them in 1863 -—a work which they would not hare tried, or, trying, accomplished to the present day. The 'irregulars/ who were good enough at ' bush-whacking' a^d guerilla warfare; would have neTer seen the inside of Rangiriri or Te Awa* mulu. The Maoris ia their expressive 'pig' an-English,' used to call them. gammon the sogers.' The 'MaiahV triumphs in the field were overshadowed by his success in Ferliament. In a N.Z. Cabinet he was as necessary as the Duke of Wellington at Windsor Castle when any domestic squabble set the servants talking. Like the Vicar of Bray, whatever change occurred, he could always be depended on to be found in the same place. The bole was square, he (the peg) was square, and nothing short of dynamite could shift him. It was only the other day he re-formed the present Ministry, on Mr Whitaker's retirement. Such are the men who will represent, their colony at the approaching congress." ,