MINISTERIAL CADS.

Observer, Volume 4, Issue 96, 15 July 1882, Page 275

MINISTERIAL CADS.

The article in our last week's issue was an eyeopener for the great majority of our readers. Few people can realise how the wires are pulled in Wellington, how half-a-dozen journalists and purveyors of news, the subservient tools of the Ministry, can create and foster what the uninitiated mistake for a consensus of public opinion. We were actuated by an Englishman's love of fair play in taking up the cudgels on behalf of Sir Arthur Gordon. Whilst the colonists are bound by constitutional ties and sentiments of loyalty to the Crown, they ought to pay due respect to its representative. They can please themselves when the ties are severed. Hence the fact that no member of the Ministry or leading official had. the decency to see his Excellency off on his departure from Wellington was a piece of impertinence which is likely to recoil on the colony. Ministers are public servants, bound by oaths of allegiance and office, and it is their duty to set an example of official courtesy and etiquette. They are not paid large salaries and allowances to give New Zealand an unenviable reputation for caddishness, and to drag the colony through the mire.

"Whatever opinions may be entertained as to Sir Arthur G-orclou's personal qualifications for the position of G-overnor of a colony possessing responsible government, every colonist who cherishes a sentiment of patriotism, of loyalty to the Crown, a3 well as a sense of decency* will repudiate the slight cast upon Sir Arthur Grordon. Ministers, whose adrainsfcrative acts belie their claims to Liberalism, may flatter themselves that they are popularising themselves with the mob by these tactics, but they will yet find that they have misjudged the temper of the people. The feeling of reverence for our Constitution and the sentiment of loyalty to the Crown, are too deeply enshrined in the hearts of the people to be affected by the electioneering dodges of any political party. And who are these men who have had the effrontery to treat the Crown's representative with disrespect, and to set a mischievous example of incipient disloyalty ? One of them began life as a shoemaker ; another was not many years ago the keeper of a small huckster's shop ; a third a bullock driver ; but for the fortuitous accidents of political vicissitudes all of them would have remained mere nobodies to the end of their lives. We honour any man who has climbed the ladder of fame and fortune, but have nothing but contempt for ' him that forgets the rungs by which he ascended, and looks down on mankind with the ludicrous affectation of a being who has decended on earth from some celestial sphere.