A PEOPLE'S MINISTRY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 237, 15 August 1872, Page 9

A PEOPLE'S MINISTRY.

John Peerybingle, in the Melbourne "Weekly Times," thus moralises on the late Duffy Government, whose pride it was to be known as the People's Ministry. Mr. Donald Eeid and his friends used to claim a similar distinction, and appear by their late style of manipulating the landed estate of the province to be doing their best to earn it after a somewhat similar fashion : —

Those squatters are lucky dogs. Somehow they've a knack of squaring things, and getting what they want. They are lucky dogs ; but, after all, is it luck or good management % You can do a 1 lot with " proper representations," a " dummy," and the key of the backdoor at the Lands office. Yes, yes, my land-seeking friends, there no doubt about it ; the squatters know how to make friends : they've found out the inside track ; they've learnt the short cut to fortune. Why can't we all be squatters, with friends of the people on the look-out to do us a turn? Why can't the down-trodden ones of the carth — these poor deluded, ill-used 42nd clause men — each have a few thousands of acres on the cheap likewise? Hooray ! What I weep for is a People's Ministry ! What I dream of is a People's Ministry What I howl for is a People's Ministry — And Humbug. Let us not dissemble. I long for a People's Ministry, and I long also to be a squatter, persecuted by a People's Minister; and buried under a land-grant, big enough to seb up a kingdom of my own. When an apprentice takes to the lollypop businees, they feed him on hard-bake, bull's eyes, toffy, and so forth, till he's sick to death of sweetness. That's what the People's Ministry tried to do with the squatters. They stuffed 'em with acres of the best land going ; they gave 'em land for breakfast, land for dinner, land for supper, but the squatters came up smiling, and kept on asking for more. It's a way they have, especially when the back-door of the Lands Office is open ; and the Friends of the People are caterwauling about the country, making fancy speeches, and getting fuddled on flattery, and other liquors, instead of looking after the land-rats. Their motto was " words not deeds," — unless the jdeeds happened to be the deeds of property, cleverly grabbed out of the hands of this gentle and amusing public under the pretence of friendship.