The Waikato Argus GEORGE EDGECUMBE, Proprietor. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1898.

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 336, 3 September 1898, Page 2

The Waikato Argus GEORGE EDGECUMBE, Proprietor. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1898.

There is only one possible reason for the circulation of a plan of Sir John Hall's estate in Hansard, and that is that the Minister for Lands is an obstinate roan and dominates his party. The object Mr McKenzie had in view was to illustrate the misdeeds of those who have held high political positions in the colony, if actions can be called misdeeds which were strictly in accordance with law. This sort of thing is in thorough keeping with the practice of the Ministerial party who endeavour to justify their own misdeeds by charging some other man or set of men with having done a wrong many years before ; it matters not to them whether the cases are in the least degree analagous. Their contentions are very much on the lines that because a man a few years back stole a horse another is justified at this date in committing a burglary. This is the argument put forth times out of number by the members of the party which took oilice under the pledge that all would be pure under their regime—as often in fact as they have been convicted of " burglary " before the tribunal of public opinion. In order to gratify tho spleen and still the wrath of Mr McKenzie, for the first time in the history of Parliaments and Hansards a map is to be published in that record of talk, in order that a Minister may be "understood of the people." The Act-ing-Speaker has ruled that this can only bo clone by resolution of the House, and declined to allow a plan of Rushy Park and other blocks of land to be inserted with which the name of the Minister for Lands is associated and that in a manner not to his credit. How miserably small all those members must have felt when they crawled into the lobby to record their votes, in order that one of their task-masters should have his way and the course taken by the Premier gives colour to the doubt as to whose is the ruling spirit iu tha Cabinet. Mr McKenzie has placed his party

in many an anomalous position and has provided them with many a nauseous cud to chew : bub this last must have been the worst tax on their digestions which their Highland chief has set them. The whole performance is a digrace to Parliament and the colony ; but the country lias become accustomed to that sort of thing at the hands of the Hon. Mr J. McKenzie.