The Waikato Times.

Waikato Times, Volume IX, Issue 512, 31 August 1875, Page 2

The Waikato Times.

Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political, Here shall the Press the People's right maintain, Unawed by inSueuce and uubribed by gain.

TT/BSDA V, A tTGUST 31, 1875.

The Seventeen Patriots who voted against the Second Reading of the Aboli tion of Provinces Bill, deserve to be immortalized in song. Oh ? that we had the divine gift of the Bard to sing their praises with. a forty-poet power ! "What pen could e'er do justice to the high-souled patriotism of a Bunny, the magical eloquence of a Sheehan, the sweet-scented modesty of a Reeve 3, the profuse liberality of a Swanson, or the exalted financial genius of a Donald Heidi Poets yet unknown will swell with rapture in their praise ; historians will blush at the inadequacy ot their eulogies, generations yet unborn will weep tears many and sore over the untimely fate of this magnanimous Seventeen. The feats of iHoratiua and: his companions, the deeds of the Spartans at Tlvirmopylaa, the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the charge of the Six Hundred — all mle into insignificancebaside the conduct of this Seventeen. We tire so overcome wifih. emotion at the misfortunes of this little band of Patriots that the page is watered with oue tears, and the lines which record their virtues are blotted and blurred. Onr faithful "typos" have caught the gushing infeotion, and this building resounds with woe and lainen-' tations. Our sorrow almost found appropriate expression in those funeral drapings which on a recent occasion expressed the lively grief of a sympathizing prede cessor, and wo lelt tempted to exclaim' witli . him, " Lost in the ■element they loved so wel&" J3ut away with melancholy! There are • times in which a man. must suppress. the feelings that are gnawing at' his heart-strings, when tears must be dashed away, and the inward woe be concealed from the gaze of an unsympathLzing public. This is 1 one of those time?. Be it ours, therefore, to affect a lightheartedliess which, alas ! we. cannot feel, in order to cLo justice to the immortal virtued of this noble Seventeen. Amongst them Sir George Grey stands out with the prominence and brilliancy of a sperm candle amidst farthins rushlights. The chronicler

blushes at the charges which a cold aud suspicious world has 'levelled at his puvo soul. Perish the critics who charge him with one jot of selfishness ! Anathemas on the head of those who unblushingly assert thatheisadisLippointed misanthrope; an Ishmael, driven out from the fat pastures of Downing Street into the wilderness of official neglect and indifference. Who shall say that one unsalfish thought, one gleam of vengeful spite, ever sallied the fair soul of this pure Patriot ? "What though he thwarted General CUiiisron, strangled the Military Settlement Scheme, dissipated the .£3,000,000 Loan, brow-beat the Colonial Office", assumed the toga of a ColcmialCjssar ! — Did he not retire to the cloisters of lonely Kauwnu, and there — euranmded by dusky companions in woe — muse over the ingratitude of an unappre.ciative public, and surrender himselt a prey to hidden sorrows ? And when twc patriotic journalists and a self-sacrificing Provincial Secretary chartered a steamer, and — like theTribunes who went to Cincinnatus, — bowed low before him, and tearfully besought him to forsake his hermitage and save a falling- country, did any thought of unsatisfied ambition or long-.bent-up vengefulness awaken the slumbering soul -of the lonely anchorite, listlessly dreaming away hisclosingyearjsamidstthe solitudes of classic Kauwau. When -this distinguished Juan Fernandez bid a sad farewell to the Lares and Penates of his island home, to the Naiades and Dryades of its fountains | and groves, when he gaced with lingering affection on the kangaroos and emus, — mute companions of his joys and sorrows — did any latent ray of slumbering Caesarism fire the old man's soul 1 Bid he foresee in fancy Dr Pollen and the Ministry hurled from office, and himself Premier, surrounded by men in whom his soul delightetfh, with the Queers of the multitude ringing in his ears? Did his imagination picture the fruit of that crop which he sowed in his appeals to demagogues of Auckland City West; of that shoulder-rubbing with the people, or that well-affected sympathy with the bone and sinew of the colony? la that vista of future years, did the vision of long scores rubbed out against old rivals, and the Colonial Office of an independent Great Britain of the South, with Sir George Grey as its First President, obtrude itself upon his gaze ? There are those who say it did. Reader Wood too — the man who exhibited the genius of an Adam Smith and a Stuart Mill combined, by magnanimously sacrificing our Securities at 85, when by a little more selfishness he might have obtained 92 — shall a breath of iuspi«ion rest upon him? Reader Wood — who was foremost in denouncing Provincialism in the years gone by, and waxed eloquent on the waste and extravagance of Superintendents and their followers, — is he not a martyr to consistency and political morality in sacrificing 1 his convictions for the paltry emolument < of a Provincial Treasurership, with a prospective seat in the Grey-cum-Fitzberbert Ministry that was to be, and the yet more remote office ondjr the future President ? Fitzherberfcthe Machiav&li, the Talleyrand, the Mephistopheles of the House, the malignod " Sturdy-beggar, 1 ' the magician who ra ; sed untold wealth out of unre-

claimed lands aad mythological securities, he too shines amongst that noble Seven-, teen. Does not; the Superintendent of' TVelliugfcon love Auckland with an- *ffec- , tion more than womanly ? Ha* he not iij the past aided in relieving Auckland of the encumbrance of the "Seat of 'Govern•merit, and -transferred the burden toxsomewhere in Cook's Straits, where are his oven vine and fig tree 6 ? Who shall say that the thousands lie has received from a grateful country are any recompense for those " great efforts*' which are embalmed in countless pages of Hansard, -every syllable of which has been paid for out of the Public Funds ? When, amongst his brilliant reclamation achievements he introduced a Provincial Act which enabled him out of the Provincial Funds to divert the course of the Hutt River from his own property into that of a neighbour, ■did not that neighbour call down blessings upon his head ? And then Macandrew — how shall we do justice to this galaxy of clean-handed politicians !-Macandrew, who, , when persecuted by the minions of a Cruel Sheriff, proclaimed his own house a Gaol, and frustrated the machinations of tyrannous creditors. Language stands aghast, descriptive power is " flabbergasted." The names pass before our admiring eyes like a grand panorama of modern heroes, before whom those of Ancient Borne and Greece pale into littleness. Reeves, who delivered a Public Works Statement in 1872 that -stamped him as a paragon of engineering genius ; who, like Joseph, was let down into a hole by hia Ministerial brethren, and has sini c remained in the cold shade of Opposition; when his Pharoah, Grey, elevates him to place and power, will ho not smile on Vogel, the Reuben of the Brethren, and slyly insert bags of gold from the Treasury in his sack 1 Next in array, Sheehan, the hope of the Newton Debating Club, who learned wisdom at the feet of Shanaghan, its whilom President, and drank in inspiration at the Governor Brown Hotel, — Sheehan who burst upon the faded politicians of the House like a newly discovered meteor, and startled the gaze of millions by his Deuioathenic orations. Is he not the Little Benjamin of the Seventeen, the chosen of Henare Matiu, the anchor of hope of the lords of Hawkes'Bay soil? Shall the •virtues *of John White remain unsung ? White the Grimaldi, the Touchstone, who revives the ancient glories of Asbley's -in the House of Representatives, and who dispenses his aspirates on-all -sides with profuse liberality. How shall we gauge the sublime disinterestedness which enables him tdjdespise the opinions of his constituents ; tiow do "justice to £he Imperial dignity with which ke filled the Speaker's Chair •hrthe "Provincial Council of Westlaud, and monopolized all the {Speechifying 1 And Hunter,, the pompous Turveydrop, ihe Commissiou-agent-and - auctioneer-m-Ordi-nary to Fitzherbei t ; Buimy, the Blackstone of the English bar ! who blesses benighted New Z'uland with his shining* presence, who hna alternately graced the ranks ef Centralists and Provincialists, Ministerialists and Opposition, with a blind devetion to himself, and a magnanimous indilloreaco to his constit.ients. : Need we waste panegyric.-? on tbo phiUuthropy of a Swanson, who ia ever foremost in lending to the distressed and needy without hope of receiving again? Lot the Bard sound his tuneful lyre over the gl-jues of Dig nan, whose legislative aurels are eutwmeti with the vine leaxves of Bacchus, and who diffuses political wisdom as bountifully as in earlier days he dis.pen.sed the soul inspiring beverages to thirsty disciples in Wyndham street. What a touching picture to see the lamb Donald Reid lying down with the lion Macandrew ! How shall we extol the unsophisticated nobility of soul of Takamoana, who voted against Te Makarini in 1872, because the "Father of the Maori innocents declined to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness and propitiate this Child of Nature by presenting him with a horse and dray, purchased out of the Public Funds ? And the rest of the acts of this Patriotic Seventeen, are they not written in the chronicles of Piovincialiaru ? "Oh for a forty-parson power to sing thy praise hypocrisy." Alas. ! that such pure souls as thsse Seventeen should b» despised by a blind and unsentimental Fifty-two, that the genius of Sir George Grey shall have again to betake itself to the uncongenial solitudes of Kauwau ! " Imperial Caesar, dead, and turned fo clay, Might stop ft hole to keep the wind away."

At the last moaceot we are compelled by pressure of telegraphic and other mater to hold over an article on the report of Native Coinm snouers, correspondence on tho proposed Central Waikato Agricultural Show, and other matter. The fortnightly meeting of the Pukerimu Mutual Improvement Society, took place on 'Friday last, the 27th jnst. Owing, no doubt, to the inclemency of tho weather, the attendance warf rat'.er smaller thin uau&l, only some 13 mem be w being present. Mr. Stui'ges was called to the chmr. After the minutes of the previous meeting had been read and confirmed, the debate on " Centralißm v Pro? incialiam" wis proceeded with, and occupied mott of the evening. Mr Henry Buttle opened tho question with a new brief argument! in favour of *' Centralism." and the Abolition of the Provinces. Mr Cooper, on the other Bide of the questioo, launched out into a long and powerful oration in favour of the continuation of Provincial lnttitu'ion*, and after taking his hearers with Sir Joseph Paiton to view the «plendid architecture and the massive dome of St. Paul's cathedral, and then far a voyage acres the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers to the new Sta'-e of Massaohstsetts, anJ tht.n introducing thorn to the Goths and to the Q-ttuls, he brought them back to the Provinces of New Zealand, and in hn peroration, whi'h could only be compared to one of Gladstone's mightiest efforts, he bo far carried the meeting with him b« to secure, by the chuirmau's casting vote, the preservation of the provinces. A reo:t&tion, by Mr Hugh Fitzgorali, and • wading, admirably renderod by Mr Robert Oalcy, brought the meeting to a cose.— (Correupjndent). There was no performance of tlaa Airec Combination Troupe, at Ngaruawahia, on Saturday night, us announced, in consequence, we understand, of the Company being wmdbound at Coromandel. The .Agent of the Troupj Mr Alexander, in orms us that if all goes w«ll, his principals will give entertainments at Ngtruaon Wednesday, and at Hamilton on Thursday and Friday evenings next. Tho Trustees of the Kirikiriroa Highway District, will meet to-morrow (Wednesday) at the residence of Mr De Vere Hunt, to hear and decide appeals agamit the late assessment

Mr J. H. Boott, of Paterangi, offer* thirty pounds reward, to any perrons giving iuoh -infor-. mafci.n at w»ll lead to the conviction of thieve! found stealing hit cattle, oirpetsoa* driving them out of the district s t\ Mr Shera one of the Veoresfrntitivei of "MeSsri Mo Arthur Bbera and Co., of Auckland, adverti«e« £10 reward, for the reeovorj of a portmanteau, aceidentaly dropped into the Waikato, on Saturday night last. There was • waaa'arly lost too on th« occa«ien ; he was " walking the p'aAk"to the Btuenoae. cacryiag Mr Shera's baggage and alas ! man and traos went overboard. The man ffn« fished up, wetter and ladder, baggage lost, — hence the advenfcisenwn-t. Mr Gwynueit will ba ■ perceived alto offers a reward of £5, for the lost portmanteau. ~ Th# island of Santa Cruz, where Commodore Gbodenouqh roceived his death- wound, is one of tht most inhospitable o( the South Pacific island*. It is tituato in about 118. latitude, and 165 fl. longitude, immediately south of the Solomon Islands. Its iniiabitantt are the most ferocious of savages. It will be remembered that JBishjp Pttteraon met hi-« death in Ifoe same region There are tome strong points of resemblanoe between the death of Commodore Goodenough and Captain Cook. Both were on a mission of peace, to each the savages had manifested a friendly disposition, and both were killed whon th«y were about to re-embark, Captain Cook being set upon with clubs and spears, while the Commodore was fined upon with poisoned arrows.