MR RUSSELL AND THE GOVERNMENT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2343, 16 July 1887, Page 2

MR RUSSELL AND THE GOVERNMENT.

TO THE EIMTOK. Sir,—Mr Ilussell, in his address at Cambridge, as in that at Hamilton, betrays the cloven hoof. Plain J. 13. W., in dealing with the one chief issue before the country, the fate of the Ministry, plainly says in his address: “Itis a solemn duty devolving upon every man who cares a rap for Ids adopted country nr who has children growing up in it to kick out of office and keep out of power a Government like the present one.” A few pithy words like these are w*orth a yard or two of gush and declamation. How different are the utterances of Mr Russell on this important point. Just as he preaches railway reform and advocates Vaile's railway scheme, leaving a back door of escape w'hen ho has to support his Ministerial friends in the House in rejecting a trial of the scheme; so in this case he hedges round his disapprobation of the Stout-Vogcl Ministry with reservations and contingencies which would allow him, without direct breacn of election pledges (at least as yet exacted) to throw himself into the arms of his friends—Messrs .Stout and iialhince. Vogel is the Jonah he would throw overboard, but tell it not in Cambridge, publish it not in the streets of Hamilton, little more than a year ago Mr Russell was the exponent of Vogelism, the ardent admirer of Sir .Tillius, and actually advocated the borrowing of another ETC,OOO,OOO, to be entrusted to Sir Juhns for expenditure, the very man he now turns round upon and makes the -cape goat for the sins of his coadjutors. H»w far, I ask, with such an immediate past behind him, can we trust Air Russell as our representative in the immediate future? When he has gained his end, a seat in the House, he may pack up his carpet bag, and Waikato will know him no more, save as one sitting in Parliament to the exclusion of a belter man who would have truly and honestly represented her. The truth is, Mr Russell may deny it as much and as often as he likes, but his mainstay in the present election is the support of the Government, and tho-e who watch his utterances closely, and who are not led away by ad captaiuhim arguments, verbosity and flapdoodle, can plainly see that he is endeavouring to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds—join in the cry for retrenchment and reform, yet leave himself unpledged to expel!from office, in all circumstances and under every contingency, those members of the present Ministiy wh" are giving his candidature the Government support. He is trying to serve two masters, the people whose suffrages he asks, and his friends in office, in whose downfall rests the only hope of the electors, and the prosperity of the colony.—Yours truly, Ei.kctoh. Cambridge, July H.