THE GOVERNOR'S SPEECH.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 6053, 9 February 1892, Page 2

THE GOVERNOR'S SPEECH.

At the farewell banquet to the Governor, held in Dunedin on Saturday night, in the course of his speech responding to his health, he thus referred to our labour represpntatires :—I have seen the solidarity of labour. I have Been the working men exhibit their loyalty to each other by the truest test of trials, the pinch of hunger. I have seen men stick to each other even when they had a bad cause. I say, sir, that that was worthy of a better cause. (Applause). I have seen the determination on the part of the industrial classes to be represented by some of their own mates in the Parliament of the colony, and I have noted the difference between these true representatives of the people and the would-be champions of the working men. (Loud and continued applause). I have found the former to be conscientious, honest men, with a grave sense of the responsibility that rested upon them, and a sincere desire to do their duty. Gentlemen, the next Parliament in England will most certainly contain a number of labour representatives. (Hear, hear). I have not the slightest fear for the future of the Empire, because these men will take a share in shaping it. (Applause). lam one of those who have no fear of the democracy —but I confess that I have some dread of the smooth tongue of the plausible demagogue. (Applause.) On the contrary, I think such representation in the Imperial Parliament will be productive of immense good to the Empire. There was a danger at one time that the Empire might go to pieces out of sheer indifference, because paople in one part of the Empire did not take sufficient interest in what was going on in another part, but since the great dock strike in London, and since the Australians came forward with their sympathy and their purses, it has been abundandly clear that the influence of labour in >ne part of the world, is so great in another part of the world, especially of the English speaking world, that there is no danger that we shall look only upon the affairs of others. Nor, gentlemen, do I think that we have much to fear from the action of sfatesmen. The responsibility lies upon the statesmen of those days that they did not avail themselves of the irretrievable opportunity for promoting Imperial federation it the time when self-government was conferred on Australasia. But the duties of the future are so interwoven and bound together that they may by no possible change of circumstances be ever .swept asunder and separated. (Applause.)