The Inangahua Times. PUBLISHED TRI-WEEKLY. MONDAY, APRIL 16, 1883.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1259, 16 April 1883, Page 2

The Inangahua Times. PUBLISHED TRI-WEEKLY. MONDAY, APRIL 16, 1883.

To sajr.thfttjMr Shaw's address to the electors ( on Saturday evening last ;was disappoin'tirig, would be! to. apply to it ,th| .', Vgrytr .'HTildesfr ••euphemism w^ich the most .friendly pritiqism cduld suggest". ■'■' Never" did such a great , mountain^ bring forth fiuch-.a diftunuti've' mouse, and never probably did. an audience, assemble with higher anticipations of a " feast of reason and a flow of soul " and go away so utterly hungry, and empty as theone in question Coining from the seat of Government where he had a good opportunity of profiting ,bjr his professed intimacy with, the "' « Ministers the day, and the officers of .-.the. Departinenta," it -was naturally' thought that, although- a' freshman in poUtics, he would have been able to cram suffi,cien% r to make, at all- eyente/somethinglike a presentable figure before those whose suffrages he was about to sei&kV It must 'be confessed', however, that not only did he fall very far ibelow the exjectaefon 1 of his political opponents, but disappointed even his frwnds, anct' th«y have been candid enough to say at). 'We will probably be told, however, that politicians are not horn, but, like Topsy, they grow, and that, although a political neophyte of a very pronounced type just now, Mr. Shaw would improve with age and experience, and eventually bocome as celebrated in politics as hu is i.-w'd to be in tho 3;r.r.

This may be all ye y well, but judging ] by Saturday night's performance, we 1 are sadly afraid that life is too short ] for the experiment Mr >haw com- i menced by drawing a rather singular ' and certainly very original illustration. ( He said the colony was a vast estate < and the electors present were a meet-, ing of creditors gathered together to appoint a proxy. There was something grimly funny about this, and only that the speaker quickly mixed the metaphor and likened the audience., to a number of shareholders in a registered company, everybody would have fairly exploded with laughter. Fancy 1 a meeting of the creditors of a portion of the Globe. I The idea is certainly new, and it may probably be of very forcible application, but we must confess we don't exactly see it From this the speaker went on to say that before the day of the poll he "will shake hands with every elector from Larry's Creek to Brnnnerto'tf " — the Dan to Beersheba of the electorate. Now, we do not for a moment fw^sh to underrate ,the importance of hand-shaking at electioneering times, But we would remind Mr Shaw, that, although it may not be the impression in Wellington, it is nevertheless^ fact, that miners have. the bulk of them will be found to require to have their heads shaken before they will care to avail themselves of his great condescension. He next proceeded to say that we did not want to send a man to Wellington who possessed an extensive knowledge of public affairs ; what we wanted was simply a " proxy IJ to look after the aSairs of Eeefton and the Grey Valley, and not the Colony at large. This is Mr. Shaw's idea of the duty devolving upon a member under representative institutions. Here again is an instance of the candidate's deep and inscrutable knowledge of political economy, and .hii? happy faculty of presenting old things in new and striking lights. We had always thought that purely. " local " affairs belonged, or properly; should belong, to local Government, and that that was indeed the very beginning and the end of the, aim when in troducing the local <3overnmentscheme. Possibly we are wrong, and he (Mr. 'Shaw) is' right, and our reason ;fo/ saying this is, thatM£ Shaw explainedthat he had studied politics very closely for seven years. Now, no man can have spent, so long a time as seven jearsin studying the politics of this rColony without getting pretty well at .the .root of everything! , Few "will doubt this for a moment, and here we are brought to reflect upon the great waste of time which men like Stafford, Foxe, Grey, Wakefield, and others have been guilty of . in devoting from 25 to 40 years in the same study. But, to proceed. Talking about railways, Mr. Shaw considered that the idea of getting engineers to report on railway routes was the biggest nonsense in the t world. He would not^allow an en* gineer to dictate to him _as to which way a railway should or should hoFgoi JThe. proper duty of &n engineer was to take a railway wherever he was told, and there was an end of it. In relation to the East and; West Coast line he would simply say to the engineer "I want these two points connected 1 ' and Presto! the- thing should be done. Here again is further remarkable evidence of nascent political genius, showing a royal road at once out of half the difficulties that have beeriperplexing Govern raientsfrom the formation of the Public Works policy Who would noli vote for such a candidate 1 If there is one thing Mr. Shaw does not believe in more than another it is Royal Commissions. These are the chops and tomato sauce that have caused all the trouble in the past Does anybody think for a moment that if he is elected he would allow Captain Russei to dictate to him which way a; railway should ga? No, all Royal Commissions, as well as engineers, would, have to stand off the grass when he was about - Concerning education, he was pretty full on that subject, for, whilst most men were satisfied with one opinion on |he subject, ne confessed to f the possession of two. • Ycb he had two opinions on education. One was his private opinion, which was to the effect that. Government had as much right to feed as to educate the children of the state. This is no doubt a very sound opinion, and will meet with wide concurrence amongst the heads of families throughout this electorate, where the cold, wind gives the youngsters such fearful appetites! His other opinion, which it must be assumed is his public one, and only trotted out on large occasions, is that the present Act stidtild have a good trial. Here again we have evidence of the budding states- ■ man. He believes in giving a bad Act ,a . good trial. This is truly political magnanimity of a high and noble type. We have merely touched upon the salient points in Mr. Shaw's rather remarkable, address, for to go into it fully would outrun the patience of the reader, and we must therefore reserve a more extended, notice until a. future L bc'<Jasion.' fn the meantime some of thepoliticalconundruraspropounded by Mr, Shaw will no doubt occupy the attention of the electors during the interval.