VII.

The seventh and last characteristic of true Liberalism is that it is essentially progressive. Our space to-day, however, prevents us from going at length into the consideration of this noble characteristic. We need only remark that the pretenders to our historic name, like the ass in the lion's hide, make one of the silliest blunders possible in reference to progress. They mistake change for progress, and as they are incessantly changing one wrong set of political opinions for another wrong set, they fancy this page 11 is progress, and claim to be Progressists. In other words, they confound movement with improvement. They actually fancy they are moving onwards and upwards, while they are only moving backwards and downwards. The other day our Premier and his crew began to sound the big drum and to wave their false colours, proclaiming that they were going to imparadise New Zealand, and that they were really marching to the promised land and the New Jerusalem. Poor, deluded creatures !—if I may be allowed a few hot words from Mr Carlyle—they are marching, not to the New Je-rusalem, but to the old Ge-henna, and here I may leave them till next Saturday, and the next number of our New Zealander.