Three Ministries.

I propose to-night to discuss our political outlook. I mean What mainly does this Government seek to do, and by what means? What, in other words, are you to expect from us, not only with regard to legislation, but with regard to administration? Now, most of us judge of what a man will do from his character, and hence it is not amiss for me to begin by a word about the 'Ministry of which I nave the honor to be a member. What sort of a Ministry is it? Need I remind you in answer that there is not one but three different Ministries in office in New Zealand just now. There is the Ministry as they appear to Mr Massey—that is, the Opposition's Ministry; there is the Ministry; as they appear to their makers—the Liberal party—that is the Liberal Ministry; and there is the Ministry as they appear to the members themselves—that is the Ministry's Ministry. They are all different. The first is bad, the second is good, the third beyond all question excellent.—(Laughter.) But I am not going to dwell upon their excellences—that would take too long. And there is another reason, and that is that it is always more interesting to listen to the vices of a public man than lo any catalogue of his virtues. The former have a piquancy of savor quite absent from dreary goodness, and hence if you want to say anything interesting about a Ministry show them in their true colons, or, rather, in the true color, page 8 veterinarian, and twenty-two ordinary qualified veterinarians, fourteen meat inspectors, twenty-four assistant meat inspectors, one laboratory assistant, one laboratory attendant, four clerks, and one caretaker; and the whole of this is due to legislation passed under tilts Government of which the present Ministry is a-continuation. And yet this is Socialism—the work of the seven or eight devils, as the case may be, above referred to. I pass by the enormous sums we have spent under the Rabbit Nuisance Act, Noxious Weeds Act, and Stock Acts; but do you know that the State is now paying for fifty-six inspectors of stock who are also inspectors of dairies and noxious, weeds and rabbit pest. In addition to these there are ten others exclusively employed as inspectors of dairies, seventeen as inspectors of noxious weeds, thirty-nine rabbit agents, six overseers of experimental farms, thirteen nurserymen, thirty-three clerks and other officers, not to mention rabbiters, farm hands, and other laborers. The sheep tax, which was imposed to defray the expense of sheep inspection and the eradication of scab, produces only £20,000 a year. It bears so lightly that a man with 10,000 sheep pays only £10 a year—a sum equal to the wool off thirty sheep at present prices—while the Department of Agriculture cost us for the year ended March, 1906, over £124,000, and is steadily costing more as operations extend. Pause, and ask where your respective farming industries would he without these and other services, and recall what still socialistically the State is doing for the farmers. And this Farmers' Socialism is still growing. In sixteen years it has grown and flourished like the wicked and the green bay tree.