An Australian Orator: Speeches by David Buchanan. Edited by Richmond
Thatcher. (Remington and Co.)—These orations are "offered to the candid consideration of the English public, as a fair average sample of the public, political speech of New South Wales." So writes the editor, though not without a suspicion that the "more fastidious English taste" will not "relish some of the more forcible of the orator's effusions." As the English people, according to the orator, "groan under the oppression of a titled and privileged class," their opinion can scarcely be worth having. It is certainly contrary to their slavish habit of thought and speech to say of Ministers who are asking for "supply,"—" Supply, indeed ! The supply they want is supply to their own pockets, £40 per week;" or that they are "hugging office to their hungry souls in the spirit and with the principles of burglars." Here, again, is a tasteful phrase relating to the Soudan Expedition,—" The loyalty I refer to is rotten and nauseous to the very heart of it,—most rank and loathsome in the extravagance of its idiotic expression." Here, again, ie a personal amenity. One Minister is described as a "pretty little piece of human pinchbeck, garnished with rubies, and tipped with kid, scented and ornamented in a fashion truly exquisite ;" and another, who is "a leading Roman Catholic," is delicately chaffed as having delivered his speech with an " extreme unction" which was "ominous of the speedy dissolution of the Government." If this is a "fair average sample of the average political speech of New South Wales," we feel that there may be lower depths than the Parnellitee and Mr. Labon- chore.
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