The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1877-05-15 00:00:00

GOSSIP OF THE TIMES.

Just as everybody thought that the Irrepressible Mr.
Walker was done for at last, and laid decently to rest, with
his squibs and his Synopsis A. on his political coffin, he
bounces up win like a Clown in the pantomime, with a
' Here we are again !" and we are threatened with another
fight. Mr. Midshipman ltobinson, whoee debts had been
paid, and who had been mourned as "having met his
death in the sepulchre of his forefathers," was not a more
startling apparition to his comforted heir-at-law than Mr.
Walker redirirui on the political stage. For, as Midship-
man John Robinson's heir exclaimed :
. . . .

O;ebody read,
In some newspaper that you were dead.
" I'm not dead at all, says Jerk Robinson. And '
so says Mr. Walker. For Mr. E. Martin, thinking
perhaps merely to pronounce that life was extinct, as the
doctors do, rather roughly turned over the prostrate form
of Mr. Walker, when up starts our Tear'in, and, behold! I
"There's life in the old boy yet !" But Mr. Walker,
entitled as he is to Mr. Roebuck's cognomen, will have •
tough foe in Mr. E. Martin, if we don't mistake, and the ,
burgesses and ratepayers will watch this new tussle with I
intereet. Mr. Walker says he was the means of reducing I
Weymouth pooreate from 2s. to Is. in the L. I had heard
something like that before, but could not understand it, ,
and Mr. Martin gives it the "correction direct," whereon
Mr. Walker, rather more neatly than he sometimes
writes, informs Mr. Martin thee he is" quite wrong,"
explains his assertion, and "thereon issue is joined." It ,
is • very pretty quarrel as it stands, and though the
sympathies of many Weymouth people will be with that
fine old Weymoutbian, Mr. Martin. hot Conservative
though he is at election times,—get I must hasten with
my' proclamation of neutrality, to promise both parties
a "fair field and no favour in the columns of the Pi:Jeans,
and may the best man win. For the matter is very ini•
portant to the retepayers, and we ought to have it out.
If Mr. Walker has saved the Weymouth-side people half
• poor's rats, they ought to give him a testimonial, and a
handsome one, too, but if Mr. Walker i. drawing on his
imagination for his facts, why! have at him, Mr. Martin
and, with or without the two pins (politically) punch his
head ! Figuratively, of course, I mean, and perhaps
while the discussion is going on, the parties had better
remain on different sides of the Bridge.
It is • noteworthy fact that no one has arisen to dispute
Mr. Walker's claim that he was the means of reducing
Melcombe Regis poor's rate from 1. to ls. 2d. True, an
overseer has told me—" No such thing; the reduction
was caused by something else.' What that something
else was, I have not been clearly told, and Mr. Walker's
bitterest foes seem to shun the subject—
" Like one, that, on a lonesome road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."
We really ought not to lie under an obligation to such •
person as Mr. Walker, without acknowledging it, and that
in some substantial way. It is enough to tempt anyone
to mischief if he is cheated out of credit he really deserves
as Mr. Walker would be by some fast-talking people if he
really did effect this reduction; while if be really has no
claim to this credit, the lion's skin should be pulled over
his ears, and he sent about his business in or out of the
town. "Dew tell ;" somebody !

For it is not a fit reward to keep Mr. Walker in the
Council, "anyway you can fix it Mr. Walker is there
the representative of the Park, and, so far as the Park
interests clash with those of the general body of rate-
payers, Mr. Walker is, and must he (politically and
municlPallY only) the public enemy. Perhaps the
oddest suggestion was that ha should be made an alder-
man, a sensible thing enough if the aldermen met in a
separate chamber, and conducted themselves after the
style of the House of lox*. But our sidemen aft With