AN ABSURD SUGGESTION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1041, 4 January 1884, Page 4

AN ABSURD SUGGESTION.

' The, Marquis of Lome is fairly outdona His Lordship recently proposed that the affairs of the colonies should be disposed of by a Federal Council sitting in London. We analysed that piecious scheme with our habitual candor, as soon as we heard of it; and we need not say anything more about it. Mr William Hay, lately a member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, has now written to the Times to propound a still more brilliant scheme. Re thinks the way to settle the colonial question and to maintain satisfactory relations between the mother country and .the colonies, is to create “ colonial life peerages ”! This means that a certain number of prominent colonists, presumed, we suppose, to be representative men, are to be elevated to the House of Lords. Their title and privHejges are to be theirs for life only, and are not to descend to their posterity as in the case of British peers,. They are, in fact, to hold a position very similar to that of Irish and Scotch representative peers, and they are to give attention to colonial questions in the Upper House of Parliament. A very nice, little pleasant arrangement, truly, —especially, for the lucky fellows who should have influence of,- imnjudenGe- or;- money enough to gef thferiselveS.chosen for the life peerage. xtaKQuld be a fine thing for the bloated squatter,' the successful land shark, the lucky moneylender, the blatant ’adventurer, to become Lord Lowngwool, Lord Swampton, Lord Screwcash, or Lord Brazenjaw, respectively, and for their wives to be peeresses, and their sons and daughters “honorables.” But where'the benefit to the colonies would come in, we confess we are quite unable to see. Really, it is hard to, blame the English papers for setting colonists down as snobs and prigs, when the .leading meh- among them, or those who pass for leading men, deliberately propose such schemes as this. Fancy CQlqnists seeking to be represented by cqjppjsts in the .House of Lords, at the very time 'when they are seriously thinking of abolishing the Upper Chamber in their own Legislature, and when there is a growing feeling even m England in favor of doing away with the House of Lords itself! We do not know in the least who Mr William Hay is, and we need not express our opinion of. him. He has written himself down as an ass.— Titnaru Herald.