The Dominion FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1909. BAD METHODS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 692, 17 December 1909, Page 6

The Dominion FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1909. BAD METHODS.

-The proceedings in the House of Representatives after midnight on Wednesday were thoroughly; discreditable to the House. ■. The Government, of course, must bear a large measure of the.blame that i,B due to the revival of the worst kind of. ''legislation '• by exhaustion," but the final responsibility; lies with the Houso itself. The members' on the* Opposition benches might, of course, as one of the Ministerialist spokesmen frankly suggested, have held their tongues, but it is difficult to feel that the proper performance of their.' political obligations is an offensive thing.. The public is profoundly uni interested in the attempts to show that I resistance to the Ministry's driving tactics is ; reprehensible,' and Ministers and their/friends, are simply 'wasting- their time—hot to mention the public's timein saying that any member is an enemy of the people when he.strives to ensure the proper conduct of Parliamentary business. There are sis sitting days leit to Parliament, and in those ■ six days members are expected to transact a mass of business which could not receive proper'attention in much less than as many weeks.: In other words, the programme of business; which the Pbime Minister announced yesterday afternoon is a programme for a good part s of a session.) The Native Land Bill and the Defence. Bill aro each of sufficient importance to require at least a week's consideration. The first-named measure is a. consolidation of a multitude,of conflicting and contradictory enactments which the Native Land Commission frankly declared , to bo something like ■ an impenetrable jungle of incomprehensibility. .There is probably only, one European member, Mlk' Heuries, capable of understanding or criticising the details of this.Billto ask any other European membor to apeak about'it at short notice is as absurd'as to ask a child to discuss New-' TON'S; Principia. '.'. The. Defence Bill, troducos the greatest social innovation of our time. Although we have'recommended a great temporary sacrifice of the liberty' of criticism in the interest of , the/momentous principle of .this Bill, we are-:still freo .to., say. that it. is most Improper, that a wwwuto of snob vast

importance should be mado one: • of > dozen Bills to bo dealt with by a House that has lost its power to legislate and ; that is'physically and mentally exhausted, and is asked to do six weeks', business in six days. Of the many Bills which it,is proposed to. cram through the House, there :aro few that can be considered above the need for criticism; some of them involve points that should bo discussed fully and carefully, and without heat or haste. In addition to this mass of legislation,. there aro yet to be dealt with tho bulk of the Consolidated Estimates, tho Public Works Statement and Estimates, and tho Supplementary Estimates. ' Attention has to be given, also, to the report of the Police Commission, to tho proposed increase of the already high Customs tariff and to tho trouble in the Land and Incomo Tax Department, How can Parliament dp, all these things in six days, when the thermometer is near the nineties, and physical unfitness conspires with personal anxieties to render the bulk of the legislators ihcapablo of giving proper attention to anything at all? It is not yet too late to make a protest that,will bo heard and approved even by a public that has already caught the infection of the coming Christmas season.