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Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1524, 21 August 1912, Page 4

The member for Patea, Mr. Pearce, turned a point against the member for Lyttelton very neatlylast evening. Mr. Laurenson, who is one of the strongest advocates of the leasehold in Parliament, seized the opening made by Mr. Craigie to put in a few words in support of this form of tenure and to show cause for the faith that is in him told a story. He recalled an incident of his early youth in Scotland, which he said had made so deep an impression on him that he had determined that when he came to this new land lie would fight unwaveringly for the leasehold form of tenure in connection with all Crown lands. The incident in question ypkterl |o an old lady who had gouo to the

owner of the land she rented to ask some favour or concession, and had been refused. The poor old creature had pulled her shawl over her face and gone home disappointed and despairing. Mii.- Laurenson told the story very well, and with a proper j mournfiilness, and everybody felt very sorry for the old lady in her disappointment. But so far from illustrating the merits of the leasehold, the anecdote, as Mil. Pearce promptly pointed out, went in quite the opposite direction. Under the frajlibld tenure such an incident could never have occurred. The policy of the ltcform party was to give the old lady and everyone else who desired it the right to the freehold of their land. Mr. Lauhenson looked rather uncomfortable under the member for Patea's dissection of his pathetic little story'. Perhaps the member for Lyttelton dragged in the wrong anecdote—the. one lie quoted mav have been designed to point another moral altogether. Under the protection of his Parliamentary privilege, Mr. L. M. Isitt last evening delivered another of his bitter and vindictive personal attacks on The Dominion, and those associated with it. It is the class of thing wc have grown accustomed to from members of his type. Mr. Isitt's habitual intemperance of speech and the hitter personal hostility he so frequently displays when subjected to criticism have of late made his rising in the House a signal for an exodus of those members who resent tho lowering of the tone of Parliament by such outbursts. His behaviour last evening was such that he not only had to be called to order by Mr. Speaker for the use of language derogatory to Parliament, but later on, out of a House of 80 members, only a bare quorum of 20 members reassembled after the supper adjournment when he continued his diatribe. This stinging rebiiko from his fellow members shonld have a wholesome effect on assisting Mr. Isitt to realise that the road to respect in Parliament is not paved with vituperation and . slander. • ■