POLITICAL NEWS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3158, 11 August 1881, Page 3

POLITICAL NEWS.

[BY TELEGRAPH.]

(FROM OTJB OWN CORRESPONDENT.) Wellington, August 11. The House is in a very bad temper over the manner in which replies have been given respecting the arrival of the Wakatipu. It was rumored yesterday that the Premier, acting in the capacity of Minister of Public Works, and Mr Maxwell, the General Manag?r of Railways, had a dispute, with the result that Mr Maxwell sent in his resignation. The report of the committee on the New Plymouth harbor works is of a very sweeping and condemning character. After reviewing the circumstances under which an enormous sum of public money has been literally thrown into the sea, the report concludes by stating that the results from the proposed works would be altogether inadequate to the expenditure required, and as but a very limited sum, not exceeding £5000, has been expended upon the breakwater apart from the plant, the committee recommend the Legislature to at once take steps to stop the further progress of the works, to take over the assets and the liabilities, and after providing for the latter to devote the land fund to its ordinary purposes. It was understood that, at a meeting of the Goldfields Committee held on Tuesday morning (Mr Reid in tbe chair), the question of the abolition or reduction of the gold duty came on for discussion. After the matter had been pretty fully debated, the question was put to the vote, when there voted for the total abolition Messrs Weston, Pyke, De Lautour, and J. C. Brown, and for a reduction Messrs Hirst, Seddon. and Gibbs.