THE FIJIAN PARLIAMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 3244, 14 July 1873, Page 3

THE FIJIAN PARLIAMENT.

The Fiji Times comments as follows:—The undignified and abrupt termination of the sessi u just closed was only in keeping with the session itself. The proceedings throughout were mixed with much that was farcical, personal, and ridiculous: and the result for good of the session has been - nil. The House has been brought into contempt by sending conversation lozenges to the Premier, and moving that the “document” be read; by the solemn assurance of the Premier when he gravely told the House that there were eight hundred prisoners of war at Nadi, awaiting directions from the Government, but the House bad not *een fit to give the Government the necessary power to dispose of them, by passing the Martial Law Districts Act. Those eight hundred prisoners were pigs ; and their capture, if such a number was really caught, \yaa uaed for, we can imagine, no qthpr purpose than that of misleading the House anil the country. Then the House took exception, and justly, to an article in last Saturday’s Gazette , and had the writer brought up to the bar. But it was disappointed of its quarry, for instead of finding that the Premier or Chief Secretary was the author, it proved to have been written by Mr Rider, the Clerk of the House, in his position as editor of the papeij. The House was not in good humor, and asked for vengeance on the writer; it was asked that he should be fined heavily, and then sent to a common prison ; but the better judgment of sqm? prevailed, and iie was to be (?ept in the custody of tqe, Sergeant-at-Arms during the pleasure of the House, The experiment of self-government in our small community has not been altogether a happy one, The constituent members of the body politic have not been of a character to secure that cohesion in the mass, which was necessary to build up a firm and substantial edifice. Petty jealousy, say some, has been allowed to interfere with the builders of a fabric, now apparently tottering and weak ; the class of builders has been the great drawback to the success of the whole scheme, is the opinion of a large number both in and out of Fiji.