PARLIAMENTARY GOSSIP.

Evening Star, Issue 3278, 22 August 1873, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY GOSSIP.

(BV OUR Sl'F.ciaL 1! KPO UTI’K. )

WELLIN GTON, August IS I suppose you expected my budget by last steamer, but I saw nobbing sufficiently eventful to induce me to hurry in my ua; ration of Parliamentary details ; and this more especially as I gave you considerable items of more or less pungency and interest by wire daily. Fortunately for correspondents the wire saves them half their trouble, enabling them to have more time at their disposal than the editor of a daily, or a horse engaged in the equine exhili rating business of turning a pug mill or a puddling machine. You will see from your Wellington files that the Superintendent of Wellington and his lieutenant, the Provincial Secretary of the Province, have been dilating at some length on the proposals introduced by the Premier relative to borrowing on Provincial securities. The great difficulty the Province of Wellington experiences is this—it has to acquire the securities by purchase it would have to hypothecate. Of course it is no matter to the South what Fitzherbert may say, whether he speaks seven hours as last session, or four hours as in this one. His diffuseness is something wonderful and abhorrent. If he has a point to make he spreads it over a quarter of an hour’s conversation, so that the point sought to be thrust prominently forward is lost in the multitude of his amplification. His speeches want boiling down or subjecting to a kind of mental hydraulic pressure. This question of Provincial borrowing will cause a considerable amount of angry discussion; and as I telegraphed you, an effort may be made by the Northern members to sec what can bo done to insure insular separation. The Goldfields Committee, I believe, has ;ften resembled a bear garden, goldfields members, as a rule, often being of a peculiar and pugnacious character. Some of them lack rudimentary, as well as political educa tion. Uncouth is a bear, or a goldfields member in Victoria in days of the past, has been a common saying. There are several points of difference between our various Colonial Legislatures. In Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, members at times indulge in pugilism, pugilistic and profane language, and get up occasionally, and call each other d d liars. There is nothing of this kind in our New Zealand Legislature, only occasional scathing sarcasm, and au abundance of superfluous talk. The debating power, however, of the New Zealand farJiaincnfc is inferior to that of Vicooria and New South Wales. We stick and haggle more for ceremony than our Australian neighbors. What kind of legislative arena it would have become had an Australian element not been imported into it, is almost impossible to divine, unless something of a fossiliferous character. V\ e know something of driving cattle, sheep, horses and men in the South, but the people in the North go in for driving timber —and this in a peculiar manner. To avoid cartage of kauri and totara to saw-mills, the following method is adopted. Logs are cut on the banks of small creeks, and rolled together in their beds in which large dam are constructed containing many millions of gallons of water. These dams are cut away when the requisite number of logs are collected, and aie driven by sheer aqueous force to their destination. The flood submerges the low laud, destroys utterly the creek, all vegetation ou its banks, and the previously peaceful and pleasing valley becom-.s in a few aours, from the dam to the destination of ffie logs, a hideous wilderness. More small settlements are growing alongside these creeks in the Northern Island ; fell mongers pursue their callings there, and other occupations incident to peopling new lands are pursued. Now, on the Coromandel Peninsula, a firm called Harris have a large and prosperous saw-milling establishment ; and either an individual or a firm higher up the valley wants to have the privilege of driving timber past the mill of Harris and Co. to the sea or elsewhere. Hence the origin of two things : the purchase of the chance of a constituency in the North Island, and the introduction of the Floatage of Timber Bill into the House. A new Bill was introduced ohis day, and rumor says it is the fifth of the genus that has been drafted.

bir Francis Dillon Bell has been cultivating financial calculations daring the recess, lie infoims the public the result of one of those investigations has been that the working man has received L 400.000 from his employer more during the current year, or in the year just past, than in the previous one. It would have been very interesting to the public to know the arithmetical method hy which the Speaker arrived at the conclusion. Indeed, it is a very curious inquiry how he could arrive at any conclusion on any subject. He indulges in a mental kind of pitch and toss —the heads have it the first time; but he is dissatisfied, and spins his mental coin again, and when tails turn up he shakes bis head and throws the coppers again into the air, and so continues doing until you are in doubt yourself as to what he means, and begin questioning whether he is only a juggler tossing about balls to show the quickness of his mental vision and sleight of band. You had better copy from the Independent the mode of Mr Fitzherbert’s speech.