PARLIAMENTARY GOSSIP.

Evening Star, Issue 3281, 26 August 1873, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY GOSSIP.

(BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER.)

Weuinotox, August 20. Toil will see from the order papers the daily pressure of business before the House. You will also see by your exchanges how ittle of the business is daily got over. The time of the House is taken up mainly by asking questions, obtaining answers, ami long palavers on notices of motion. There was an astute American at one period who said that, for conversational success, the conversationalist should take care only to speak on those subjects with which ho was well acquainted. He has even advised his pupils to read up for the purpose, and told them to carefully ca'culato the nature of the audience they intended to delight. Well, many of our members have each a little conversational speciality of their own, with whose peculiarities they are well acquainted, and this, their special knowledge, they display on every available occasion. Some have an antidote for murrain in cattle; some have water ‘for goldfields on the brain ; one or more may have a weakness for advertising s'-guinea Lincoln ram-lamhs, or 500-guinca bulls; others delight in law reform; a few have Maori proc'ivilies and dream of miscegenation ; others are afflicted with gold duty reduction ; a few imagine an utopia for whisky drinkers ; another goes in for factory girls and regulating universities ; some have selfassertiveness in view; others imagine classic localities such as Mount Ida or the Avon the centre and support of the Southern Hemisphere, One such individual the astute Yankee held up as an illustration of an objectionable conversationalist, who always had an evil habit of descanting on the strength of the man w ho carried away the gates of Gaza, and who was only put down by Doing told that he was a stronger man than Samson, as he always had a knack of lugging Samson into the presence of his friends by the head and shoulders. Samson is very often lugged in here- in season and out of seasop—snd tipworst qf such lugging in is that he i» not the representative strong man, but the strongman only of Ihe village or constituency. There are others, like the hon. member for Auckland City west evidently born objectors, who like patentees, or inventors, consider their own special Morrison pill the panacea for all disease, and their own particular idea the summit of all wisdom. Others are, again, embryonic law-makers, and as such will so remain. Those arc some of the reasons why the annual murder of innocents takes place, and why floods of little Bills are resuscitated from their graves annually. The result of this Samson Agonisles business is that a lot of matter on the papers will he no nearer consummation or solution at the end of the session than at the present time. One thing is very palpable, all the parish work of the House cannot be done in the Assembly. Why should half-an-hour’s time of seventy or eighty men be spent in listening to the question whether Nasoby should have a new court-house, or the Duuatan a lunatic asylum. If a man has a jaundiced horse, or children suffering from diptheria, he comes to Parliament asking advice in distress, or a prayer for a remedy, to be printed at the expense of the country. I have been as rabid a centralist as New Zealand possessed; but I here make a rmblic recantion of my error. Parish work cannot be done in Parliament, or it must be kept in session all the year round. The policy of “equilibrium” is tho thing : rendering to Provinces things Provincial, and to the General Government things only of general importance. If these things continue, soup tickets for pauper Maories and miners will yet be solicited from the Ministry, and the culinary comfort of Joe Brown or Takainoana made the pretext for the change of political opinion. All this is patent, or, in the words of the Speakerlast night, “ when a thing is understood it is understood.”

As far as order shows to 7.30, nothing of any note occurs save what you got from Meagrs Reid and Gillies by wire, until you come to Mr Bradshavy’s question about the University matter, which I failed to follow cr know anything at ail about. Mr Reid deserves the thanks Of Otago and the country for putting his foot on the truck system, and drawing attention to the necessity of regulating the management of coal mines. The great necessity of for the proper management of coal mining is a task worthy of the highest philanthropist or tho most

ambitious politician. The subject is so difficult to deal with ia a satisfactory manner, contains such a multitude of contingencies to provide for, such manifold danger? to guard agains f , that half a century’s British experience ha? failed to place the thing on a satisfactory basis. At 8.30 vve got to the eighth clause of the Permissive Bill, and as this tippling Bill will take a week your reporter will adjourn.