ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 3301, 18 September 1873, Page 3

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

. AN AMUSING SPEECH. Mr Andrew, in supporting the second reading of the Provinces Borrowing Bill is reported to have said : “If the Government depended on carrying the Bill by means of votes, not arguments, they had shown themselves bad tacticians in not having their votes in readiness.—(Laughter.) The Government professed to have attained equilibrium. There were two kinds of equilibrium —stable and dynamic. The first was due to the centre of gravity being within the base of support, the second was owing to the conservation of the axis of rotation. They had an instance of it in the bicycle, another in the common top. He. would ask the Government which kind of equilibrium was that which they bad attained. Was it that they had found a support, or was it that their 1 ideas on Provincial institutions Svere in a constant and violent whirl ? {Loud applause.) I It was all very well to talk of abolishing the Provinces, but it is not so easy. At the time when Mr Fitzherbert was elected to the Superintendency, a gentleman who did not now occupy a seat in the House had written to him t© come down and hold the funeral service over it. He had come down, but found that the Province was not dead. , It was no common artist, no common carpenter, who bad taken in hand to revive it. After a month or so it waa alive again, imposing taxes with renewed vigor.—(Applause.) He would vote for the Bill, as git was a step towards abolishing Provinces ; he could not see why it should not next borrow for municipalities and individuals. The Provinces were too nearly related to the Government to do business with it. Their ( coming to the Assembly to get loans authorised was a parallel case to young ladies coming to their papa to borrow money to make themselves attractive on the security ,of their future husbands. It had beou said

with truth that the Government had no backbone. They did not indeed belong to the order of vertebratea ; they belonged to that of crmtacece. They had a shell that no taunts could pierce.—(Applause.) If the Government had no backbone, however, the Opposition had no head.—(Applause.) He bore in mind the line “Great Jove is down, confusion reigns instead,” and would therefore vote with the Government.—(Loud applause.) •