A VISIT TO THE HALL OF TALK.

Evening Star, Issue 3520, 5 June 1874, Page 2

A VISIT TO THE HALL OF TALK.

Few persons who depend solely on the newspaper reports for their knowledge of the proceedings of the Provincial Council have any idea of the immense amount of enjoyment that is to be derived from a visit to the Chamber. If they would consider that a speech, of perhaps an hours duration, is cut and carved by those abominable reporters until the substance of it W compressed into a dozen lines, they must have the conclusion forced upon them that however little thought may have been contained in the rejected portions of the speeches, there must of necessity ha,vo been in them a considerable amount of food for reflection. Having a spare evemng last week, I took a stroll Into the Council Chamber, more, by the wav. to have a. look at the faces of old friends than to listen to their speeches, for I was totally ignorant of the nature of the business which tom th! subject of deliberation. I soon learnt, however from the speech o a gentleman who was on his Cnte^ d) and who 'vidently waa master de la grand tour— nevermind the gender • , of t K e goldfields, that the question under oonT aS a n ? otl ? 11 filing reference to the •ale of auriferous lauds, which had been tabled °t f heotherM Leans” (“TheM'Lean” is absent at present on a yachting expedition) who had just concluded his speech! When the for M h j! d T u i cet , tones of th ® member Ida had escaped by th. ventilator, there arose yes ~ there arose e speaker of the night. Geography, entoology, horticulture, and prosody, and all the otner parts of speech into which human thought or language can possibly be divided, were drawn upon by the hon. member; impossible problems m geometry, of which nobody had over heard, were rapped out with great gusto, “ There is,” (

said he, a problem in geometry which it is impossible to solve—which never has been solved—which never will be solved. I mean the probkm of ‘‘howto find the centre of a 2l rc i. • 0 r^ )elßon w h° occupied my seat, the solution of that problem was no very difficult matter, because from that position the hon. member himself was seen to occupy the centre of an admiring circle,” within the circumference which might be seen four smiling reporters selvmg another great and impossible problem by sitting round a square tableculling the square” if not “squaring the circle. Slipping from geometry, he leaped to the summits of the Hills, where the poor u(SS®r was depicted as being denied the luxury of a newspaper, and having the world entirely ou ,t j 1 ? m > * n a w orse plight than Milton (1 don t mean the constituency repro* sented by the hon. the Speaker) 'who had the world shut out only at one entrance. He was described as being in a state of complete ignorance, and, in effect, as being one “ Who answers nothing that you axes; But earns his tucker and pays taxes And contrasted with the working men of cities and towns, who were said “ To have their daily papers local, And nearly all things reciprocal,” whatever they may mean. After this, either the Speaker or myself must nave slumbered, for I was quite confused some* how or other, and there entered my ears a jumble of all sorts of things earthly tabor* nacles, soul aud body, clay and marl, gold and quicksilver, amalgamation and etherialization. i ready think I must hare fallen asleep, for the next thing I remember was the Mayor of Port Lh aim era Hughmg down large trees which had been grown out of the solid rock by the previous speaker by means of asscfiisttA immigration. A person sitting next me ejaculated, “Oh, Darm-it / he joking again. ” I politely informed him that the speaker’s name was M'Dermid, not ODermid; he replied, “Ohl I beg your pardon, and laughed. His Worship having delivered himself of the inevitable “blossom as the rose,” which seems to be an adjunct as necessary to the speech of a representative for Port Chalmers as “Amen” is to the prayer of the honorable the Speaker, made way for another honorable member (from Ireland, I believe), who requested the House to adjourn in order to give him time to look up some statistics. The House wouldn’t adjourn, however, and then a dolorous voice was heard informing the ’ouao in a sort of mgeen scripture that he was of opinion that the days of his borrowing were nearly bended, ’ and moved that “land ought not to be sold, and that a land and income tax ought to be imposed.” The Provincial Solicitor agreed with the amendment—quoted Stuart Mill and an Essay on Population, which was written long before the Provincial Solicitor termed an item of any population, by a reverend Mr Malthus, who, having remembered how Sarah “ had pleasure when she was old, is said to have advocated the separation of married couples of ages similar to hers in the English loorhouses in order to prevent the increase of a pauper popula- * n L j la was nofc Hue, however. After further discussion, the question was put anil lost, fourteen voting for aud seventeen against the amendment. I just glanced at the minority, and could not help thinking that a land and income tax, if imposed, would not press very heavily upon those who composed it. ihe Speaker adjourned the House for ten minutes, when I retired, having spent an evening not altogether in vain. . X.