TOWN EDITION. PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

Evening Star, Issue 3804, 4 May 1875, Page 3

TOWN EDITION. PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

Tuesday, Mat 4. When the House met to-clay, there was, in consequence of Mr Gillies’s resignation, as intimated yesterday,-no Speaker (the member for Milton occupying a seat alongside of the member for W aihola), the Council was immediately requested by the head of the Government to proceed to _ the election of a successor to Mr Gillies. In proposing that Vir J. L. Gillies should again take the chair, the Provincial Secretary said he thought in doing so he would only bo giving effect to the wishes of a great majority of the Council. Members generally weie firmly persuaded that Mr Gillies had qualities which pointed to him as being in a very high degree fitted to fill the chair. At the close of the last session such was generally admitted, and he was not aware of anything having occurred in. the interval that was likely to alter the opinion that then prevailed. Such being the case, he submitted the question to the House, in order that it might have an opportunity of expressing its opinion as to whether the fact of Mr Gillies holding the office of Secretary to the Harbor Board was in any way likely to interfere with the proper discharge of his duties as Speaker. The Government, Mr Reid went on to say, had no st’ong feeling in the matter; but the' recognised that Mr Gillies had properly discharged the duties of Speaker—(“hear,” from Mr Green)-and they did not see that his holding his present office need be any bar to his holding the Speakership. The question was submitted to the Council in accordance with the late Speaker’s wish; and if the Council thought otherwise, Mr Gillies would, he believed, be satisfied with the decision come to. The nomination was seconded by thu Secretary for Goldfields, who thought if the right of Mr Gillies to hold a seat in the Council was admitted, his right to be appointed Speaker should also be conceded. After a few minutes’pause. Mr Fish rose and expressed his great regiet> from a poisonal point of view, at having to propose a name in opposition to Mr Gillies’s. He admitted with all sincerity Mr Gillies was better qualified—from his great experience as a politician, and the knowledge of parliamentary forms and precedents his previous occupancy of the chair had given him—than any other, member of the Council to fill the chair; but notwithstanding this, it would be a perfect scandal to the Province if, in the peculiar circumstances which surrounded the hon. member for Milton’s position, he was elected Speaker. He looked upon it as humiliating in the extreme for the head of the Government to have made such a proposition ; and it was a shameful disregard of the decencies of society that should not be tolerated, that a paid servant of the Harbor Board should he elected Speaker, The positions were incompatible. It was a solemn, hollow farce that the Speaker should resign to-day to be re-elected to-morrow. He could not conscientiously let pass the ‘ opportunity of recording his strong and earnest protest against someth'ttg, rgry closely approaching corruption in the State, and proposed that Mr M'Glashan should take the chair. Mr De Latour, in formally seconding the amendment, hoped a sense of the late Speaker’s merits rvould not overcome the Council’s sense of the requirements of the position ; and Mr Tuuton, while entertaining the highest respect for Mr Gillies as Sneaker' thought the circumstances in which the hon! non. gentleman stqod, it would be indecent for him to retain the Speakership. Speaking on behalf of his constituents, of the Province and dignity of the Council, ho did not think Mr Gdlies ought, und»r the circumstauces, to be ro elected. Then Mr M‘Glashan got up and disclaimed any knowledge that he was to be pronosed until he heard his name road that , , Som weeka a ff° ho intimated to dr Gillies that he thought, it incompatible he should hold the Speakership and the Secretaryship of the Harbor Board. He (Mr M’Glashan) omt 10 fill the position Uks I\lr Gillies, who had done his duty well, but since his name had brought forward he left himself in the hands of the Council— Mi Gillie- said that before applying f o r the Secretaryship of the. Harbor Board he made the Ordinance his study, and saw there was no thin" in ijj to militate against his accepting the Secretaryship or any other office under the Board, and at the same time holding his position as a member of the Board. Had it not been so < ho would not have applied for the position. With regard to Ids present position he had considered it his duty to resign, so as to give the Council an opnortunity of deciding whether he-, having accepted one position, _ they should exercise 'their right to appoint anotln r honorable member to the Speakership. To whoever was elected he yyomd give his heartiest support in carrying out the rules of the Houre, and in conducting its business with dignity and de•ioriua. Mr Bumsden moved the adjournment or the debate till to-morrow to give absent hon members an opportunity of expressinganopinion upon the Mr Green, in supportin'* the adjournment, said he Would feel it to be his duty to oppose Mr Gillies’s re election, though, to do so, would occasion him more regret than anything ho had done, since he held a seat ia the House. Vnd'ei- the circumstances oi Mr Gillies-s connection with the Harbor Board it would be an indignity to the House to »e-elect s P eakevß hip Mr Wood did not think the Council would in any way degrade itself m the estimation of this or any other community by calling any officer of the Harbor Board to preside oyer its deliberations. After some remarks^by the Provincial Secretary, the motion for adjournment was carried. . na,lie of Mr Reeves was accidentally omitted from the list of members present at the opening yesterday.