WELLINGTON GOSSIP.

Evening Star, Issue 3888, 10 August 1875, Page 2

WELLINGTON GOSSIP.

{From our own Correspondent.)

Wellington, August 8. Numerous and terrible were the jokes cracked over the fire, or, rather, singeing at Parliament Houae.on Wednesday evening. Cause—smoke —for there really was no fire—originating in an overheated flue in the narrow corridor immediately behind the Speaker’s chair, which flue came into contact with a loose piece of board, which had inadvertently been laid across it. Effects various, aud mostly indescribable ; but the only serious one a little disturbance, in which some decidedly unparliamentary language was used, nearly provoking an appeal to fisticuffs between a member of the Press and a well-known member of the Civil Service, The effects made to extinguish the fire were rather ludicrous in some oases ; and they have been described by a hand not unknown to the readers of the Stab " The Government officials, with the assistance of several of the members belonging to the engineering profession, notably one of Dunedin’s members, got out a hose, which would play when anybody could be got to play with it. On the present occasion everybody meant business, so the hose discharged itself of the water somewhere about its middle, instead of playing at the nozzle. The fire was discovered to be underneath a lobby in the right wing of the building; and the hose having been taken through, endeavors were made to stop up the leak with a doormat, but that was found not to succeed, and the engineering members gave orders for buckets, After the lapse of some, time, during which a person might have borrowed half-a-dozen utensils without * turning a hair,’ an official arrived with a tin pail, which was immediately taken possession of by one of the engineering members; although, being empty, it was practically useless. At juncture, a hose-reel and some firemen arrived on the scene. One length of the hose was rolled off by the combined efforts of the officials, firemen, and engineering members, when it was discovered that they had got the wrong length, and the right length was therefore taken off and carried into the lobby, which by the way, at this time, had come to be as mysteriously inviting to the onlookers as the morgue to Parisian citizens. And the fire wus ultimately extinguished. The general senso of humor was somewhat tickled at the peril in which the building had been placed, and jokes were made with the greatest recklessness, Two or three gentlemen hit upon one joke at the same time: that some ultra provincialist had made an attempt suddenly to abolish the House of Representatives ; and a member of the fourth estate, of the Jefferson Brick order, grimly suggested that it was a gunpowder plot No. 2.” The short debate on Thursday on the constitutional question served one good purpose, viz., to show beyond a'l question that Mr Prendergfvst’s opinion has ever been that since 1868 the Assembly has the fullest power to abolish Provinces. Quite correct was Sir George Grey iu saying that he never stated to the contrary ; and equally true was Mr Stafford’s observation that it was rather unfortunate that the impression should have gone forth, and be published without contradiction, that Sir George Grey had said the late Attorney-General had at one time or other given a contrary opinion to that the Government laid on che table the other day. In the short speech he made, Mr Stafford brought out these facts very prominently : That it was prior to the passing of the Imperial Act of 1868—which the Government now rely on—that Mr Prendergast explained to Sir George the meaning of "Abolition of Provinces” to be the alteration of Provincial boundaries. It was the doubts raised by Mr Prendergast that induced Mr Stafford to draw up the memorandum which led to the passing of the Imperial Act of 1868, and the object of which was avowi dly, as explained to the Attorney-General when he was asked to give his "serious consideration” to the draft Act the Imperial Government sent out to the Colony, to give to the Assembly th© fullest power to legislate in the matter of the Provinces.

There is a pretty little quarrel just now between the Auckland Government and the General Government. Subject: the Mangere bridge, of which Mr Richardson says in the plainest terms the Auckland Executive were consenting parties to th» cost 'of construction being charged against the loan of LGO,OOO voted by the Assembly for the construction of roads in the north of Auckland ; and the • Auckland Executive, headed by Mr Gillies, the late Superintendent, say In their turn that they never heard of such a proposal before. Mr Richardson repeats his assertion, with these additions, that the credit of the Government, pledged by a previous Government, necessitated the going on with a work which, personally, he would never have undertaken ; that not only were the Auckland Government continually pressing him to go on with it, but when the tenders were L 1,500 m excess of the Engineers estimate, Mr Gillies telegraphed that *‘my Executive recommend the acceptance of the tendersbut new sought to shelter himself under the plea that he was not included in the term “my Executive,” because he wgs opposed to tho work. That question apart, • here is this grave point for the Committee to whom the matter has been referred to decide; who has told the lie, for a gross on# has been told by someone. Mr Fyke will live in the memory of many people for the extremely s&vage and vulgar speech he made on the second reading of the Deceased Wife’s Sister Marriage Bid, lire ladies paid the member a fitting compliment. When he said the next step should be to legalise polygamy, or permit polyandry, the ladies in a body retired from their gallery. The member for Wakatipu deserves a leather medal suitably inscribed.