Parliamentary Sketches

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 73, 8 December 1887, Page 3

Parliamentary Sketches

I By Oub Wellington Watchman. ; If one were to turn the whole ParI liamentary • business, into farce under soine such title as -jPame Zealandjia's School, scant injustice would be done ito the actors therein. Our House reminds me of nothing quite so much as a dame's school of an inferior type, of which Major Atkinson is the dominant i and Yogel the deposed " cock." At- | kinson'B mental attitude may be described as that of the small boy who, ■ having worsted his rival, and having .' most of the other small boys at bis ] back, places his finger to his nose, i after the fashion of the Parisian 1 gamin, and grinning at his antagonist : Ba y 8 _« Yah !" Yogel, on the other i hand, murmurs shrill defiance, as the : juvenile who says—" Wait until my i hand gets well, and then just see what a licking I will give you!" While Kumara Seddon— a fat, bursting sort of a boy in a tight packet — j skirmishes round at a safe distance, metaphorically, and actually bellowing out—" Come on ! Come on ! " Politically, I take Sir Julius to be dead as Julius Ceesar. Indeed he is deader; men still read die late Mr Caesar's commentaries, while the commentaries of poor Sir Julius fall flat on inattentive ears. # * # # I have never believed in Sir Julius Yogel as a politician, nor have I ever had a very exalted idea of his cleverness as a statesman, but I certainly opined he was a clever man of the world ; but a man who does not know how philosophically to accept defeat cannot be truly characterised as clever. Mr Fish is a new member, though few would suspect it. To say that Mr Fish's manner is confident, and that Mr Fish speaks as one having authority, would be to do that-estim-able Dunedinite an utter '. injustice. Mr Fish has the colossal cheek of an Egyptian statue; the oracle of Delphi would have been silent, had he, she, or it ever listened to the oracularity of Fish ; and Solon would have taken a very back seat in the pit, had he heard the words of wisdom perpetually j distilling from the lips of this Otago Hi Ham in a dingy frock and a festooned watch chain. " I deny !" " I believe !" "I am satisfied !" " I djftj. approve !" are some of the lofty expressions which escape from this rather common common-councilman. But Fish will make his mark in New Zealand politics, if monumental impudence, a dysentrio fluency, and an impervions cuticle are — and I think they are— factors of success. # .#.-•■#■ # ■ Mr Cockatoo Turnbull followed Fish with his sagacious poll on one side, and with a mute entreaty in his eye that someone would please scratch it. He did not, he said, apropos to some interjection by the Windy Phenomenon, " believe in plucking a bird before it was ripe, no matter how ardent these young spirits may be." In other words Mr Turnbull did not believe the time was ripe to force on a revision of the tariff with a view, to that prohibition which some of our misguided politicians misname protection. Mr Turnbull is right, the time for prohibitive protection is not ripe, and the sun is not yet built that will ripen it. At the same time I did not quite understand what Mr Turnbull meant by talking about a ripe bird. I tiust that this was not his parliamentary method of calling the rhenomenon a decomposed goose. # # # # Mr Barron, a. gentleman of an exquisite dignity, connected, I believe with the manufacture or sale of preserves, may be described in the vernacular of the period, as a ' jammy' senator.