Federal Council.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 185, 5 February 1895, Page 2

Federal Council.

CRITICISMS BY SIR H. PARKES. (.Per Press Association). Melbourne, February 4. The Argus says that the confusion at Hobart suggests the unfitness of some of the present leaders in Federal matters for the work that lies before them. A broad road is ahead when once the stream is crossed, but if the bridge builders are petty minded and jealous we _hall have no bridge. It is to the credit of nearly all the Premiers that we are able to say that they have been conciliatory throughout. The basis of the election of the convention by the people must be considered acceptable, as it recognises the necessity of beginning at the beginning, but the limitation of the number of members from each colony to ten is regarded as questionable, there being a danger that all the ten will be elected on the ticket of an easily worked minority in the cities. A large gathering of true representatives is more likely to provide good work than a small body composed very probably of political filibusters. Sydney. This Day Sir H. Parkes says he does not think the proposals of the Premier's Conferference for a convention is serious. He considers it preposterous to talk about a mob of people making a convention for a State. It is remarkable that only three Premiers were agreed on the question, and the three who did agree are distinguished for bidding low for support and declining to take instructions from wiser men than themselves. They are three wandering lawyers who have met to make a constitution for all Australia in disparagement of a convention of statesmen elected for that purpose from all parts of Australia. Mr Reid, the Premier of N.S.W., had proved himself utterly incapable of understanding the functions of which he has undertaken the charge, and is utterly unworthy of support. Sir H. Parkes does not want to return to office himself, but he believes he could weld the Colonies into a substantial and permanent union, and that in a short time. He is in favor of one straight course completing the work of the Federal Convention of 1891. Most of the members of the late Dibbs Ministry strongly condemn the Premier's Conference as unauthorised, and the scheme proposed as crude, ineffective and calculated to wreck federation.