SCENE IN THE NEW SOUTH WALES LEGISLATURE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 590, 10 May 1876, Page 3

SCENE IN THE NEW SOUTH WALES LEGISLATURE.

At five o’clock on the morning of April 20th (says the Sydney Echo) the Legislative Assembly Chamber of New South Wales bad the appearance of a taproom rather than that of a chamber in which the representatives of the people had met to sensinly deliberate and conduct the public business. The floor was littered with torn paper, sickly, yellow faced, and unkempt members lay or sat about the benches, while one or other of them talked anything, and jokes and bursts of laughter were as common and as frequent as they are in the smoking room. The Go vernment were determined to press Mr Dibbs’s motion respecting the agreement between them and the Bank of New booth Wales to a division, and the Opposition, oi the few of them that were in the chamber, were equally determined that the Hou=e should not go to a division until the motion had been debated. Thus a trial of physical strength was commenced and maintained, the Government and their supporters having the advantage of the others by net fatiguing themselves with speaking. Counts-out were attempted numbers of times, but always unsuccessfully, and the greatest rubbish was talked. Shortly before 5 o’clock the motion that the debate be adjourned was put and negatived by 20 to 7, and the motion of Mr Dibbs being then put, Mr Farnell rose and moved the adjournment of the House, threatening to speak for hours, and altogether outstrip his well-known nine hours speech. He was prevented from speaking to the main question, but with the frequent rests which the attempts to count out the House gave him, and the stimulating effect of it may be half a dozen glasses of water, he managed to continue in possession of the chair until about half-past 7 o’clock, when Mr Dibba’s amendment was withdrawn, and the House, having resolved itself into committee of supply 2>ro forma, adjourned until 7 o’clock in the evening. The whole spectacle was a degrading one.