NEW SOUTH WALES.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1696, 28 July 1879, Page 3

NEW SOUTH WALES.

SYDNEY, July 14. The session of Parliament has been protracted beyond all expectation, and its approaching termination is presaged by some rather artificial thunder. The Premier having brought forward no measures of large value, has seen those to which he attached the highest importance very freely dealt with by the Legislative Council. At each successive instance of the exercise by the Council of its right to amend measures, the Premier has indulged in portentous mutterings. Now, he is flinging thunderbolts about in a fashion that would be terrific, were it not that there is a lack of belief in his power to convulse the world. I will endeavour to trace the course of events and their progress towards the present culmination. In the first place there was the Privileges of Parliament ostensibly introduced to give power to either Chamber to curb the outrageousness of their own members, sundry very striking instances of rowdyism having occurred in the Assembly The Bill, however, when produced, was dis. covered to be framed as if the public had been outraging the Assembly, instead of members of the Assembly scandalising the public, and shamefully slandering private individuals, and one another. The chief offender was Mr McElhone, M.L.A., a cattle-dealer by trade, and a grievancemonger by choice, whose license of accusation and violence of conduct in the House neutralise his usefulness as an entirely fearless exposer of abuses. Sheltered behind his privileges he has flung about accusations and charges with inexcusable recklessness. It has been enough for him to be told a probable story about wrongdoing. His mind appears to be so constituted that ho is ready to believe any evil of his fellow-men ; and without troubling to sift out truth from fiction, he adopts all sorts of yarns, and roars them out in the Assembly, putting the worst construction upon everything. But he never affords his victims an opportunity of bringing him to book. Mr Garrett, an ex-Minister for Lands, a man who has unhappy failings, and respecting whoso administration scandal has at all times been busy, he charged downrightwith trafficking in appointments during his term of office. Mr Garrett thereupon commenced a civil action for libel against Mr McElhone, but was speedily brought up with a round turn by counsel’s opinion that, as Mr McElhone’s lawyers filed a plei of privilege, that would be an effectual bar to recovery of a verdict. Other instances of personal grievances inflicted, equally flagrant, hare occurred. The Privileges Bill, however, contains no provision for restraining members of Parliament. On the contrary it bristled with clauses, which would make it dangerous for either the Press or individuals criticising anything said or done by a member. The Legislative Council excised these clauses, and so modified the Bill as to confine its operation to punishment and repression of offences committed within the precincts of Parliament. The Premier, followed by a section of the Assembly, resented this, and after a fruitless conference, the Bill was abandoned altogether. As however almost the whole Press of the colony had supported the Council, and denounced the Bill as an aggression upon the liberty of the people, and as the public evinced a decided disposition to adopt the same view, Sir Henry Parkes, after a good deal of vague threatenings, forbore to tilt at the Legislative Council on so obviously spavined a war-horse as the Privileges Bill had turned out. The next occasion for trouble was an Additional Judges Bill, Of our four Supreme Court Judges, two have been laid up with illness for some months. The Chief Justice, Sir James Martin, suffers from an affection of the heart, and Mr Justice Hargreaves has been also very ill. Even when all four are on the Bench the business is almost more than they can manage, and the necessity for an additional appointment became beyond measure urgent when only two Judges were able to attend the Courts. There was not the faintest difference of opinion as to this necessity, and a Bill to make provision for strengthening the Bench might have been passed without a pause or check. But among the supporters of the Ministry sit sundry attorneys who have set their minds upon an amalgamation of the two branches of the legal profession. I do not wish to impute motives, but I cannot but remark that to gentlemen so favorably placed for influencing the choice of the Premier in making appointments to the prizes of the profession, it may have been aggravating to see every good thing given away to barristers, while attorneys are left perforce in the cold. In any case these political attorneys so strongly desired to effect an amalgamation that they introduced ia committee and carried an additional clause or two in the Judges Bill, the effect of which was to make it not only a measure for authorising the appointment of an additional Judge, but for amalgamating the branches of the profession straight away. The Legislative Council, in which there are several barristers, expunged the intruded matter, and Sir Henry Parkes •gain discovered that the liberties of the people wore outraged and the constitution in danger. Ho was dreadfully troubled when in the course of negotiations between the two chambers, the Council alluded to the

extraneous clauses as a “tack.” But once more the public evinced a distinct indisposition to take the matter to heart, and showed an inclination to hold that the Council was quite right in desiring to have the question of amalgamation brought before them as a distinct measure, go that they might deal with it deliberately and without prejudice. So that Bill was dropped likewise, the outcries of suitors unable to get a hearing of their cases, and finding expenses daily growing, not being regarded. After a while, however, a temporary Judge’s Bill was introduced, and the Council passed it without baulking at a little clause which provides that the appointment may be conferred upon any qualified legal practitioner, “ whether a barrister or not.” The next chance was afforded by the Land Bill. The one vital principle, or perhaps I should say fatal principle, which this Bill contained is retrospective lightening of conditions. This was introduced in committee, and it was carried against the Government that the retrospection should be unlimited instead of only applying to selectors under the Act of 1875. A word or two of explanation will not be amiss here. Our first Land Bill, recognising selectors at all, was carried by Sir John Rolmtson in 1861 after a downright struggle, in which the squatters wore ranked against the rank and file of the people. In that Bill among the conditions which a selector had to fulfil was the expenditure of one pound sterling upon each acre of selected land in improvements. This condition has been ever since required, the Land Act of 1875 being only an amending Act with regard to other details. The purport of the present Bill, as introduced by the Government, was, among other objects, to reduce the amount of improvements required to ten shillings on all future selections. The amendments carried in the Assembly gave a retrospective effect to this with regard to all outstanding selections made since 1861 upon which improvements have not been already effected. The Government resisted this proposal, seeking to substitute a provision limiting the retrospective effect to selections made since the passing of the Act of 1875. But, ultimately, they accepted the wider application, and the third reading was passed with only three dissentients in the Assembly. The Council, however, excised the retrospective principle altogether, after a series of debates very powerfully argued, but almost all the speaking in which was against the Government, with the notable exception of a four hours’ oration from the veteran Sir John Robertson, as Minister in charge of the Bill. The adverse arguments revolved chiefly on the pivot that improvment is value duo to the State in return for liberal concessions made in the price of selections, and that no less a sum than eight millions sterling was involved, as the value of improvements remaining uneffooted upon existing selections. Other potent arguments were that the waiver weuld be unfair to those selectors who have already fulfilled the conditions of improvement, and that in justice no refusal could be opposed, should such selectors come forward with a demand that the State should reimburse them the sums they had spent, and which their tardier neighbours had been relieved from the necessity of expending. It will he perceived that a curious deduction from this line of argument is inevitable—viz., that the outlay made for improvements has been a hardship, not a benefit, to selectors ; in other words that expenditure upon the land has not been, as a rule, reproductive. I do not remember that any of the speakers in either House referred to this point, but in fact I believe it is essentially true. When free selection was first mooted, and Sir John Robertson ledjan attack upon the squatters’ monopoly of the land, the most glowing pictures were drawn of the change which the occupation of the soil by industrious settlers would effect. The farmer was to make the wilderness burst into blossom. Where a single sheep required a couple of acres for pasture, instead of one fleece fifty or sixty bushels of wheat were to be produced. The face of the country was to bo covered far and wide with waving cornfields, studded with rose-embowered homesteads, and busy hosts of men were to flourish where only sheep and cattle had been seen. These splendid anticipations have by no means been fulfilled. Certain exceptional localities have been settled, but as a|genoral thing the selector has seen more certain and more speedy profit in selling his selection to the runholder than in undertaking the tedious, toilsome, and slow process of cultivation. Great freeholds have been created by accretions of small holdings, bought or dummied, and farming proper has not made any general and considerable progress in the interior or anywhere except in limited tracts, peculiarly favored by exceptional rainfall, proximity to markets, and so forth. I need not further dilate] upon these aspects of our agrarian system. Suffice it, that the Council excised the retrospective principle from the Bill, that the Government sought to induce them to reinstate it with a limitation to selections made since 1875, that they refused to accept this, and that the Bill has been abandoned. The session, consequently, has proved one of the most barren in our long record of barren sessions. The Premier can scarcely have been unprepared for this last failure. If he was, he would have resembled the husband of a faithless wife, in being at oncejthe party most .concerned, yet the only individual blind to what was going on.

Having failed to give us any useful legislation, our Premier apparently means to try whether the colony will be disposed to accept a constitutional crisis as a preferable substitute. He has now declared war against the Council, having given notice of the following resolutions: — 1. That this House, as representing the people of this country, deeply regrets that its labors have been largely frustrated in the present and former sessions of Parliament by the irresponsible hostility of the Legislative Council to many of its most carefully considered measures.

2. That during the last six years two separate measures passed through this House by different Governments, to redress the grievances of the people in their unequal representation in Parliament, have been lost by the hostile and irresponsible action of the Legislative Council. 3. That mauy other important measures, calculated to materially benefit the people, and passed by large majorities of tte people’s representatives, have been similarly lost by the action of the Council. 4. That experience has proved that the principle of nomination by the Crown in the constitution of the Legislative Council has failed, inasmuch as it clothes persons with the highest powers and privileges for the term of their natural lives, and at the same time removes them from all responsibility, thus separating them from the rest of the people, and rendering them in many cases indifferent to public opinion. 5. That a Bill to make the Legislative Council responsible to the people ought to bo introduced at the earliest practicable period. G. That under the existic g Constitution, this House denies the authority of the Imperial Government to limit, control, or in any respect interfere with appointments to the Legislative Council, and holds her Majesty’s Ministers in this colony solely responsible for their advice to the Crown, and will extend to them a firm support, in taking such steps as are provided for by the Constitution to secure the due consideration and the passing into law of important measures essential to the progress of the country. 7, That"the foregoing resolutions bo transmitted by address to his Excellency the Lieut.Governor. It is in view of the possibility that in these resolutions lies the germ of a great and prolonged political struggle that I have judged it convenient to explain at length, oven at the risk of being considered tedious, the successive stages by which the resolutions were arrived at or suggested, I do not think that serious consequences will ensue, and regard this manifesto as invented simply to distract attention from the failure of the Government to effect useful legislation. But I may be mistaken. Sir Henry Parkes must better know the political ropes than I, and it may be that he has reason to reckon upon a tindery condition of the public which has escaped my perception. I have no doubt at all that a majority of members in the Assembly will be found ready to affirm his resolutions. He would scarcely have ventured to bring them forward without first ascertaining how they would be received in the 'Ouse, as he calls the Assembly. Resolutions are, however, abstract affairs, and if the spark they communicate finds no fuel to set ablazing in the country, it will be easy to let tbe affair die out; whereas, in the event of any lively response from the people, tbe agitation would be fanned and kept alive by taking measures to give practical effect to the principles embodied. The design of the Government is supported by one of the two new daily morning papers which came out at the beginning of this month. The Sydney “Daily Telegraph ” has undertaken to ventilate and support the intentions of the Government with regard to altering the constitution of the Upper House, while on the (other hand the “ Sydney Courier,” which shews radical proclivities, champions the Upper House and declares

that its course this session has been protective of the popular liberties and the true welfare of the people. In one small country place only there has been a public meeting to endorse the action of the Government, while in Sydney itself the organisation which claims to represent theartizans, mechanics and laboring classes has adopted a pronwnciametito denouncing the Ministry, and their majority in the Assembly, and lauding the Council for its firmness. The “Herald” gives its powerful support to the Council, but the significance of that is, I think, less than that the “ Courier ” has taken the same line. The masses —the working men—do not regard the “ Herald ” with affection, and its advocacy of the Council will be ascribed more particularly to its constant sympathy with the order which gives members to the Upper House than to any unity of feeling with the mechanical classes. The probabilities, as they strike me, are that in the country, where the majority of _ persons have an interest, direct or indirect, in the reduction of expenditure proposed, the Assembly will meet with support ; whereas, in the capital, where the working classes have no interest in the perpetuance or encouragement of the land laws, which fail to settle a population which would create employment, the Council will find strong support. If such should prove to be the case, the situation will be peculiar and novel.

The Exhibition advances rapidly towards completion, and its probable cost has been a source of much discussion, the Colonial Architect, Mr Barnett, coming in for severe animadversion. The design for the building was the work of this gentleman, and appears to have satisfied everyone. Despite the heavy censure to which Mr Harnett has been subjected with respect to his eatimates, I do not remember a single word of cavil at his design, which indeed strikes me as singularly effective. But while the colonial architect’s tiste has besn universally endorsed, his judgment has been called in question, strong show of reason. Conceive that his estimate of the cost of construction was £50,000, and that already over £102;000 has been expended en the building, while the Premier has stated that the total cost will be £177,000, while many people hold tho-opinion that the colony will have laid down £250;000 before the affair is over.

Unluckily for the Colonial Architect, this is not his first great miscalculation. The General Post-office was built from his design, and is as little creditable to his taste and ability as the Exhibition building is greatly ; while his original estimate was some £Bojooo, and the actual cost not much under £150,000.

Some extenuation for the unlucky official may, perhaps, be discovered in the conditions under which the actual construction has been executed. Time did not permit of the preparation of specifications, &c., preliminary to calling for tenders, and the charge of the entire work was therefore entrusted to a gentleman experienced in extensive operations, one of the largest building contractors with whom the Government of the colony has had dealings. Papers relating to this arrangement have been laid before Parliament, and have disclosed the fact that Mr Young, the contractor in question, was engaged on the singular condition that ho should be paid by a commission of five per cent on the cost of con--8 -ruction! This of course is equivalent to offering him a premium on any extravagance he may commit. In addition however he is allowed another five per cent, for the use of his working plant. Ten per cent, on every pound ho expends on behalf of the Government. Had the colonial architect’s estimate not been exceeded, Mr Young would have pocketed £SOOO for about six months’ exercise of his abilities and experience. As it is, he_ will draw upwards of £20,000 if his bargain be upheld. Mr Young bears the reputation of a straightforward man, but good heavens 1 what a temptation has the Government placed in his way. When the present exhilaration shall have passed over, when the colony shall wake up with a headache, amidst the debris of its feast, with nothing meeting its view but the lees of its wine, and the sodden relics of its feast—when it shall thus wake up and begin to count the cost and recall the follies of its past orgies, there will be terrible times and frightful reckonings. Six months of exhibition will, I suspect, be succeeded by about three years of Boards of Enquiry, and universal repentance and sodawater. Even now the mechanical trades are extremely dull, and the continuous discharge of hands from the Exhibition building, as the edifice approaches completion, aggravates the distress already existing, and swells the number of unemployed. In illustration I may take a single episode. In consequence of objections which had been made to the wage rates in the iron and building trades, as published in the “ Herald’s ” last summary for Europe, &o. an arrangement was come to by virtue of which the President of the Trades and Labor Council, Mr Thomas White, and delegates from the trades concerned, accompanied a “Herald” reporter on a round of visits to the principal establishments in Sydney, with a view to arrive at the exact facts. Briefly stated, these were found to bo that in the ir on-working, ship ■ smithing, ship • carpentering, and building trades, things are dull. The master ironworkers agree pretty generally in stating that there are about 100 good workmen in that trade for whom no employment can be provided, and who are consequently walking about in distress. The foreman at the Exhibition buildings gave it as his opinion that he could got together 1000 workmen beyond those at present employed, were there any occasion. July 17.

The departure of the steamer having been deferred, I am able to supplement the letter prepared for transmission on the 14th inst. Last night Sir Henry Parkes brought forward his resolutions affirming the necessity for reconstituting the Legislative Assembly on an elective basis, and simultaneously Mr Docker, in the Legislative Council, moved the counter resolutions which he had prepared to meet those produced by the Premier in the Assembly. Briefly stated, Mr Docker’s resolutions were to the effect that proceedings intended to affect any Parliamentary body should be originated in such body and not elsewhere ; that measures altered or rejected by the Council had not been presented in a condition suitable for enactment without serious consideration and material alteration ; that the Council believes that it continues to possess the confidence of the public; and that any attempt to interfere with the authority of the Imperial Government to limit the creation of members of the Council would be a serious constitutional evil, and one calculated to disturb the cordial relations with the Home authorise now subsisting.

Sir Henry Parkes in the Assembly, and Mr Docker in the Council, adopted pretty nearly the same line of argument, with the distinction that they proceeded in diametrically opposite directions. Each entered upon a long review of the manner in which the Council had dealt with Bills sent up to it by the Assembly. The Premier offered in one view all the measures rejected or mutilated during the past fivo-and-twenty years, and thus grouped these appeared to a formidable indictment against the Council. Mr Docker, on the other hand, while not so careful to gather together every scrap of matter, went into particular detail with respect to notable instances, and sought to show that the Council had been fully justified in rejecting or amending, either by the attendant circumstances at the time, or by the subsequent development of events. In the Assembly, the leader of the Opposition, Mr Fitzpatrick took up the cudgels for the Council, in somewhat the same spirit as animated Mr Docker’s argument. But having the Premier’s speech as a text to reply to, he was able to be perhaps more effective. He got home a very adroit thrust by showing that some of the measures, the rejection of which by the Council Sir Henry had instanced as exemplifying mischievous obstruction on their part, had been utterly condemned and furiously denounced by Sir Henry himself at the time, while sitting on the Opposition benches in the Assembly. Additional interest was given to the debate in the Representative Chamber by Mr David Buchanan, who seized the occasion to air his pronounced radical ideas. He cordially supported the Premier's resolutions, and did a little more, for he proposed an amendment to one of them, substituting for the proposal to make the Council elective, an affirmative that it be abolished altogether. Sir Henry Parkes will probably not thank Mr Buchanan for so extremely vigorous a push in the direction he has chosen to proceed, especially as the latter justified his amendment in a vigorous speech directed to show that his conclusion was the only logical outcome of Sir Henry Parkes' premises. The debate stands adjourned.

It has been found that, after all the extra expense allowed for expedition, the Exhibition Building cannot be completed by the time originally fixed. Mr Young has found that the work on the dome and other parts of the lofty exterior cannot be pushed on ly night as well as by day .as was intendedi

Even with the help of the electric light, the danger to the workmen is too great. The opening has consequently been fixed for the Ist of October instead of September. The exhibits have commenced to pour in. Among those to hand, the great organ, sent by an English firm of makers, is already lying in the building ready to be taken from its cases and erected.