POLITICAL NEWS.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1799, 26 November 1879, Page 3

POLITICAL NEWS.

WELLINGTON, November 24.

Tho more I watch the Hon. John Hall in his present prominent and arduous position the more I admire him. There are very few men with so much all round ability, so much power, so much information, and so much persevering industry. This, too, is combined with modesty amounting to humility, conscientiousness that puts his integrity above suspicion, and a really anxious regard and respect for the feelings ef all about him Such a character and such a highly nervous sensitive temperament are of course incompatible with that callous indifference, that disregard to attacks, that contempt for intended annoyances, which add so much to the comfort of a man in any public position, so that it is often really painful to watch the effect of the coarse, vulgar morning, noon, and night annoyances to which he is subjected from the thoughtlessness of many, the blind ignorance of others, and from the malice aforethought of not a few. Fancy such a man sitting for twelve hours a day at the clerk’s table trying to pass a Bill which he has made as perfect as possible with his own ability and industry and the assistance of the highest authorities he could consult. Ho listens, not with patience, but with infinite long suffering, to all the stupid, ignorant, and careless objections that can bo invented against it, and answers them all without asperity or without letting out one of the many cutting replies that must be constantly rising to his lips. Bet me give a few specimens of the proposals and answers actually made on the Registration of Electors Bill. Mr Seymour George—l want to insert a provision here to make it easier for a man to get on the roll. Mr Hall—lf the hon. member would kindly read the Bill he would find that what he desires has been much more effectually provided for in clause 6.

Mr Pyke—l propose that the Registration Officer be fined £lO if he fails to put a duly qualified elector on the roll. Mr Hall The hon. member and his party cannot seem to realise that under our electoral provisions the registration officer is not the mere passive reluctant critical receiver of names, but the active searcher for names to put on the roll, which' can be put on at any time. Mr Andrews—Sir, a man ought always to be able to vote under protest. I shall propose that after a man has been struck off the roll his vote shall be received under protest. Mr Hall—The hon. member will perhaps remember that this is the Registration of Electors Bill, not the Regulation of Elections Bill. Mr Thomson—l have an amendment to propose to regulate what objections can be made, Mr Hall—That is already done by an amendment the Government has accepted from Mr Hislop. Mr Thomson—What gross carelessness of the Government not to have provided for it itself! Mr Hall—Well, the Government provided for it one way and Mr Hislop another, and we thought his provision at least as good as our own.

Mr Seddon—Now, sir, I have got a lot of new clauses to hintroduce into this here Bill. Them provisions what the Government has made won’t prevent personification. In the hold country people live for hundreds of years in one place, generation after generation, and hevery body knows hevery body, but here it is quite different, as you will find bout before these clauses has been in hoperation a twelvemonths, I have got these here clauses printed on the supplementary border paper, sir, and they’ll make it himpossible for hany body to practice hany himposition on hany returning hofficer. I propose the first new clause, sir. Mr Hall—The hon. member has taken these clauses from the Victorian Act, and they fit very well in the Act he has taken them from, but they would not fit into this Act in any way, and if we were to adopt them, wo would abandon this Bill and adopt the whole Act to which they belong. I prefer our own Bill, and I hope the committee will also prefer it.

But whilst he treats the mosquitoes that buzz about him in this mild way, he is not always so gentle to his more important assailants. When, for example, Sir George Grey had the hypocrisy to propose on Thursday his Bill for the Prevention of Corrupt Practices, Mr Hall mischievously suggested that the hon. member for the Thames had been partial in the selection of crimes to be visited with punishment, and hinted that when in committee he should propose to include such sins as spending public money unlawfully, making delusive promises to constituencies, and lying and deception generally. I need not say much about the proceedings of Thursday night, as for the credit of New Zealand, it is better that they should never be reported. The first part of the night was spent chiefly in a rather free fight over Mr Balance's Wanganui Endowed School Bill, in which parties were mixed under entirely new conditions, being no longer Greyites and Hallites. But the early hours of the morning were spent in a really ruffianly attack on Mr Hurst by the Greyites whilst he was attempting to carry through committee a local Auckland Bill. Their animosity to Mr Hurst seems to know no bounds, and I suppose it was at least partly to defend him that Mr Hall was so regardless of his health as to stay in the House until 4 30 on Friday morning on a private members’ day. Of course in their rough persecution of Mr Hurst, the Grey party did not fail to throw some dirt at each other, but I will only give you one sample, which I select more for its accidental drollness than for anything exceptional in its coarseness. As Mr Hamlin was making one of his last speeches for that evening, he said, as ho often does, “ To my mind—to my mind, sir.” “ Oh,” said an hon. member, Mr McDonald, “ shut up; you have got no mind now ” ; whilst another, Mr Hislop, said something still more rude, calling him by the name of a long-eared animal.

Mr Hamlin, in a voice that is always loud and clear, appealed to the Chairman to know if that was Parliamentary language. As might be expected, the Chairman had not considered the speech sufficiently edifying to hold himself in the attitude of attention, and when thus appealed to, he rubbed his eyes and said “ What did the hon. member call yon ?” It was some little time before Mr Hamlin answered, when, balancing bis fine form steadily and assuming his most military attitude, he said, in his loudest tones and with a straight look at the Chairman, " You are a jackass.” Mr Seymour is not a hasty man, and, although he put on a very severe

countenance, he did not speak until he had taken time to consider that Mr Hamlin was possibly addressing him as a reporter, not as an accuser. On Friday evening it was hoped that the House would take the debate on finance, but Sir George is always on the look out for some mischief on the motion to go into Committee of Supply, and first, Mr Pyke was made use of to rave, in a very bumptious way, against tlm withdrawal of the subsidies—a subject on which he feels a strong interest. There was nothing in his motion that was very different to the expressed views of the Government, and from such a quarter it was not worth fighting, so it was let go undebated. Then came Mr Stewart, with what Sir George Grey thought would be a Government crusher, refusing to grant supplies until Government gave certain promises. There is nothing dangerous in Mr Stewart’s speeches. He may be a lawyer, but he will never be a statesman, and what little he said was left to one of his own party to answer, and thus without debate his motion was condemned so decidedly on the voices that Sir George did not go to a division. This seemed a death knell to all

hope of upsetting the Government this session, and its effect was evident on Sir George Grey’s face. The smallest both in mind and body of his supporters was put up to bully and defy the Government, and to assert in his own choice terms that not a single item in the estimates should pass the Committee that night. This, of course, put the Government partly on their mettle, and for eight hours an obstinate fight went on with constantly decreasing numbers, but always with a largo majority on the side of reason and the progress of business. For some hours Sir George Grey wisely kept silence, and left the obstruction to the small

fry of his party, but after a while he came to the front and figured for some time as the proposer of alternate motions to leave the chair or to report progress, finishing up his night’s work about 2 a.m. by a violent attack on the silent and passive Government for their contempt of the House, Whatever he does, or however he is met, it is his invariable practice to accuse his opponents of the very crimes that he commits himself. Thus he drags himself lower each day in the eyes of friends and foes, and as he crept away on Saturday morning he must have felt that his wisest and best friends were daily leaving him, and that the Hamlins, the Shrimskis, and the Lundons of the Housel would soon be all that will be left to do his bidding and sound hie praises. The estimates had been sent down as prepared by the late Government, and included many increases in salaries. The first of these Mr Shephard proposed to reduce, and Mr Saunders expressed a hope that the present Government would withdraw all proposals made by the late Government to increase salaries in the present condition of the colony’s finance. This the Government at once consented to do if the House would support them, and said that they would take the vote on the first proposed increase as an expression of the wish of the House with regard to the whole. This being given against the increase, the whole of the advances proposed by the late Government will now be withdrawn.

I see that the Grey organs are assailing the present Government as the proposers of these increases, and it may be that they know no better. Mr Ballance asserted in the House on Friday that the estimates taken up by the present Government had been prepared by the departments, but had never been approved in Council, or really adopted in any way by the late Government. Against this, Mr Frher, as the late head of tho department under discussion, adopted and defended the proposals to increase, and his five colleagues took care to say not a word about them, an attitude they would not have assumed could they have dared to charge the present Government with originating them. But we are not left to inferences on this subject, as the late Government had not only approved the increase of salaries, but had in most cases actually paid them since the 3Cth of June, without waiting for the approval of the House, and thus placed their successors in a position with the civil servants that they could not withdraw the money actually paid eway without the support of a vote by the House. Yet in the face of this fact five out of six of the late Ministers sat still, and heard the present Government accused in tho House of having prepared these objectionable increases to the public burdens,

You will see that a great commotion was raised by the production of the Government telegrams on the late election. After being on the table a few hours they were referred to a select and a secret committee, with Messrs Macandrew, Q-isborne, Turnbull, and Montgomery on one side, and Messrs Bowen, Saunders, Wakefield, and Pitt on the other, so that they are likely to be well fought out, and not a single member has failed to attend every meeting of the Committee yet. The principal object of Mr Macandrew and his party in proposing the committee no doubt was to keep the telegrams oft the table until the session is nearly over, so that the disgraceful disclosures could not be laid before the House. Prom what little was seen of them while on the table the greatest disclosure they make is the readiness with which Colonel Whitmore can telegraph two opposite versions of the same act on the same day to two different colleagues—the matter-of-course manner in which a seat in the Legislative Council is offered for election purposes—a resident magistrate regarded as. a natural election agent —and a newspaper proprietor advised in the most unceremonious manner that his interest would be consulted by supporting the Grey Government. As soon as they get on the table again I will send you some specimens.