THE GLOBE. FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 1880.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1977, 25 June 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 1880.

Otte contemporaries the “Lyttelton Times” and the “ Star” have become quite hysterical respecting the early date at which the “ Press” newspaper obtained a copy of the report of the Civil Service Commission. They have rent their journalistic garments and have lifted up their voices and wept in unison. This has been immediately followed by anathemas on the Government, delivered in the most approved fashion. But our contemporaries had surely forgotten one little fact. The text of the Bill was telegraphed to the “ Press” on Saturday last; on the Tuesday previous a synopsis of the Bill was telegraphed to the “Lyttelton Times” by their special correspondent, which was in every way correct, a small item alone excepted. Nowthe manner in which the correspondent of the “ Press” obtained his matter was made perfectly clear by the Premier in the House lust night. “ The report,” ho said, “ became public property as soon as it was forwarded to the Governor. It was forwarded to him (Mr. Hail) at four o’clock in the afternoon and was returned from the Governor about seven, but he had no opportunity of laying it before the House except at a late hour of the evening.” Any reporter might have obtained it when the “ Press ” correspondent did. It was simply a matter of vigilance. But how about the synopsis obtained by the “ Lyttelton Times ” correspondent ? Was that obtained by pure vigilance? The report was in the hands of the printers at the time, had in no respect become public property, and the inference is resistless that no pure vigilance alone could have obtained it. It certainly could not have been evolved out of the inner consciousness of our contemporary's correspondent. Ho can evolve “ swamps ” and “rats,” and mysterious interviews with criminals in gloomy forests, apropos of nothing whatsoever, but ho cannot evolve correct synopses of complicated reports. That is beyond oven his powers of imagination. There is something behind all this, and it would perhaps have been as well if our contemporaries had thought this matter over before composing their little duet.

The atmosphere of the Upper House is ] not well adapted for practical jokes. A 1 calmness, almost a heaviness, pervades the apartment, while the even tenor of the ways of the Councillors is seldom to be broken, even by a gentleman with such fiery methods of expressing himself as Colonel Brett. Like the Island of the Lotus Eaters, it is “ a land where all things always seem the same.” Now, for the proper appreciation of a really good joke, the electrical state of atmosphere caused by more stirring scenes is necessary, For instance, a story might “ run ” with the greatest success in Paris that would fall very flat in one of the upland valleys of the Swiss Alps. And certainly Sir George Grey’s “ latest ” has not run in the Upper House. His great Moorhouse modal and ticket practical joke has fallen so flat that Legislative Councillors have absolutely refused to have anything to do with it, and have negatived the proposal. This must bo very trying for the introducer of the Bill. Nobody is to bo so much pitied as a joker when one of his elaborate schemes falls through. And the affair apparently took so well in the Lower House that there seemed every chance of its being carried through to a successful issue. On the other hand, Mr. Moorhouse is to be sincerely congratulated. As we conjectured, he was not much elevated by the proposal. Tho Hon. Mr. Chamberlin said that Mr, Moorhouse has stated in his hearing that the Bill proposed to give him a State pauper’s ticket. He might have added that the same benevolence was to bo extended to his heirs for ever.