PARLIAMENTARY GOSSIP.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2264, 5 July 1881, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY GOSSIP.

[fbosi a coebespondent of the "press."] WELLINGTON, July 2.

The House has become mors interesting during the past week, and a few lively skirmishes have come off, though always in committee, so that they will not appear in " Hansard." Last night Mr Montgomery proposed to authorise the returning officer to ask an intending voter if he had voted before in that election for any district. This was done with a view to bring up the question of plural voting, and to enable Sir George to make his stock speech on that subject, which has been reported so often that he now prefers to make it in committee on an evening when the galleries are full. But Mr Swanson has also a stock speech, with a great deal more point in it than Sir George's, upon the same subjeot, and he delivered it last night in reply to Sir George with an energy and gesture that was highly amusing, and made everyone forget that the speech had ever been delivered beforo, either in the House or on the Auckland wharf. The promises of tho Grey Government were all arroyed in laughable oontrast to their performance, and tho laughter of the Houbo and galleries evidently made Sir George feel that the old carpenter was getting the best of the fight. His engineer, Speight, came to his rescue, and made by far the best speech he has ever yet made in the House, and, unlike the other two, it was a first performance. He was too much in earnest to spoil bis speech, as he generally does, by protentiooe oratory, and was too vehement to give time to notice his defective pronunciation. On one important point, too, he had the host of the argument, and he made the most of his advantage there. Swanson's stook speeoh drags in his own great pet, Mr Sheehan, and in it he had said " What would the Grey Government have been without Mr Sheehan ? Without him they could not mußter brains enough amongst them to keep their seats on those benches a singln day." Mr Speight replied, amidst the cheers of his party, that but for Mr Sheehon's vices the Grey Government would have been on those benches now, and thejmaladministration of Native affairs was the rook on which tho Grey Government had undoubtedly been wrecked. It. was quite evident from the manner in which this assertion was received, that Mr Sheehan is now completely disowned by the party that so long tried to uphold him, and that Sir George and his supporters are now horrified at actions whioh they were so entirely blind to when Mr Sheehan was in closer contact with them. In opposing Mr Saunders' motion for open nomination, Mr Montgomery said, with his usual dignity, that a show of hands was contrary to "tho spirit of the ballot." Mr Saunders replied " that what tho hon. gentle man oalled the spirit of the ballot" was tho moßt mean, spiritless, deplorable weakness that the law had to provide for. As long as there were persons so weak and spiritless as to be afraid to let any one learn how they voted, it was better to let them creep to the poll in their own way than to let them be driven either to it or from it by artful designing candidates, and therefore he had always supported the ballot as a neceflßary evil. But to hold up the "spirit of the ballot" as a thing we were to infuse into all our institutions, and to discourage the open, manly exercise of a public duty by on open show of hands by those who were willing to use not only their votes but their knowledge and influence, was a humiliation thot he hoped was very far distant from any English community. During the past few days the Government haa been beaten on two divisions in a very ridiculous way, one of them being on a motion . brought on by their own whip, who was one of the tellers against them, and tho other on

' a motion made by Mr Andrews to forbid all private investigation of serious offences by | civil servants. The strength rather than the | weakness of the Government was the cause of both these defeats. In the absenoe of any organised Opposition, or any agreement as to i leaders or guiding principles in the party called the Opposition, the friends of the Government have no visible foe before them and feel at liberty to roam about as they like. Sir George Grey and his nephew Mr George are always on the look out to play a sort of boyish trick when any division is going on, and if they see a chanoe to get a division against the Government, will run back with their party into the epposite lobby to that to which they intended to go and often to the opposite side to that on which they had spoken. Such divisions may please little minds and be rather a godsend to hard up "correspondents," but they have no sort of political significance. The Hon. John Hall gains friends both by his contideration for everybody and by his wonderful assiduity and attention to every duty, and it would take a great deal to make any of his present supporters vote against him when their voto is really called for. It cannot, however, be denied that the Redistribution of Seats B<ll is a rook ahead upon which the strongest Government may be split and the Nelson members will not accept any proposals that would leave them no more than their due share of representation on the basis of population.