FROM AN ILLUMINATED M.S. OF THE PERIOD.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 294, 3 August 1865, Page 2

FROM AN ILLUMINATED M.S. OF THE PERIOD.

Respectfully presented to the contemplation of Member* of the P. C. and G. A, by the owner. Friend, you will knowhow wo call this assembly ? A “Micel getheaht” op "great thought,” a “ Witena gemot” or “meeting of the wise,” and at present it well deserves its name. Our redesmen or counsellors, the members of the legislature ponder much before they come together, say little, and write less. All dorms or statutes which have been enacted since the days of our earliest rulers, would not fill four-an l-twenty leaves of that dirty Blue Book which William the AcoTvto has dropped on the floor. Hence, our common people know the laws and respect them; and

•what is of much greater importance, they respect the law makers—mark thatl Long may they continue to deserve respect. But lam not without apprehensions for the future. We are strangely fond of novelty. Since the days of King Fitz we have been accustomed to consider the member for Porangahau as the very pattern of “good councellor,” and although we have seen measure after measure of his proposing, and act after act of his dictating, overruled ; there are numbers amongst us, including very estimable personages to say nothing of “ Squatters,” who continue firm in this delusion. I hear that that distinguished statesman designates such assemblies as ours by the name of “ colloquim,” that is as we should say, a “ talk,” wnioh be renders in his cormpt jargon by the word “ Parlementand should our Witena gemot, our Micel getheaht, ever cease to be a “ meeting of the wise,” or a “ great thought,” and become s Parlement , or talk,” it will be worse for New Zealand than if a myriad of Hau Hans were to ravage |tho land from sea to sea. Friend, mark my words 1 If our Witena ever enter into long debates, consequences most ruinous to the state must inevitably ensue —they will begin by contradicting one another, and end by contradicting themselves. Constantly raking expectations which they never can fulfil; each party systematically decrying the acts of the other: the small settlers and townspeople who compose the great body of the people will at last fancy that that the Witan are no wiser than the rest of the community. They will suppose that the art of government requires neither skill nor practice ; that it is accessible to the meanest capacity ; that it requires nothing but Parlement or “ great talk ; and leaving their ploughs and their harrows, their tools and their shops, armed with their flails and pitchforks, their hammers and yard measures, they will rush into the Hall. They will demolish the Superintendent, and seizing the Speaker and the clerk, they will involve the whole assembly in unutterable confusion and dismay, and produce a revolution in favor of less talk and more thought and action in their representatives of Witans.