HOW LIBERTY WAS WON

Hokitika Guardian, 9 August 1927, Page 4

HOW LIBERTY WAS WON

A forensic treat was accorded Auckland Rotarians on Monday, when the Her. .Jas. Barr, D. 1).. -M l*., delivered an address on ‘’The Mother ol Parliaments.” Tracing the early history of the English Parliament, the speaker went back to the time of Magna Chnrtn, with its legal safeguaids for the average citizen. The struggle of the people against the autocratic power ol successive English sovereigns was eloquently described. In those days, said the speaker, it ttas a common practice for a memhci who spake his mind in Parliament ti.

find himself promptly consigned to the Tower. Graphic word pictures were drawn : special incidents in which the grer parliamentarians ol the past llgurcd during their stniggle against the tyranny of tnon.urchs in the Stuari juried. Finally the Bill of Bights in ItiSO with its provision for annual payments only to the Crown settled the right of sovereigns in the matter of taxation. Strikingly he related the siorv of CYouiwcH's dissolution ol th-• Long Parliament. The defects of the old parliamentary system which was disfigured ib.v corruption, was illustrated bv the .statement that a man

paid £IOO,OOO for the right to control the representation of one of the “rotten boroughs.’’ '1 ho most expensive electoral dinner on record included GBO stones of beer, did dozen of wine, and .8(15 gallons of whisks. Shaftesbury, a rr.mpai alive purist, spent £15,0! 10 in his election in 1801. and William Wilborfoi i e’s elect ion to t'orkdtirc cost him £58.(01). The Reform Rill was designed to chock these abuses. Having related numerous anecdotes, illustrative of humor in Parliament, the speaker gave eloquent renderings of extracts from such orators of the past as Gladstone. Karl of Chatham. Kir Robert Peed, Karl Ileaeoitsfieltl and John Bright.