Local Intelligence.
After more than one fruitless endeavour by the Government aud a portion of the Council to provide means for the regular and speedy transmission^ of mails between this province and Australia, the balance of the Legislature, as the Yankees would call it, has been brought round to a sense of the fitness of such provision, and has taken steps to unite Canterbury with the rest of the world. This desirable result has been accomplished by the men of business out of doors, who, no doubt surprised that there should be any question on the matter, addressed the Council in a memorial, conceived in terms of etiquette but conveying a very legible reproach, and thus brought about what senatorial argument would never have effected. It is pleasant to see public opinion so well timed and so effective, but it is not pleasant to find that the Council, on a practical question, must go to the public for advice.
The Council is almost at an end Gf its labours. Prorogation comes immediately, and dissolution will follow without any further waking from that legislative sleep. The only obstacle that I interfered to stop the passing of the Appropria- j tion Bill, and thus to defer the prorogation/has I been the vote on Immigration. His Honor, not being prepared to carry out the policy indicated by the Council for the conduct of immigration, has intimated his refusal to accept the office of agent. The Council on. Thursday night wished to know what was to be done, and, apparently thinking that it would be better that their resolutions should be reconsidered than that operations should be delayed or possibly the whole scheme collapse, took the word of the Provincial Secretary that the affair might still be'settled as at first contemplated, and appointed yesterday for the re-opening of the debate. Till this point should be settled, the Council would not carry through the Appropriation Bill. On this whole question one of the most interesting debates of the Session arose : at one time most vehement, at another most humourous, and again most bitterly angry. The Provincial Secretary was a wonder to behold, and on that night capped the performances of the session by a crowning exhibition of his unequalled powers. He charmed members by his urbanity, provoked them by his indifference to business, tickled them into roars of laughter, subsided into an independent member by the fire-place, was goaded again into being Government, sat a while disconsolate on the ministerial bench, rose in wrath and stepped forward to confront an attacking member, then lifted his voice in a mingled strain of supplication, persuasion, remonstrance, annoyance, and invective, and, concluding with a torrent of impassioned denunciation, precipated himself into the street and did not come back. The Council has laughed again and again at the honorable and jovial Secretary/and so have we; but we also join the Council in condemning the almost savage spirit in which his observations, unwarranted perhaps, but really inoffensive, have been taken and replied to by some members The Secretary is even too good humoured, and we think that the gentlemen who were so much offended might have refrained from bitter replies, remembering what vexations the man in office has had to change kindly humour ,nto one of wrath. Certainly he was on .Thursday evening «like a fiery dragon pale with, rage as he once expressed it.
On Friday, yesterday, the Council resolved that agencies such as those referred to in his Honor's Message, No. 43,'(see Council reports) should be established in Melbourne and Sydney. The. Eoads Diversion Bill was passed through committee. The resolutions on Immigration were to be. considered yesterday evening. Prorogation will come on Tuesday or Thursday. The session will probably conclude with a dinner to all hands. An inquest was held yesterday on the body of Mrs. Hester Bolton, who died very suddenly on the 24th instant. Medical evidence proved the cause of death to have been the bursting of an aneurism of the artery of the stomach. A verdict was given accordingly. Thursday last was the day appointed for considering objections to the Lyttelton Roll, but there were no objections to consider. The revising justices purified the roll and rendered it somewhat correct. There will most probably not be any provincial elections under it. . The weather has changed from fair and frosty, through wet and windy, to' mild and cloudy.
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Lyttelton Times, Volume VII, Issue 485, 27 June 1857, Page 6
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733Local Intelligence. Lyttelton Times, Volume VII, Issue 485, 27 June 1857, Page 6
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