NOTES FROM SPECIAL REPORTERS AT WELLINGTON.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 238, 26 September 1873, Page 1 (Supplement)

NOTES FROM SPECIAL REPORTERS AT WELLINGTON.

Mr. Andrew, in supporting the second reading of the Provinces Borrowing Bill is reported to have said i "If the Government depended on carrying the Bill by means of votes, not arguments, they had shown themselve bad tactitians in not having their votes in readiness. —(Laughter.) The Government professed to have attained equilibrium, There were two kinds of equilibrium —stable and dynamic. The first was due to the centre of gravity being within the base of support the second was owing to the conservation of the axis of rotation. They had an instance of it in the bicycle, another in the common top. He would ask the Government which kind of equilibrium was thatwhich they had attained. Was it that they had found a support, or was it that their ideas on Provincial institutions were in a constant and violent whirl P (Loud applause.) It is all very well to talk of abolishing the Provinces, but it is not so easy. At the time when Mr. Fitzherbert was elected to the Superin tendency, a gentleman who did not now occupy a seat in the House had written to him to come down and hold the funeral service over it. He came down, but found that the Province was not dead.. It was no common artist, no common carpenter, who had taken in hand to revive it. After a month or so it was alive again, imposing taxes with renewed vigor.—(Applause.) He would vote for the Bill, as it was a step towards abolishing Provinces he could not see why it should not next borrow for municipalities and individuals. The Provinces were too nearly related to the Government to do business with it. Their coming to the Assembly to get loans authorised was a parallel case to young ladies coming to their papa to borrow money to make themselves attractive on the security of their future husbands. It has been said with truth that the Government; had no backboneThey did not indeed belong to the order of vertebratea ; they belonged to that of crustacece. They had a shell that no taunts could pierce.—(Applause,) If the Government had no backbone, however, the Opposition had no head. —(Applause.) He bore in mind the line " Great Jove is down, confusion reigns instead," and would therefore vote with the Government. —(Loud applause;)

It is strange that the Speaker cannot touch a subject without making a mess of it, or making himself ridiculous. On a question of privilege, the other night, he quoted as a sample of the gross disrespect with which the House was treated, that some obscure individual occupying the position of Mayor of some place in Otago, had dared to send a telegram, " a most improper and impertinent telegram," to him, Sir Francis Bell, Speaker, Wellington, asking him to " see a telegram which had been forwarded to two of the Ministry, Messrs. Bathgate and Keynolds.'' The " Smiler " tried to mitigate the wrath of the irate dignitary by suggesting that the telegram was sent to him in his capacity as member for an Otago constituency, stating that he had received a similar message. But no, the idea was preposterous ! Separate him from his position as Speaker, gown, bands, and ruffles, and" where would the House be ? Where, indeed ! Again, in commenting on a certain letter of Mr. Carieton's, the self-con-stituted "Nestor" of last Parliament, being printed and circulated in members' pigeon-holes, perhaps an improper proceeding in itself, he went out of his. way« to express his surprise that Mr. Carleton could have put his name to such a production, quite a justifiable criticism coming from a private member, but one that he had no business to deliver ex c tthedra.'

The poor "Sniiler" has come to grief with his little Bill, as the Premier's generosity in having it reinstated on the order paper went- for nought, and "most urikindest cut of all," it received its coup de grace principally at the hands of the hew' member for the Wakatip, Mr. Vincent pylte, whom the " Smiler" evidently thought he had bound in bonds of everlasting obligation to him, by moving, only two days previously, that his - na'me be added" to the Goldtields Committeeman object of ambition to many members. But "not for-Joe;" Mr. Pyke would have, none of-it, denounced it as "crude" and a "sham," and a very pretty passage of arms took place in which the "new broom " got considerably the best of it. Mr. White, in his most ing a corroboree tants, much in the would u mbrella^^^^^^^^^^^H boys tig^^^^^^^^^^^^H spectacle, simles wasj^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^l