SOUND ADVICE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 293, 11 December 1877, Page 4

SOUND ADVICE.

Sir Stafford Northcote, in a late speech at Exeter, touched upon two great and growing evila, drawing his illustrations from the House of Commons, but which he might etill better have taken from the New Zealand Parliament. "Two great evils," he said, " were the tendency to excitement and the growth of vanity. Unless there were some measures of a startling character paseed in a seseiou there was a general fealing that Parliament had fallen back, and was not answering the expectations of the people. As to the second point — vanity and conceit — no intellectual disease was so mischievous as this in the present day. It was at the bottom of a large proportion of the waste of time in Parliament." Upon this point Sir Stafford said:— "Men are much more anxious to distinguish themselves and make themselves prominent than they are to get through the work that is to be done; and really it is very often almost avowedly the case that a man will get up and make a Speech which there is not the smallest occasion to make, which not only is there no occasion to make, but which for the sake of the very cause he is advocating it would have been better not to make, for the mere purposes of getting his name before the public, and showing that tie has paid attention to the subject. I have known [scores and scores of times -~I have known men of considerable position who have really damaged their cause by their inability to do that which I hold to be the first duty of a member of Parliament tu learn to donamely, to swallow the speech which he intended to make," These are words of wisdom indeed, which we earnestly desire some of our New Zealand public men, both on the Government aud the Opposition aides, would " murk, learD, aud inwardly digest." The curse of the present barren session of Parliament has been fruitless and unnecessary talk. Let wordy hon. members during future sessious restrain themaalves, and remember that they have important work to do. They were not sent to the Assembly merely to gratify their vanity by making frothy speeches about everything out, above, and below tbe earth. We often read Hansard with

a feeling of shame and indignation that men should waste valuable time and public money in many of auch speeches aa are reported there, when measures of vital importance to the interests of the Colony are left finlirly neglected, and the session closes with little of real work accomplished.