PEARLS FROM PARLIAMENT

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 172, 17 October 1903, Page 21

PEARLS FROM PARLIAMENT

WE shall not be able to go to bed at night without being submitted to examination by an inspector, whose duty it will be to see that we have first washed our feet and said our prayers.— Mr. Kirkbnde. * • * Rings are all ri E ht if we are inside, it is when we are outside of them that they are wrong.— Mr. Buddo. » * * Very little damage can be done if the Newtown hotels are allowed to keep open until the result of the Privy Council appeal is known.- Mr. Field. * * * It is quite evident, therefore, that the Mapouiika Parliamentary party w as not aristocratic in their tastes and wines.— The Right Hon. Mr. Seddon. * * * A powerful Government supporter can have roads maintained by the Government that should not be so maintaained, whilst a weak Government supporter cannot get anything.— Mr. T. MadkenThe individual intelligence of Parliament may be of a high standard, but the collective intelligence, so far as its execution of work is concerned, as evidenced by the work accomplished, must necessarily be a low standard. — Mr. Major. I am certain the honourable member for Wellington City (Mr. Duthie) knows perfectly well that when the honourable member for Avon is really jesting Mith the House he is most serious, and that it is when he is serious that he is really jesting.— Mr. Wilford. * * * I understand that the witnesses examined by this Committee: were some of those lean, lanky, lantern-jawed Prohibitionastsi who invade the precincts of this House to such an extent that it is impossible to leave or enter the building without always observing them hanging about our passages and corridor®. — Mr. <R. MoKenzie. » ♦ v Now, one can imagine all sorts of things. Take the case of a person, living up on the side cutting along the Hutt-road, past Kaiwarra. There is a footpath along that road, and if, under this Bill, a man or woman was carrying a load or bundle on her ©houldeir® that would be illegal, and the only alternative would be to walk in the middle of the Hutt-road.— Mr. Wilford pictures a frightful catastrophe. * * * Mr. McNab. — In the southern part of the colony there are sandhills stretching for miles along Foveaux Strait. That is the locality where the rabbits were introduced. They were taken there because it was nice dry ground for them to burrow in, and a policeman was sent down to prevent them from straying. An hon. member. — It was deolared a public holiday. Mr. MoNab. — -Yes, I believe it was, and they have had a high old carnival ever since. * * * We had an amusing experience in connection with one of these Government inspectors in my distinct. He had attended some lectures by a, veterinary surgeon, so he thought he knew something, and posed as an expert. There was a dance in a certain town, and this man attended it. Prior to the dance the groom at the hotel told him there was something wrong with the saw — .that it had swine-fever, or something of the kind. She was a matronI 3' old sow, with pious proclivities, but on this occasion she was going on in a most unseemly manneir, standing on her head, and cutting other capers. The young fellow went to nave a look at the sow, and in his note-book he took note of her symptoms. The sow became somewhat calm after a time, and the expert returned to the hotel for refreshments. He had not. been there long when he was informed that the sow was worse than ever, and this time the attack lasted for some time. The explanation of the whole thmgr was that during the morning the landlord had told the ostler to take away some sour beer, and the man had tried thie experiment of making the- sow drunk. Each time the inspector adjourned to the hotel for a refresher the groom availed himself of the opportunity to freshen up the fever. — Mr. Rutherford.

I do not. know how it is, but when any question comes bcfoie the House that touches alcohol at all thcie seems to be imparted into it a,n amount of feeling that to my mind, is absolutely unnecessary.'— The Right Hon. Mr. Seddon. * * * I said, before the people of Wellington proceeded to remodel the gardens they should send a man to New Plymouth to go through the beautiful re-creation-grounds there, see what was done, and then come back to do likewise. — Mr. E. M. Smith. * * * Although I think it is perhaps right to allow cyclists to use the footpath, and I see no objection to their doing so so far as the daylight is concerned, I think a clause should be inserted pieventmg them riding on the footpath at night.— Mr. Harding. * + I shall not say whether I am able to follow him on that point, but one of the first impressions I had when I came to this city w as that if the citizens of this place had been as alive to the scenic beauties of the place as they might have been they would have had a.ll these bare hills aroung the city covered with trees. —Mr. Sidey. * * • Here we are not all missionaries and captains, but the bulk of us are either Councillors or Justices of the Peace. Soon we will not be able to heave a brick without felling either a Town Councillor or a. member of Parliament. Sir, the thuur is preposterous.— Mr. Laurenson (whoso is without office let ham throw the first brick). * * * I stay at a hotel myself, and I take my wife and family there. With regard to hotels generally, and the urgency of closing them up at once, I say that the majority of hotels are not the plague-spots they are represented by certain honourable members to be, otherwise we w ould! not. find the honourable member for Masterton and myself living in them. — Mr. Rutherford. * * * The Hon. Sir J. G. Ward.— lt lias occurred to me durmg the course of the lengthy proceedmss this evening that the proposed amendment ought to be extended, and that °the greatest gasworks in the colony should be included An hon. member. — That is the Council itself. The Hon. Sir J. G. Ward.— No, sir, that is the House of Representatives. * * * The honourable member from that fishing centre of Lyttelton oomplaaried about the streets of Wellington because they are not straight. Perhaps they cannot compare with the streets on the slopes of Lyttelton, but I do not know jf a straight street is always the most desirable. There is beauty in a curve , but if his comparison is with Christchurch, then there is certainly no beauty m the streets of Christchurch, where they seem all to be laid off on the skew.— Mr. Duthie.