THAT ST0NEWALL. A Question of Principle.

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 224, 15 October 1904, Page 6

THAT STONEWALL. A Question of Principle.

THE Opposition decided, an hour and a-half after midnight one morning last week, that it was time to go home, and so they sat until glad nature awoke and the business man of Wellington went to his lunch. The Opposition was tired. That's why it stayed m its seat, and baulked business. It was a question of principle. The sturdy British spirit, and all that sort of thing. It reminds us forcibly of the small boy who, smarting under some fancied parental slight, says: "J won't have me dinner, so there !" * * * No one would trouble much if the members of Parliament went out into a paddock, and stayed there for sixteen hours on a question of principle. It wouldn't cost anybody except the politician anything. If the politicians wanted to exhibit their extreme impatience to go* home by sitting on a fence m the rain for twenty-four hours, it would be nobody's business But s the stonewalling absurdity costs money. • * * An unkempt, unwashed, morning politician isn't nice to look at. He is doing nobody any good, and he is getting paid for being an. umnterestirt, spectacle, and a laughing-stock to the country. The mother of Parliaments had fits of stonewalling Gladstone stonewalled once off his ow n bat for nine hours. With all Svc respect to the memory of the great statesman, on that occasion he must have been an insufferable bore. And, because the Commons do this kind of thing, the New Zealand Parliament should follow suit, especially "on a question of principle." The Commons don't get paid, stonewall or no stonewall The New Zealand Parliament does get paid. A- a matter of principle, it ought to d' something better for its money than sitting up all night out of sheer spite, and talking nonsense Politicians, as a rule 1 , strive fairly hard for their place, and they begin pretty early in each session to mdi

care that it is time they were going t.i their homes. But, on a "question of principle" they are content to put in a profitk- 1 - stonewall period, thus deferring the departure for which their souls yearn They protest against "legislation by exha.ustion," preferring to exhaust themselves by twaddle that is not legislation They call upon tnc country to pay the bill, and are very high-principled fellows indeed J> would be interesting to know more about these questions of principle, and what is gained by sticking up for them Also, whether the country would not rather see such pnnciples go hang than that their legislators should fatigue themselves by talking rubbish when they ought to be in bed