AN APPEAL FOR HAWKERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 45, 2 December 1871, Page 4

AN APPEAL FOR HAWKERS.

The Legislative Assembly of Victoria was recently addressed, at the bar, by Mr Fisher, a barrister of the Supreme Gourt. The learned gentleman appeared, in his turn with others, when the measure for the reform of the market laws was called on, to plead with the House in the interests of the hawkers of produce. The speech which went before Mr Fisher's was like any other speech by a legal gentleman, but his own was an oration —an effort which, in its magnificence, carried the House back to the " dark backward and abysm of time, when Demosthenes was trying, in a small way, to address public assemblies. The effect, however, which Mr Fisher produced on the House was not exactly such as would have flushed the cheek of the orator of old Greece with inward pride. He began splendidly—his speech should be as short, compared with the speech which had gone before, as the hand-basket of the hawker compared with the heavy cart of the marketgardener or the lumbering coach. The feelings of the House, affected beyond

control, were here expressed in a manner which prevented the sentence from being heard to the end. But the orator went bravely on. While the flashing eyes saw nothing but the burning words of the written address, the years were deaf to the convulsive sounds which rose around him. The hawkers were taxed for the support of a little army of non-producers, who toiled not, neither did they spin, unless it were in the complicated web of city taxationThen the attention of the House was turned to the procurement of a nutritious and delicate article of food—fish ; and Mr Fisher was obliged reluctantly to pause until the attentive House' had recovered. In the next place,.he led them into the presence of the wretched fisherman, who toiled for so many hours at his net; and followed that same fisherman on his weary trudge of 25 or 40 miles, through no less than three toll-gates, till he arrived at the Fish Market, a market which the most sanguine city alderman in his brightest postprandial moments would not attempt to say was a marked success. What conflicting interests did the corporation protect ? We did not catch flounders or flatheads in the Tarra ? The corporation even taxed the peripatetic vendors of cockles and periwinkles at the rate of a penny a gallon. At this period it was thought in the gallery that the two members for North Melbourne would have to be carried out. The speaker wondered the corporation had not levied their petty dues on the " frail old fellows" or " sprightly youngsters" who cried the newspapers in the streets. How was it that we had so much foreign and so little home produce in the market ? Because the market-gardeners of the other colonies basked in the smiles of a happier Pomona. Was the domestic goose a comparative rarity—the House was occupied for about half a minute in saying loudly that it thought not—or was a fresh egg a reminiscence of the past! Draco's laws were said to have been written in blood, but the rules of the corporation were traced in human sweat. In this wise period of decentralisation, why should Melbourne resemble an enormous sponge, absorbing all the scanty produce of the country districts ? Might the cry of the hawker be heard withacceptancebi this honorable House. The speech was still ringing in the ears of lion, members when Mr Macpherson remarked that they bad been insulted by somethiug fit only for a penny reading. Mr Woods added that it would not have done even for a penny reading.