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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4966, 21 February 1877, Page 2

It is to be hoped that the Hutt County Council will soon decide upon some regulations by which their meetings will be made to present something like an appearance of order and method. At present they are characterised by nothing but confusion, and this not only prevents that respectable body of men from doing their business thoroughly and clearly, but makes them look extremely ridiculous. In saying this we have no intention to offend, and should be sorry to- know that anybody felt hurt thereat; our object 'simply being to tender a little friendly advice, to the end that the members of the Council when' assembled together to consider important questions should not present the appearance of a lot of little boys (and very ignorant little boys too), playing a game far in advance of their years and education. It is quite true that the Council is yet in its infancy. There have, however, been several meetings already, and it is time now that the members settled down into rational habits ; but the meeting yesterday afternoon, in reference to its conduct, was quite as peculiar, and perhaps a little more so, than the first meeting held by the Council at the Hutt. We may suggest the advisability of the Council framing standing orders for their guidance, or adopting the rules of the Municipal Council. It may be well for instance—not to put too fine a point on it, —that not more than five out of the nine members should be allowed to speak at once, and that each speaker should stand up ; of course it would be p.n improvement again if the Council could bring itself to believe that one at a time was sufficient, and sometimes a little too much. Of those whose business it is to listen to these gentlemen and j record the substance of their.outpourings, or I

grasp a flitting idea, which no sooner appears than it is lost in a whirlwind of confusion—well, it is unnecessary to say anything of them, perhaps, or the mental agony they suffer, further than that there is a possibility of their reports approaching the incoherency characteristic of the Council’s proceedings. That is not all. Even yesterday, after a good deal of general free and easy conversation quite unconnected with the subject supposed to be before the meeting, Mr. Smith remarked that they appeared to be “going backwards like the frog.” There was a good deal in that remark of Mr. Smith’s, although there is a little obscurity in his reference to the frog. Whatever may have been the result of that gentleman’s observations on frogs, it is pretty certain that his calculation as to the tendency of the Council at that' moment was tolerably correct: they really were not going forward, but on the contrary seemed to be going round in a maze, with two or more resolutions before them at one and the same time. There are two or three members of the Council who seem to think that while speech is silvern silence is golden, and of these the most noticeable is Mr. Morgan, who occasionally speaks, though only when he really has something pertinent to remark ; but we have no desire to particularise further. There is another matter, however, in connection with the meetings of this Council which calls for remark. The chairman (for whom we entertain the greatest respect, by tlm way) is, if possible, too industrious. As chairman of the Wellington Districts Highway Board, he has been accustomed to do the work of the clerk in so far as taking minutes of the meetings is concerned, and he continues this practice as chairman of the County Council, writing down the various resolutions, instead of requiring the members to write their resolutions for themselves and hand them in to the chairman in the ordinary way. This seems to have become, a habit with Mr. Mason ; but it is a habit which he would do well to discard, as it not only delays business but looks undignified. The Council sat for two hours yesterday, and the business transacted might have been got through in half the time or less, with every consideration being given to the matters discussed.

We are in receipt of what purports to be a report of proceedings at a meeting of the Karori School Committee on Friday evening last. A letter accompanies the report, and requests its publication in the New Zealand Times. Without any intention to be rude, we may at once say that this request will not be complied with. In the first place, the meeting took place on Friday evening, and the report was only forwarded from Karori yesterday morning. It may be quite reliable; but it would have been more satisfactory had it not apparently taken such a long time in preparation. In the next place, the report was forwarded previously to other local papers, which, even if the first objection had not been paramount, would have sufficed to have excluded it from our columns. Finally, if the Karori School Committee had wished for a speedy and proper report of certain proceedings, to which they seemingly attach a good deal of importance, they need only have notified us, and we should have been most happy to have sent a representative to their meeting, when we should have been responsible for the report in this paper, and would not have been compelled to refuse one the authenticity of which we are not prepared to guarantee.

Anxious to live under a Government which shall not be anarchical, and in a country which shall not be subjected to the tyranny of a depraved and corrupt centralism, a few of the followers of Mr. Macandrew profess a desire to leave Otago and to settle in lower California under the pleasant and safe rule of Mexico. These gentlemen have such peculiar theories on the subject of government that it is not impossible they would find complete happiness in Mexico, where a man can easily make a fortune to-day and lose it to-morrow in one of the revolutions which are as much an incident of Mexican public life as letters from Sir,George Grey and Mr. M acandrew became at one time an incident of public life in New Zealand. Tastes differ, and whilst the vast majority of the people of New Zealand will prefer their own country, with protection to life and property, even though Sir George Grey and Mr. Macandrew should quit it, there would be manifest intolerance in denying the right of those gentlemen or any of their followers to emigrate to Mexico, where it is quite easy to get up real revolutions, and where any man, by dubbing himself Dictator, and putting himself at the head of a few scarecrows, can exercise all the rights of his position until he is taken, and his career terminated sus. per coll,]

The Commissioners of Police assembled in Wellington at present, it may as well at once be understood, can settle nothing, and their meetings cannot be grouped under the generic term conference. They were simply invited by the Government to come together and make what recommendations might seem fit to them in view of the altered position as to control and other matters under which the police force of New Zealand will in future be. But their meetings will not be recorded in the way of parliamentary papers, nor is the Government likely to be at all hampered by any recommendations they may make, should such recommendations seem unfit to be carried out. Under these circumstances, it is unnecessary to say that any reports which may be published as to the ultimate manner in which the police work of the colony will be administered are simply wholly incorrect.