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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 974, 31 August 1881, Page 2

The following is a sample of the way the extremely Honorable member for the East Coast disports himself at the expense of other persons, and plays off in vindictiveness what he has not the brains to cope wdth otherwise. On the motion for the committal of the Law Practitioners Bill, Mr. Allan McDonald said—

He sincerely hoped the House would pass the Bill, for he did not believe in any body of men having a monopoly of such a profession as this. He would give the House a case that occurred in the office of Mr. Smith, the seconder of the resolutions just read by the honorable member for Dunedin (Mr. Stewart). There was a young man in that office trying to pass. He was son of the Registrar of the Supreme Court, and had been in Messrs. Smith and Anderson’s office for about three years. It would be remembered by some honorable members, there was a very heavy lawsuit carried on at Dunedin, and which had extended over two or three years—the case of White v. McKellar. If he recollected rightly, Mr. McKellar employed Messrs. Smith and Anderson, and they lost the case for Mr. McKellar. When they submitted their bill to Mr. McKellar he refused to pay it, and it was taxed by this young man’s father, the Registrar of the Supreme Court, and £BOO was knocked off. One of the firm afterwards went to this young man and told him that this transaction of his father’s would affect him very considerably in the office, and he did not like to say what the result might be. The young man had, in consequence of the action of his father, to leave the office. He had a very hard job to get Smith and Anderson to sign his articles, and he had to be transferred to another lawyer and had to go to the North Island before he was allowed to pass. He said that if this Bill became law he thought they would not get such a good class of lawyers. With regard to being four or five years in a lawyer’s office, it was too long a time to be there at a very small remuneration. He hoped the House would pass the Bill. Before sitting down he would askwhat was the man, who seconded the resolu, tion read to the House, up to now ? He was at law with his own wife, trying to do her out of the property left to her by her own relations.

Mr. Speaker said it must be most distasteful to the House to hear matters of a domestic nature dragged before the House in this way. If an honorable member entertained such an opinion, he ought not, in his (the Speaker’s) judgment, to express it. Mr. McDonald would be very sorry to go outside the rules of the House. There were some lawyers with regard to whom it would be a very good job if they had to go through their examination again. All he wanted to say was, that he heard Mr. Smith was getting the worst of this lawsuit he was carrying on against his own wife, and he for one was glad to hear of it.

Mr. Oliver was very sorry to hear the observations that had just fallen from the honorable member for the East Coast. He did not think any honorable member should screen himself by the privileges of the House, and make statements there which he would be afraid to make outside. Mr. McDonald : No, I am not.

The name of the “ young man ” “trying to pass,” we leave to the sagacity of our readers to discover. But, as the honorable member for the East Coast has mentioned Mr. Smith’s name, we are at liberty to explain that be is the same gentleman who, in a recent law case in Napier, embraced Mr. McDonald’s name as that of a gross perjurer, and falsifier of the truth, so that it is not surprising that this biglittle boy in politics, should so far forget himself as to bring down the wellmerited rebuke of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

But we wonld supplement our remarks by saying that it is simply embarrassing to more terrestrial minds than that of Mr. McDonald, to endeavor to fit in the arguments he adduces—if arguments they can be called. We have italicised, in the foregoing extract the portions to which we allude. Mr. McDonald says, firstly, that “he “ sincerely hoped the House would “ pass the (Law Practitioners) Bill, “ for he did not believe in any body of “ men having a monopoly of such a profession as this while, secondly, “ he said that if this Bill became law ” (this is his own grammar) “he thought “ they would not get such a good class “ of lawyers.” there is an old saying that a man at the age of forty is either a physician or a fool; and his latest contradiction furnishes abundant proof that, whatever other qualifications the member for the East Coast possesses, he cannot lay claim to that of a physician.