THE SECOND THOUGHT

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 41, 11 June 1914, Page 4

THE SECOND THOUGHT

Sir Joseph Carruthers did not talk polities in a specified sense at a banquet to Mr R. L. Baker, but something in the atmosphere called from him a reference to what we are led to believe will bo a "bonny scrap," says the Sydney Telegraph, as a Stadium habitue would have it, "in the future." Sir Joseph was responding to the toast of Parliament. "While I am at all times prepared to defend Parliament in its good works," ho said, "there are times when 1 feel like a member of the public, and think it would be a good thing if we had no Parliament for a long time. We are getting such a multiplicity of laws that the country would be all the letter for a rest." Just here he simulated anxiety. Mr R. D. Meagher,,Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, was in the chair. "I'd like to take another look at you, Mr Speaker," he said. "I belong to a House against which the order has gone forth for its destruction. lam going to get it into good fighting trim. We'll get Mr Baker to give us a little training. Parliament is, we are told, to become a stadium in which the. fight will be between the Assembly, that young and virile body, presided over by my friend, Mr Meagher, and the old fogeys of the Legislative Council, that place where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. It is proposed that the wicked Assembly should make an assault upon us. There will be a good many rounds fought before the old House is knocked out, for it stands for a very good thing—the second thought."