SCENE AT A BOROUGH COUNCIL MEETING.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2641, 26 June 1877, Page 3

SCENE AT A BOROUGH COUNCIL MEETING.

The Otago Guardian gives the .following particulars of the encounter between Councillor Halligan and Auditor Eager in the St. Kilda Borough Council Chamber, which event was referred to in a telegram recently :•—

A special meeting was convened to consider the new scheme for the drainage of the municipality. Shortly before the hour appointed, the town clerk and Cr Halligan were in the Council Chambers, when Auditor Eager made his appearance and tendered the amount due for rates on behalf of two of the ratepayers of Musselburgh. The payment was accompanied by a demand to see the books in order to ascertain who had paid and who had not. The books, it appears, were ~ refused, and what is colonially termed a civil " barney)" arose. The town clerk and Cr Halligan held the august name of "the Council" in terrorem before the astonished auditor, and the latter promptly consigned the august body to a place that is supposed to be paved with good intentions, although, somewhat too warm to be pleasant to ordinary mortals. Cr Halligan retorted that he was there to protect the Council from abuse, and, it is said, squared defiantly at the indignant auditor. Auditor Eager replied that he was too old a goldier to be intimidated, and that he had an old score against the councillor to rftfltify for having given him a "hiding " •WlenWwas slightly elevated, and pitching Isftn into a ditch. A pugilistic encounter ensued, in the course of which the auditor is said to have succeeded in balancing accounts in a way that was tolerably satisfactory to himself. Shortly afterwards the quarrel was renewed, and at this stage the Mayor, with half-a-dozen ratepayers and Crs Arnold and Roughton, put in an appearance. When the Mayor entered the room he found Cr Halligan arid Auditor Eager on the floor lighting, as he describes it, "like two dogs." The ratepayers were grouped around them, their attitudes and features betraying all the varied degrees of admiration, from the moderate to the intense. A ring was cleared, and for a few seconds the two combatants were left to square matters after a congenial fashion. It then became apparent that the auditor was making: things very severe for the councillor, and as both of their features had suffered . considerably, the onlookers considered it necessary to interfere and put an end to the disgraceful spectacle. . The councillor, who is" said to have been worsted, was accompanied home by Cr Arnold; and as the Mayor had not the necessary number of members left to form a quorum* the meeting had to lapse. The auditor's features are slightly scratched and swollen, especially over the eyebrows, but the injuries done to the councillor's frontispiece are described as being of a somewhat more unsightly character.