PARLIAMENTARY GOSSIP.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3932, 5 August 1881, Page 2

PARLIAMENTARY GOSSIP.

[By Telegraph.]

(feom otjb special cobeesponbent.)

Wellington, This day

The melancholy dulness of Sessional work in the House was momentarily enlivened yesterday by Mr Finn. He quite unexpectedly gave notice that he would ask to day a question to the following effect: — Whether Government is aware that the Resident Magistrate at Kumara, Westland, recently opened the Court for the transaction ojt'^ judicial business at 8 o'clock in the evening, and sat until four o'clock the next morning, and during such time totfk the evidence of young girls, and at three in the morn, ing issued a warrant to compel the attendance of another girl of tender years; also what the Government intended doing in the matter. The Magistrate referred ! to is Mr Stratford. Further details relative to the accident on the Masterton line show that the passenger carriages had even a more narrow escape than was at first supposed from following the timber trucks over the embankment, iv which case the loss of life would have been serious. The Times apologises this morning for its insult in reference to the pressmen, and says : " We used the term ' undesirable class ' the other day in a collective, and not in an individual sense. We meant it to include reputable as well as disreputable men, of any calling, for our argument bore exclusively upon the desirableness of elevating the status of tbe legal profession as much as possible, because of its important bearing, less upon the public than upon private life." It would have been better had the Times plainly stated that the offensive leader was written by a sucking lawyer and pub}iohcd through inadvertence;.