The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1881.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4027, 24 November 1881, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1881.

" Facta, non verba " should be the maxim of all those gentlemen who consider they have a divine gift for legislating for the people. It is utterlytuseless for a member of the House to talk to an almost interminable length, when) be cannot find anyone to listen to him, or when no one pays the smallest attention to his utterances. He gains nothing by such a profusion of verbiage, and the only result is the waste of a large amount of. valuable time—time that should be occupied in the consideration of measuresjreally necessary for the benefit of the colony. It is a pity that this view is not more generally held for it is a well-known fact that the oratorical beauty of a speech does not consist of tautological phrases, and commonplace anecdotes. Speeches, like boobs, carry most .weight when reduced into the smallest, possible compass, when the arguments >qre laid down with clearness and; brevity; Jf an argument is a perfectly; correct j and unanswerable one, it does not require to be demonstrated by a profuse ' amount of language f and the very terseness with which it is propounded is more likely to cause members to consider it than if surrounded with- an embarrassing and superfluous amount of talk. When a member of the House comes before the electors to give an account of his doings in that assembly, he does not do so to inform the public of the scores of pages in Hansard taken up by him in useless prattle. He is expected to state what good he has done for his constituents and the country generally. If he has been instrumental in doing good for the district he represented, his worth is unanimously recognised, but if on the contrary he has actually done nothing, his constituents are likely to.raise the o]d Scriptural complaint, and say, "We asked you for bread, and yoir have given us a stone." There are times, we admit, when lengthy speeches are required—in a case for example, where important innovations in Legislation are under discussion, but, taken as a general rule, the discussion on various matters in the House, are permitted to occupy fully half as long again as they require. No wonder when such lengthy speakers as Dr Wallis, and Messrs Speight and Seddon parade their views in the House, the members, reporters, aud all but the parties speaking, look at the clock and wish themselves at home.