AN UNKNOWN TONGUE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 131, 2 April 1901, Page 3

AN UNKNOWN TONGUE.

The incident in the Debate on the in the House of Cqpimons, of which a cable message .made mention, when an Irish member attempted to address the House in the Erse, or-old Irish, tongue, did not pass without a reference to the custom prevailing in the New Zealand Parliament. Mr O’Donnell, the member for Kerry, had not gone very far with his remarks, which were, of coarse, unintelligible to all but a very few members, before the Speaker pulled him up. “ The hon. member,” he said, “is proposing to address the House in a language with which 1 am not familiar. I presume it is Irish. That will not be in order. It is quite an unknown practice in this House, and I must ask him to address the House in English.” Mr O’Donnell, however, went on with his Erse remarks, and was again called to order, whereupon Mr John Redmond rose to a point of order, and asked whether any written or unwritten rule of the House forbade a member speaking in the language which was most familiar to him and was the language of the majority of his constituents, He mentioned that when he was in New Zealand he attended debates in the House of Representatives, and that in that Assembly the Maori members were allowed to speak in their native tongue. He himself heard a member of the New Zealand Parliament addressing the House in the Maori language. If that were permitted in the Legislature of oneofEngland’s selfgoverning colonies he did not see why it could not be allowed also in the House of Commons. But the speaker thought otherwise. So far as ho knew there was no precedent of any member having, during the six- hundred years the House of Commons had been in existence, and the hundred years during which Irishmen had been members of the House, tiied to address it in any language but English. If any change had to be made it could be done by the Standing Orders. “I have no doubt,” he added, “that the hon. member, with that eloquence which distinguishes his countrymen, will be able, if he pleases, to address the House in English as well as in Irish.” Mr O’Donnell, however, was not conciliated by the compliment, and would not ispeak further. The precedents of those six hundred years were too much for him.