PARLIAMENTARY NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 1002, 6 September 1872, Page 2

PARLIAMENTARY NEWS.

(From ' Hansard.') THE o'cONOIt PETITION".

Mr Gillies brought up the report of the Select Committee upon the petition of certain residents of the Bullor district, relative to certain land purchased by Eugene O'Couor, Esq., M.H.E., which was read as follows :

" Owing to the vagueness of the allegations in the petition, the Committee had some difficulty in determining to what their inquiry should extend. They believe that the House desire to give the hon. member for 3uller an opportunity of vindicating his character and honor, as a member of this House, from charges made against him by the Provincial Council of Nelson, and would not expect the Committee to examine into vague accusations and recriminations between Mr. O'Conorand individuals. They therefore determined, at an early stage of the inquiry, to confine themselves to the question, 'Did a knowledge obtained by Mr O'Conor, as a member of the Provincial Council, of the intentions of the Westport Committee, to recommend the reserve from sale of certain lands at Westport, induce or contribute to indued him to forestall tho Ooinrvx-fctoo?. intention, by tho purchase of these lands on his private account ?'

" Copies of the evidence taken by tie Committee of* the Provincial Council of Kelson were put in evidence, find Mi' O'Conor submitted himself to examination on oath, and to cross-examination by counsel on behalf of the Speaker and some members of the Provincial Council of Kelson.

"Your Committee find—(l) That Mr O'Conor had the intention of purchasing the land in question in AVestport some time prior to the meeting of Westport Sea EnL-ivajhinont Committee. (2.) That he was present in the Committee-room during the deliberations of the Committee, and had an opportunity of hearing those deliberations. (3.) That ha having stated on oath that he did not hear those deliberations, your Committee are bound to believe him. (-4.) That he has sufficiently accounted, by documentary evidence, for his having, immediately after the deliberations of that Committee, purchased the; laud in question, without having recourse to the supposition that he heard, or was in any respect influenced by a knowledge of those deliberations. (5.) That, before his conduct was publicly called in question, he, as soon as the resolution of the Committee was communicated to him, offered to surrender the land for the public benefit. ((j.) That your Committee are of opinion that Mr O'Conor did not act in any way dishonorably in the matter, ond that there was nothing in his conduct connected with that purchase derogatory to his character as a member of this House.

"Your Committee will only add, that, whilst they considered it unnecessary to put the public to the expense of calling witnesses from a distance on such a matter, they gave time for production of witnesses, and they were willing to adjourn further for that purpose, on payment of costs of adjou nment, which; was declined; and that they attach no weight whatever to the declaration put in of one J. M. Laugdou, it being improbable in itself, and contradicted by the declaration of Mr A. Wilkie."

Mr Btafford : I beg to move, " That the House has received with very great satisfaction, the report of the Committee in this case."

Mr O'Conor : Sir, I think I may be allowed to say a few words of thanks to this House and to the Committee for giving me an opportunity of repellmg the stigma which my enemies have endeavored to attach to my character. I will not at the present time, considering the important business now in abeyance, weary hon. members by detailing all the circumstances which induced mo to bring to this House a petition from my constituents, asking for an investigation

of this charge. It is well known that in the course of a political career we make enemies, and I have been unfortunate enough to have made my share amongst the most bitter and unscrupulous, either from the course I have followed in my political life, or from some other cause which I do not now wish to surest. Those enemies have combined to blacken my character throughout the country, by means of the telegraph and the Press of the Colony, and have compelled me to appeal to this House to examine into the charges made against my honor. When a person who has sought above all things to keep his name and character above censure, finds himself suddenly thrown down from the position to which he has been elevated in the opinion of his fellow men, the House may understand what the feelings of such a person in such circumstances must be. For four months I felt myself entirely unable to stem the torrent of public opinion that a few virulent enemies had caused to flow against me, and the only means that was left to me was given by the chance of my being a member of this House; for if I had not been so placed, and had not had the power of bringing forward a petition from my constituents calling for the inquiry, which resulted in a Committee being appointed, consisting of members chosen from both sides of the House, to investigate into my conduct, my character might have perished, and my name have been for ever blackened by the relentless persecution of those whose whole object seems to me to ' hare been to have been to hound me down and ruin my character, regardless of what the feelings of myself and of those connected with me might have been. I appealed to this House, where I expected to get that fair play and justice which I could not get from men who were blinded by prejudice and bigotry, and who were, moreover, in the hands of a cunning charlatan, who was cunningly using them to effect his own purposes. The case was examined into by the Nelson Provincial Council, who never had an opportunity for going fully into the matter; and the Press, from the moment the charge was made, contaiued only repetitions of concocted phases of the case. The telegraph news-agent in Nelson, abusing the position he held and the power he had to control the newspapers of the Colony, lent his aid to blacken my name still further. It was not sufficient that by those means a resolution was passed by the Provincial Council, mortifying enough, one would think to gratify the most bitter hatred ; so much so that a member of this House, in referring to it, said " it would be death to the reputation of any one " Sir, I was followed to my own constituents followed like a hunted hare from place to place, when it was found that the garbled and onesided evidence taken before the Nelson Committee was not sufficient, the false declaration ma le by Langdon, and referred to in the report of the Committee, was paraded before them. The injury clone by tint false declaration ought to be sufficient to attract the attention of the House to the necessity for enacting that statutory declarations should not continue to be taken in this land in such a manner as to enable those making them, when false, to keep without the reach of the law. This charge was brought against me in all directions throughout the country, in such a manner that I really am astonished that I have been able to struggle through. AVhen I camo to the House and methon. members, some few who did not know me, seemed to look at me with distrust, but I am proud to say that many bon. members I do value took the earliest opportunity of telling me that the slander had fallen harmlessly on their ears, and that they knew me better than to suppose I would be guilty of doing what I was accused of. This day we have had brought under our notice a slander published in a newspaper, and the House expressed its indignation ; but I stand the victim of slanders in nearly every paper in New Zealand, aud yet some say I have no legal remedy. I have been pursued to the floor of this House, and have been insulted by the manner in which the persecution has still been carried out here. I repeat, I am thankful to the Committee and to this House for the trouble they have taken in this matter, but I regret that the Committee did not see its way to enquire into the manner in which the resolutions were passed by the Provincial Council of Nelson; for, though I do not charge and nevor did charge the Council as a whole with unfairness—for there are in it some estimable men—yet my personal enemies in it made this their stepping stone to crush a political opponent, who had for years stood against their self-seeking and personal baseness. There was but one course open to me besides bringing the matter before the House—the law; aud to a considerable extent the privileges conceded to Provincial Councils directly precluded me from taking that step and prevented me from bringing before the legal tribunals of the country those persons who have been the means, for a time, of degrading me and slandering my name throughout New Zealand. Mr Luckie: Sir, as a member of the Provincial Council referred to by the hon. member for the Buller, I am bound to clear the names of those gentlemen -who unanimously adopted the report of the Committee appointed to mako an inquiry into that hon. member's conduct. I shall not now enter into the question raised by the I

hon member, and all that it is neces. airy for me to say ia this : that two members of this House, with a repu. tation as unblemished as ever was that of the hon member for the Buller, have been charged by that gentleman, although not by name, yet he named them elsewhere, with combining with other gentlemen, equally honorable with themselves, falsely and maliciously, for the purpose of getting the Provincial Couucil to pass that resolu. tion. I say at once there never was any combination of the kind, and they never thought of such a thing. That resolution was unanimously passed, and was afterwards as unanimously confirmed. At the time, a charge was repeatedly made that the evidence was not fairly taken, and was garbled to make the affair appear muuh worse against the hon member for the Buller than it was ; but I say no such thing ever took place, as a proof of which, every member of Committee bore testimony to the fairness of the inquiry, and every person who gave evidence before the Council's Com. mittee has examined and signed hi« evidence as being correct. Mr O'Conor : No.

Mr Luckie: I repeat, that every witness examined before the Committee signed the evidence, and a copy so signed was produced to the Committee of thi3 House. One fact deserves notice, and that is, that though the member for the Buller deuied at Nelson the correctness of the evidence taken there, and made repeated accusations of its being garbled, yet he actually put the evidence before the Committee of the House, and admitted its accuracy. The Speaker: I think the hon. member will be acting in accordance with the wishes of the House if he refrains from discussing the proceedings of the Nelson Provincial Council. Mr Luckie: I bow to your decision, Sir; but I think that intimation might well have been made when the previous speaker was addressing the House, inasmuch as charges were brought by him against members of the Provincial Council, but for which I should not have addressed the House at this time. Personally I care nothing for his statements, but I am bound to defend the Council and its action from unjust aspersion. I will merely say that I, as chairman of the Committee of the Provincial Council, have nothing to regret, for I did my duty without fear or favor or a shadow of enmity for why should I have enmity against the hon member ?—and it is unjust, aud without foundation, to say that I or any member of the Council have sueh a feeling toward him or any man as would lead us to commit such a contemptible action. The evidence adduced before the Committee was supplemented before the Committee of this House by the addition of certain document*, about the value of which I say nothing, but some evidence that was desired at NeUon was put in here by the hon member for the Buller himself, although he refused to produce it to the Council's Committee. I will onlv add, I wish to be understood that, in justice to the members of the Previncial Council, I desire that somtthing should be said in defence of thenaction, and to note the fact that evideuce was submitted to the Committee of this House that was not produced before them. lam sure no hou member can be more gratified than I am that at last a decision has been arrived at by the Committee of this House. Motion agreed to. On the motion of Mr Gillies, it was ordered, That the report be printed, and that the names of the members of the Committee be affixed to it in order that attention might be drawn to the composition of the Committee.