OUR SYDNEY LETTER

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2887, 15 January 1891, Page 4

OUR SYDNEY LETTER

(KILO.M OCR OWN" COKRKSPOVDKST.) Syjj.n ky, December 24. L , .\kluml''..nt has at lust prorogued after an unuseally long session with an unusually short record of work done. Seven-eighths of the time has been spent iu useless talk, which has led nowhere, and a great part of the talk has consisted of irritating recrimination, which has led to inaptitude by making it more difficult than it otherwise would have been for members to co-operate with one another. However in a state of affairs in which co-operation so easily passes over into conspiracy, it 13 sometimes better for the general public that men iu positions of power should f.ill out than that they should agree. It must he sufficiently obvious to any observer that there is no folly too idiotic to fiud supporters in the House, uo injustice too glaring to be perpetrated, provided a majority of members imagine they can increase their popularity with the most ignorant of their constituents, or otherwise serve their own ends in rushing it through. A very manifest compensation attends their bickerings so long as there is any doubt of their intention to do what is right and just. One cruise o",f the futility of the I'nrliament (apart from the incompetence and lack of public spirit of so many of its members) is that it is far too large and unwieldy. In Great Britain the same number'of inhabitants would be amply represented by thirty nr forty members. A special cause which has operated durjiiir tim present session h;n been payment of members. The same spirit which nromnt.:d hon. members to help them-

••elves oul of the public sts-ons; box, led them al.-o to desire to »nj.iy their ousilynot monthly cheques as long as possible. But the House was so evenly divided tint the in Lroduc - tion of any of the burning questions with which it was specially ducted to tic il would have led to a crisis, and the

crisis to a uissolutiou. Thcu, instead of drawing comfortable salaries duriug a long recess for doing nothing, they would have been in danger of losing them altogether, and at any rate would have been pai to considerable trouble and expense in the attempt to renew their tenure, it can hardly be imagined that men who were able to swallow the greater scruple should be vanquished by the less. Therefore, the questions which would have sent Ministers to the country and members to their constituents have been postponed with the willing consent of all concerned. So far as the I'rotection-Free Trade controversy was concerned there was a valid excuse for postponing the t>riff battle on account of the strike, and the unsettled state of the public mind as to the attitude and claims of the Trades and Union agitators. But a House that meant business would have disposed of it before the strike began. Whether the Assembly meant business, or whether it meant sticking to its pay as long as possible, neither I nor anyone else is in a position authoritatively to decide. But whether it meant it or not, it lias been conspicuously successful in achieving the latter object, and has as conspicuously failed in achieving the

Mr Crick has withdrawn the charges of corruption which he made against the .ijieaker and the Chairman of Committees. He now attributes them to the bad grog which he had imbibed. But surely Air Crig w;>s net under the inllitenee of bad grog all the time that lie w.is con; esting the West, Maeqnarie election, v.'heu he made capital out of these very charges and declared that, if defied, he would prove them up to the hill. Sober, he made use of charges which he now admits to be baseless, and which lie now seeks to excuse under the plea of drunkcimesa. Whatever validity such a plea mayhave, it evidently cannot extenuate Mr Crick's calculated and deliberate onduct in allowing the Speaker, and the Chairman of Committees to remain under tlie stigma which lie now says had its origin in '■ bad ""After all what does this plea of drunkenness amount to as an extenuation ? In fan, says one of the truest of Latin proverbs. That is to say, when a man ia drunk, he shows himself iu hia

trues character. The brags, the quarrelsome man wrangles. .Some grow maudlin pious, some tipsily philosophical, sotno imagine themselves the only sober persons present and the most shining examples of virtue to be found in a wicked world. Hut the point is that whatever they thus show is some trait of their real character, which, whan they are sober, they probably carefully conceal. In vino ccrhis ! How then docs it help a man to declare that when lie is drunk he is a mendacious slanderer, and an inventor of circumstantial accusations calculated to destroy the reputations of representative. men, but which have no foundation

iu fact? The balancc sheet of the Labour Defence Committee has at last been published. It shows total receipts amounting to £37,'27'2. The to till amount received from England was only .(MOOU, though the intelligence published from day to day would lead to the supposition that it was at least five or six times as large. Probably each several item was made to do duty several times over in the benevolent desire of encouraging the strikers and intimidating the other side by exaggerating the amount of help received. The shearers contributed £7,710. It will be remembered that they boasted that they would give t; 100,000, if necessary. On such flimsy and unreliable promises were large bodies of men induced to cast away their means of livelihood. Falsehood and misapprehension have been so freely employed during the struggle that the public hardly know what weight to attach to any statements that are made. But, following the balance-sheet, cofnes a declaration, apparently authorised by the committee, that the capitalists were bound to win so long as the strike leaders upheld law and order. How much better and wiser it would have been to have made this declaration before spending the £37,000 and crippling the Unions in a useless and hopeless struggle, instead of reserving it as a piece of after-wit to be produced when the mischief is done.

However, Government, Parliameut, strike leaders, employers, not excepting even press writers, all all are human, all equally liable to bo misled by plausible and specious appearance. Probably, each in the circumstances of the others, would act much in the same way. Only we don't as a rule go twice into the same trap, or get caught more than once with the same bait. To show the trap, to unmask the bait, is to warn others from being snared.