HONOURS AND THE JACKDAW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 171, 21 July 1922, Page 7

HONOURS AND THE JACKDAW.

■ -i. ■! — % - 1 REMINDERS FOR MR. MASSEY. /By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Keporter.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. Honours had been bestowed so freely lately, said Mr. Sullivan (Avon) in the House, that if the process were, continued the ordinary plain would "be more rare than "gentlemen" who had been honoured. "The time is coming," he continued, "we can see it in Great Britain, when the multitude of these honours will bring them into contempt. Most of these honours were conferred upon Ministers of the Crown or supporters of the Government. If I had time I would like to read a list of honours conferred." The Prime Minister: Do it, by all means. Mr. Sullivan: T will read instead something that was said by Mr. Massey about honours in a speech at the Wellington Town Hall in 1911. The Prime Minister: I was speaking of hereditary titles. Mr. Sullivan proceeded to read a re-' port of Mr. Massey's speech criticising a list of honours conferred in 1311. Mr. Massey had specially excepted Sir Joshua Williams and the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, and had said the people who accept these titles are just as anxious to join the aristocracy, even if it be only a colonial aristocracy, as the jackdaw in Aesop's fable. During Mr. Massey's term of office, said Mr. Sullivan, twenty-four of the higher honours—K.C.M.G. and so on —had been conferred, to say nothing of a great number of 0.8.E.'5.* For the benefit of the House Mr. Sullivan proceeded to read "The Fable of the Jackdaw," which dressed itself in a peacock's plumes and sought to join more brilliant birds, but wos driven out in disgrace and afterwards rejected by its own friends"l am afraid," concluded Mr. Sullivan, ''that the Prime Minister has changed his mind on this as well as many other questions.'.'