TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3267, 21 December 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1881.

The new Parliament consists of ninetyone European members and four Maori representatives. The number of members re-elected who eat in the last Parliament is forty-four; the number who eat in previous Parliaments but not in the last is eight; thus the new House will contain thirty-nine men absolutely new to Parliamentary life. It may not be amiss to bear in mind that the colony now consists of ninety-one European electorates, each of which returns one member, while in the time of the late Parliament there were eighty three electorates and eightyfour members. Thus it will be seen the constituencies have returned more than half their old representatives. Looking at the proportion of old to new returned by the ten proviucial districts respectively, we obsrrve (Vays the North Otago Times) that Auckland sends to the House five new and fourteen old members ; Otago ten new and nine old ; Taranaki its three old members; Hawke's Bay two new and one old ; Marlborough two new men ; Nelson one new and four old ; Wellington five old and six new men ; Southland five new members; and Canterbury fifteen new men and six of its old representatives. Humid Southland it will be seen has gone in for the most radical change,

episcopal Canterbury comes next in this respect; rural Taranaki has effected no change at all, and the next in the order of standing still is volcanic Auckland, formerly the stronghold of the first demagogue and greatest revolutionist in the colony, Sir George Grey himself. Erom the new Parliament we miss some of the men who most adorned the old—men of various value as partisans, of diverse gifts as politicians, but yet well-known to all the colony as persons of character and ability. Amongst these must be mentioned Mr Ormond, Mr Ballance, Sir W. Fox, Mr Wakefield, Mr Saunders, and Mr Seymour, who, as Chairman of Committees in the late Parliament, shared, with the Speaker, Sir Maurice O'Rorke, the honour of crushing the wildly irrational obstruction to the passage of the Representation Act. Each of these gentleman constitutes in himself a loss that will be much felt in the Legislature. Mr Ormond has been succeeded by a person of the nime of Smith, and a Mr John Steven has stept ; into the shoes of Sir W. Fox, while Mr Ballance'9 successor is Mr Watt, a civic grandee of Wanganui. So with the other old tritons we have mentioned — tbey have been succeeded by men who, for the present at anyrate, appear to be nothing more than minnows. Of the eccentrics of the last Parliament Dr. Wallis, the advocate of annual Parliaments and woman's suffrage, Mr Speight, tbe interminable spouter of pure Fquasd. and the truculent Mr Lundon, whose highest ambition appeared to be to make a cannibalistic feast of Irish landlords, are left out in the cold. Not, so, bowover, the ir whilom suitable associate Mr R. .]. Seddon—the vertiable Ajax of debate, the merciless mangier of Her Majesty's English, and the mouther of speeches whose adequate receiption would entail additions to the realms of space and an extension of the duration of enternity.