Untitled

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5631, 16 September 1889, Page 2

The Masonic Convention, held last week at Wellington, not only marks a new departure in Freemasonry in New Zealand, but has a political significance in the selfusaertivent'sa of the colony which the movement displays. At the Convention ninety Lodges, out of ono hundred and fortyeight, were represented, delegates being present from every part of the colony. A inoro thoroughly representative assemblage c uuld scarcely have been drawn together ; ai "1 from a Masonic, as well as from a po/itieal point of view, the result of the nice was impoitunt. Tho establishment of a Grand Lodge for New Zealand is no lie w conception, for twenty-iive years ago it w&.s mooted. No doubt the movement has been encouraged by the success attending tho action of tho Craft in Australia, but without that the time was ripo for the amalgamation of the Constitutions working in .'his colony. As tho Wellington Kveiiiug Post says : —" Tho division of the Masonic Order in New Zealand into threw distiuot branches, under national names which have really no significance in New Zealand, for tho members of tho various lodges have not been by any means confined to natives of the portion of tbo United .Kingdom the lodges bear tho name of, has long been regarded as an anomaly, and this feeling has ; h w culminated in tho determination to for vi a Grand Lodge of Now Zealand, which shu'li claim an equal position as a Suprome governing body within tho limits of the State l* thut occupied by the Grand Lodges , of other States. Tho movement is not, as j mi"ht be at lirnt imagined, ono of separation but is distinctly based on the truest and best idea of federation. Tho bonds which unite tho Masonic institutions to those of the Mother Country will be really strengthened, not weakened, by tho assertion of independence, a« undoubtedly the ieel-hv.-i of loyalty to the Empire liavo grown stronger with the- liberty of self-government which has so wisely boon conceded ia political matters to those colonies."

Thk session is practically closed. All last week the members were drilling away from the work which the country puye them to perform. There arc vtry few. left now m Wellington, and however much the Government might have desiml to have completed the work before Parliament, it would have been quite impossible to have kept the members ) oyether. In fi short three months session our legislator* get exhausted—used up. The half of them only go to Wellington to air their verbosity, and when this lias been dene they are oil. The House of Representatives when in session presents v ridiculous appearance. The meuibors ate clmttiiic? in twos and tlircos : never less than l'mli-a-dozen are tramping from j>lace to

plaoo ; there is a constant flitting out of one door—the nearest to Bellamy's—and in at the other. Some members roll themselves up on their seats and compose themselves to sleep; others fill up their time in writing private letters. All this time some honorable member is trying to make himself heard to tho reporters ; he does not care -n nether the members hear him or not, because they are not listening to him, and, apparently, regard his utterances as so much balderdash, which in general they are. And this is Parliament! If tho House were composed of no more than twenty-five members it might bo converted into a useful institution; as it is, it is a costly, mischievous, and useless assemblage of lazy time-killers.