The Evening Star THURSDAY AUGUST 25, 1881.

Evening Star, Issue 5760, 25 August 1881, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY AUGUST 25, 1881.

In considering the action of the Speaker in declining to interfere yesterday with the House Bitting in Committee of the Whole on the Representation Bill by taking the chair at the hour fixed by the Standing Orders, it must be recollected that the Standing Orders are simply bye-laws made by each Chamber of the Legislature for the purpose of regulating the order of business. If a breach of these takes place there Is irregularity, but nothing more; and it is the most perfect nonsense to talk of the subsequent proceedings being invalidated thereby. Sir Maurice O'Rorke must have found himself rather in a quandary. On the one hand there was the Standing Order that he should take the ohair on all sitting days at 2.30 p.m.; on the other, the House were in Committee, and the majority deolined to allow progress to be reported. As a Committee of the whole House cannot adjourn, and the Standing Orders mako no provision for meeting the case of such a Committee continuing up to and over the hour of meeting on the day following that on which it was constituted, the case became clearly one of those with whioh the Speaker is by custom and precedent authorised to deal on hia own responsibility, and he seems to have acted with his usual good judgment. In the House of Commons the continuous sitting of a Committee of the whole House is not possible, in consequence of the Standing Order, framed without any view to such a proceeding, to the effect that whenever the House hap Den to be in Committee at 3.50 p.m. the Chairman reports progreßß when the Hoim resumes its sitting at 6 p.m. Mr Seddon, of Hokitika, who is making for himself an unenviable reputation aa an empty babbler, and an obotiuctlontot of the most objectionable type, raised the question when the Committee resumed at S p.m. yesterday whether the Chairman was authorised to leave the chair at 5 p.m. Mr Seymour in thus suspending the sitting of the Committee acted strictly in accordance with the practice of the House of Commons, not to speak of precedents in the House of Representatives, which are numerous and to the point. „.-.,„.,