THE CONSTITUTION OF THE HOUSE.

Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1836, 24 June 1874, Page 4

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE HOUSE.

A writer in the Otago Daily Times, while sketching the Hon. Mr Fox, says: — " The complaints that are made now of the great deterioration in the personnel and in the general character of the members and of the debates in Parliament, are to a great extent as silly as they are unfounded. It is a curious tendency of the human mind to believe that the present generation is vastly inferior to the preceding, and that our grandfathers were only a little less above our fathers, than our great-grandfathers were above them ; every schoolboy will tell you of what the school used to be, when there were so and so big boys in the Sixth Form, and when Brookes — to use the familiar Tom Brown hero — was at the head of the school ; old men will talk of what used to be done in their days, and mourn over the degeneracy of their sons and grandsons. And yet, Bomehow or other, we get on ; we advance in civilisation, in arts and sciences, in the wonderful knowledge of hitherto sealed subjects which modern research lays open to us, and in every branch of life. The truth is that we are much better off in some things, and quite as well off in others as our grandfathers ; only different spectacles see things in different lights, and in a free country everyone may look and criticise as he pleases. The lamentations and woe over the falling off in the House of Representatives, more especially, have been almost sufficient to make the unhappy recipients of abuse improve themselves off the face of the earth as an ill* smelling savor in tho eyes of their fellonrmen. But what is the truth ? Take all in all, there is as fair an amount of average ability in our Parliament now as ever there was. They cannot be all Solons, Pericles, or Cse3ars ; but those who have not the original wisdom can be guided by and learn from it, and thus be able to form an intelligent opinion on the matters that come before them. Anyone who went into the House of Representatives ten years ago, and who goes into it at the present day, will find no disparaging difference, but would be rather inclined to give the preference to the House of to-day as a debating assembly. Certainly there were men, individually, of greater calibre then in Parliament who have since gone home or died — powerful speakers, trained in England, and burning with zeal for the country of their adoption — but withal there is many a fine speech yet to be heard within the four walls of the Chamber.