Essence of Parliament.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2785, 20 September 1910, Page 5

Essence of Parliament.

Wellington, September 10. This time it is necessary to give pride of place to the children. The final clean up of the subscription lists winding up the brief campaign for the children's hospital ended on the summit of .£16,000, the height of Mt Blanc—pound for foot. What a tine illustration of foot pounds! That is the be3t part of the story. The worst part is that not a soul has said or done anything to commemorate the splendid part taken in the campaign by Hugh Ward, the actir manager who placed his whole force at the disposal of the city and started a line of subscriptim which brought the biggest contributions to the fund. Ho has got no mark of recognition to distinguish him from the parsons who out of pique at the defeat he had inflicted on them in a certain matter gave nothing. Parliament will Le asked, let us hope, to rectify this really scandalous omission. Will Parliament repair the ravages of ingratitude to the stranger who brought so much money within our gates ? It is hard to say, but it is easier to recognise the fact that strangers no matter how liberal have no constituents. Parliament, like the city and p.uthoritie3, may receive Mr Ward's name, when mentioned in the ordinary course, with a vacant stare. Man and Woman, your name is Ingratitude ! Government House comes naturally into the Parliamentary essence by the remarks of Mr Massey, somewhat belated it is true, but in order as being part of the proceedings on the " First Item,'' which . are always irregular. Mr Massey took an opportunity late last night to bemoan the determination which sent the Governor out of Parliament House and set him down on the site of the old Lunatic Asylum in the midst of the surroundings we all know and deplore. He called for tho clearing of the talkers out of the old Government House and the restoration of his Excellency to his a*ncient seat under a new roof of course. What is to become of the new Government House ? Some one threw in " Children's Hospital," " anything useful " Mr Massey retorted and the matter ended. As for any result, there will be none of ourse. Th 9 new Government House will one day no doubt be the centre of fashion palatially housed, and will therefore enjoy a rare and respectable look-out. At present you can have from the windows of the tower a fair, if circumscribed, view of a strip of the harbour with Somes Island in the distance, and you just take care not to turn your eyes down if you do not want to see mean streets. Just now the place is habitable but the furniture and other things have not yet had time to get into position. Their Excellencies are camping in their future home in the best of temper; but the photographic artist, anxious to turn an honest penny by picturing the vice-regal home for an intelligent and appreciative public, is not permitted to share this display of the spirit of Mark Tapley Esq., except by way of making the best of courteous requests for a postponement of his activity until the place is more presentable, inside and out. In the precincts of the old Government House members bawl nightly where the guests of old time said things soft and sweet; and the courtesy which used to be natural has been turned to Parliamentary stone.

The event ox the week in these precincts has been the Land Bill. It was received with a gasp that went round the Chamber; the gasp followed it into the lobby of whilom soft nothings and there expanded into a variety of things which mean a good deal and are not soft. To attempt to detil them would be useless; besides it would not be the essence of Parliament unless by the way of essential failure. It would take a big volume now to put down everything that has been said about this measure—that is being said now and will be said again in every shape and form now familiar. Avowedly a compromise, it pleases neither side. Freeholders there are who think it stops far short of whero it ought to go; and leaseholders denounce it as going much too far beyond where it ought to stop. Among these critics, however, there are many things unexpected and some contradictions. There are many misunderstandings also. Such for example as the misunderstanding that insisted on seeing the graduated tax kept hard on the big owners dispossessed by the new leasehold policy of acquisition compulsory. It was|a quite legitimate seeing, exactly representing the Jbill.- The calculation incidental that reduced the owner's four and a half per cent, to two was perfectly correct. It turned out, however, that the frainers of the Bill had never really intended to keep the graduated tax screwed to a man after depriving him of the taxed property for some one else to enjoy. They had as the Prime Minister told an interviewer, merely by the omission of a draft clause prepared for taking the tax off according to the transfers. One wonders among the many causes for wonder in the Bill whether there are many such sources of misunderstanding. To men so wondering there is no doubt that there is much that is clumsy and queer in the four corners of this measure. In every part there is evidence of has-to and crudity. Hence it has come about that the class aimed at has been thrown into a tremendous panic. It is raising the cry of confiscation and naturally this cry will reach even unto far Loch Awe. What will be said then of the Government which in black and white of its own transmission to Parliament with request to make it law proposed to tax a man on the graduated scale after depriving him of his property ? Such things are a gity from every point of view. The Bill is hidden away in the recesses of the Lands Committee and for the present there is no sign that it has ever appeared there for discussion. What will be the result will be seen after many weeks. It will probably be likened to the famous bread on the waters after many days ; but it svill probably be added that the bread when it gets back will be found to be toast and much burnt. A Bill that pleases none and regarded as a political thing, a pawn moved in the game for shaking " the frightened souls of fearful adversaries" runs considerable ridks of surprising treatment by committees and every one else, including its bewildered parents. The parents, however, do not admit bewilderment. They sit tight and comfortable, enjoying the sensation they have created, predicting that when the hubbub subsides it will be found that the Bill is much improved and better understood. The enemy declares that the Bill will never emerge except in such form as will be a guarantee for the immediate dissolution of Parliament. Between the two views there is a great gulf which may be bridged by some compromise after the committee process is done with. The builders of that bridge are preparing the materials in the committee. It will be of reinforced concrete of course. But what sort of iron and steel and what the admixture of cement and sand and good workable pebble, no one can at present dream. The Bill is regarded by certain ancient files as the creature of circumstances that are to be. These circumstances are at present in the forming. As to the result—Quien Sabe !

The rest of the business ha 3 been largly kaleidescopic. The first Act of the session has got on the to Statute Book, the phosphorus matches measure. As it is spoken of as dealing with phossy jaw one is struck by the fact that the first measure of an unusually talkative session should be chiefly concerned with " jaw." " Miller on Foxton " was a fine display and another was " Oamaru on velvet." A pool man would call the game " Red on blue ; Player yellow." Mr Millar, angry with the Manawatu people for wanting to complete the side railway through the Bulls country to Foxton to defraud the

main line of its traffic perquisites, threatens to make Foxton "go bung " by rigging the freights. The howl of the district may be imagined. It recalls the position of Oamaru and its harbour bonds. O.unaru breakwater was ruined financially, one remembers, by the predecessors of Mr Millar, the Railway Commissioners, who diverted the traffic and made the white stone town "go bung" as a sea port. Strange how history repeats itself, even when the democracy takes the railway reins from the hands of the unconstitutional commissioners whose existence was an insult to " trust the people" principles. In this case the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition, Mr Wakeup Fraser and all the financial authorities except the " douce " Mr Malcolm of Balclutha, lamented the hard fate of Oamaru and urged payment of the debt in full out of the consolidated fund rather than allow Oamaru to "go bung " for the want of i!o3,000. Mr Malcolm urged per contra that such a course would cause a race of local go\ernment blackmailers to spring out of the ground for the benefit of greedy financiers anxious for riches without trouble of seeking securities of good inport. But Mr Malcolm forgot the special causa of this going bung of the little white stone city. She is not a suppliant at the gates of Parliament, but it is a fact nevertheless that she was ruined by the policy of the State through the Railway Commissioners, who always gloried in their victory over the poor trustful creature who had really a fine maritime future before her within certain limits which she did not transgress. Thus is Oamaru on velvet, on one side the creditor is holding out a receipt in full for =£47,000 out of .£IOO,OOO owed, and on the other the Government and the leader of the Opposition, Mr Fraser and all the financial authorities except one—who to be sure has forgotten the main point—offering to make good the whole deficiency of £b'S,oio. Oamaru has never, it is safe to bet, been on such a wicket in the whole course of her life.

The announcement of the appointment of the commandant brought some very shallow criticism from Mr Taylor of Christchurch. He is replacing four men who did the work before him, and the ever ready critic demanded that he should not be sweated by doing four men's work. It was a wily expression of no-confidence in a lazy effete government. B'.-t the chief of the lazy, etc., etc., had no difficulty in showing that the improvement of the system is freeing the commandant from the office work which under the present system always turned commandants into head clerks. It is a shadow of the ancient British system in which the Chief was a head clerk tied to several chairs with red tape, whose only holiday was an occasional look at some regiment on the march, whose only relaxation (as rare as a blue moon) was to turn from despatches to buttons. These pleasures being sparingly enjoyed the practical result was that the commander-in-chief never saw the army he commanded, or by any chance took any hand in the leadership or the tactics that won him the position. The chief under (he ancient British system was always a stuffed labelled figure of a museum in a uniform when he was not a laborious clerk wrestling with "statements." We have altered tint. We have put into the chair a man who will have nothing to do with clerking, and everything to do with the profession he acquired a mastery of in war under the checking direction of the people who beat all the antiquated clerks and fossils of the British army into their own cocked hats. And lo! your omuiscient parliamentarian gets up and protests that either he will be overworked or that they were vagabonds. He forgets that he also criticised the old system as unfit for anything. Therefore when his alternative of criticism is that it must have been good it faJh on the ears cf ridicule. Colonel Godley will be Major-General the day he lands and his African service alone gives him prestige enough for any rank. If is a little coincidental that our former only general—Whitmore—also saw much informing service in South Africa. Whitmore often told stories of what he saw at the fight of Boom Platz in forty something when he was *' galloper" to Sir Harry Smith who had helped Wellington to storm Badajoz. In like manner General Godley will be talking about Colenso and Magersfontein which were not victories for us but very instructive lessons of war and very creditable to the subordinates who faced with great composure the death traps they were ordered to walk into. We hope he will teach us something more of the Boer system than of the British. The two countries are in some respects not dissimilar.

For the rest of the business it requires no omment except the remark that it was unusually business-like. The House ploughing steadily through work for a day or two was- an inspiriting and most edifying spectacle. Unhappily it ended too soon. When the " First Item "of the estimates came up off went everybody on the customary wild goose chase covering every point of grievance that has been covered before. Drop the Curtain, Sirs !