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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9076, 9 June 1888, Page 4

Our Upper Houses of Legislature are clothing themselves with honour, and if they go on in this way they will attract to themselves that popularity which is commonly supposed to invest the socalled representative Chambers. We yesterday complimented our own LegislativeCouncil on arresting the rapid course of the Midland Railway Bill, by the formation of a committee of enquiry—a procedure which has now been repeated in the popular Chamber ; and now we are told by telegram that the Legislative Council in Sydney has extracted the fangs from that notorious measure which was intended to be death to the Chinese. The telegram tells us that the Chinese Bill has passed through the Council at Sydney, and that the clauses as to the restriction of residence of the Chinese, and imposing restrictions upon them in travelling, have been struck out. It is not improbable that these barbarous and stupid proposals have been elided at the instigation of the Government of Sir Henry Parkes, who must have seen by this time that they had erred in being driven to take an untenable position by the Sydney mob. Tliq idea of the residence at all in the country of a people who were to be confined to particular quarters of the colony, and whose movements from one part of the country to another were to be regulated by passports and under police supervision on the most approved principles of some of the countries least advanced in civil government, was so outre and bizarre that the wonder is it was entertained, even in a panic; and it will hardly be ; surprising if we see in New South Wales itself a reaction to the former violence even more pronounced than in the other colonies. The Anti-Chinese craze was a species of epidemic peculiarly catching that spread with surprising rapidity over the colonies, but has nearly disappeared as rapidly as it came. Our own Legislative Council has completely emasculated the not very vigorous measure which was introduced into our Parliament when the malady first took us; and all around the colonies it would appear as if the various Governments would gladly recede from the position they have taken, if it were not for "the look" of the thing.