Untitled

New Zealand Mail, Issue 362, 18 January 1879, Page 7

It may interest the Wairarapa people to know that the Minister for Public Works continues to urge on the contractor for the Featherston extension, and that the contractor has promised that every exertion shall be made to pull up lost time, so that the works shall be completed within the specified period. If an3 r one could get a peep behind the official ‘scenes at the present moment, he would probably discover tnat the Premier is busily engaged in a wordy warfare with his Excellency the Governor relative to the recommendation of Ministers to appoint a Northern resident (Mr. Dignan, for example) to the Upper House. His Excellency, according to a rumor which appears to be well founded, declines to make the required “ call,” and grounds his objection on the fact that the legislative Council is growing out of all proportion to the other branch of the Legislature; that it contains more hon. members than the Upper House of any of the other colonies absolutely and relatively to population, and that the number of people in New Zealand is not so enormously large as to require that the roll of the Legislative Council should be increased by further additions at the present time. It is also understood that the Premier’s determination to ignore the finding of the jury and the opinion of the Judge in Walsh’s case has led to correspondence between the Governor and the Cabinet. Walsh was convicted of wife murder, and sentenced to death, but Ministers, in spite of the expressed opinion of Judge Williams that there is nothing in the case to warrant the law being arrested in its course, hare advised his Excellency to commute the sentence to imprisonment for life.