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New Zealand Mail, Issue 691, 29 May 1885, Page 18

At last night week’s meeting of the City Council it was suggested by Councillor Williams, the Chairman of the Corporation Leaseholds Committee, that Mr George Fisher should take charge of the Local Bill proposed to be introduced for the purpose of giving effect to the recommendations contained in the Committee s report. Seeing that Mr Fisher fills the office of Mayor and is one of the representatives of the city in Parliament, ana that he has no objection to the proposed legislation, he was clearly the person to whom the Bill should have been entrusted. Yet when Councillor Williams. made his courteous and very proper suggestion, Mr Fisher recollected that several members of the Council had not long since expressed themselves as dissatisfied with his very peculiar action in regard to a certain meeting in the Arcane and in refusing permission to the Chairman of 1 the Harbor Board to exhibit a plan of the

proposed Te Aro reclamation. This little grievance seems to have rankled in Mr Fisher’s mind, and, instead of accepting a task which his relations with the citizens made it his duty to perform without any asking he delivered himself of a very small speech in which he declined to have anything to do with the Bill, and told the Council it must get some other member of the Legislature to take charge of it. He said that, after the grossly insulting language which had been used towards him at the last meeting of the Council, he wondered that the Council would jeopardise the measure by placing it in his hands. That the citizens of Wellington have good ground of complaint against Mr Fisher for his conducu m this matter, goes without saying. He has a grudge against certain members of the Council because they took the liberty of telling him a few disagreeable truths, and, to pay them out, he refuses to perform what is plainly an important duty attaching to his office of Parliamentary representative. We have never denied that Mr George Fisher has ability, but latterly he has done all m his power to destroy belief in his judgment. Whoever heard of such a proceeding as that to which we have just alluded . He has now had his “ tit for tat of the impertinent members of the Council, but hereafter he must pay a somewhat heavy ’ price for a gratification which will, as a 1 matter of course, lose him a great deal or support when he next offers himself for election. If a public man will indulge in small revenges against other public men with whom he may chance to s have differences, he is almost certain to be a loser in the long run.