POLITICAL NOTES.

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 9662, 22 July 1892, Page 2

POLITICAL NOTES.

Afternoon. Mr Rolleston and the Premier open the ball with a brief wrestle, half friendly, half the other thing, about the correspondence with General Booth, after which Sir John Hall falls upon the return of the public debt laid on the table on Wednesday, and published in our columns yesterday morning. He finds it shocking, lie laments, he wrings his hands over such a breach of the privileges of this House as the presentation of a false return, he repeats in support all that the Opposition speakers have said during the debate about the increase in the Public Debt. Sir John is really very impressive. The Premier replies in his customary quiet manner. Mr Rolleston comes frowning to the assistance of bis friend, and Mr Seddon meets him hitting out from the shoulder. Three of the Opposition come into the fray, one leading man, Mr Richardson, and two rank and file, Messrs Moore and Allen. To them Mr Fisher brings the aid of ponderous humour from the Middle Party. He can’t see the return, he has never seen it, be doubts its existence.

But Sir John declares he has seen it and says he has put it on the table. Mr Fisher has looked in all possible places on the table and remains still half-incredulous, though wholly dignified. Thereupon Mr Meredith marches up to the table and finds the return, but not in the usual place. Mr Fisher is only half satisfied, but wholly scornful. Mr Guinness sweeps up the arguments of the four previous speakers. Mr G. Hutchison, in the character of the financial ‘Coming K,' sits on Mr Guinness, mouthing figures. Mr Taylor, in the benevolent character of Ancient Patriarch, who, being off duty, has discarded his robes and donned the frock coat and white hat of modern civilisation, mimics Mr Hutchison, mouthing out, ‘ One—ought—ought—four'—seems to pat each figure gently as he puts it down on the floor of the House to walk across to Mr Hutchison, and tells the smiling House that an * extra ought or two 1 is not an affair of much consequence. Sir John Hall, in reply, bewails all this wickedness of false returns, wrings his hands prayerfully and then bravely meets his fate—pressed to death by a majority of 15 ! In his grave is buried rather more than an hour of time.

At four o'clock Mr Duthie gets the Wellington Sanitation Bill into committee, and has a narrow escape in piloting that measure through. Before he can say 1 Jack Robinson' he finds himself almost stuck on a shoal not marked on the chart. His own colleague, Mr McLean, proposes an amendment. No one would suspect from that soft voice and • douce ’ manner that Mr McLean has actually attempted to tack the great principle of the single taxon to the measure. Local, option single tax it may be called, As soon as the astounded skipper in charge realises the sad fact he implores his colleague to desist. Numbers of old members of municipal experience, amongst whom Mr Fish is very active, tell Mr McLean that he will have plenty of better opportunities of bringing this great principle forward. Mr McLean after a while says ha will withdraw.

Mr W. C. Smith takes pity on the poor inexperienced young member. *We ought not to deceive him, sir. He will never be able to carry this at any future time; all the principal people will be against him.’ Mr McLean refers to the chairman, who tells him he can introduce his principle any time he pleases. Mr Hutchison throws in Mephiatophelian explanation. ‘He may propose, sir, he will never introduce,’ and chuckles as the House laughs, and Mr McLean hardens bis heart in suspicion.

‘ No, sir.’ He won’t withdraw. Mr Buckland blurts out that in that case he is prepared to talk the Bill out, and he is rebuked hy the chairman for having said a thing contrary to the rules of this House.

Thereupon, half a dozen members less outspoken than Manukau, but equally determined, make it their business to prove very clearly that unless .Mr McLean gives way, the Bill will be talk-d out.

On the other side, the friends of the single

tax and the energies of Mr Duthie hold up Mr McLean, and call upon him to go on. He yields to the fear lest he may kill the Bill, and asks leave to withdraw. Several * noes ’ prevent him; leave is refused, the Bill drives nearer to the shoal, the skipper sits in agony on the piloting chair. He relieves his feelings by accusing the enemy of hatred for Wellington, disgust at drainage, want of sym. pathy with sanitation, rapping out hia words in a sort of Devil’s Tattoo.

The enemy baits him for some time, with lectures and admonitions ; he goes below (that is, across to the Leader of the Opposition) to get wise counsel in this sad hour.

His friends lend him aid—they bring the tow ropes of remonstrance and denunciation, Tlie Government whip is going to whip up a majority. Indignant denial and more indignant assertion threaten to bring on a storm which -must Infallibly wreck the precious craft which carries the fortunes of our sanitation.

Mr Ward intervenes decisively by declaring that the Government majority is certainly not going to be used for Mr McLean. Mr Pinkerton opposes him, and so does Mr Meredith. This is the turning point of the struggle. At last, after emissaries have been seen among the enemy explaining and entreating (Mr Fish is very active among them), the skipper appears on deck once more, Mr McLean again asks leave to withdraw, and gets it • there is a solitary hand clap, and in five minutes the Bill, after a parting salute from Mr Fisher, is safely out of the Lower House navigation, bowling along under full sail bound for * another place.’ Time, 5 p.m. Duration of skipper’s agony nearly one hour. He resembles the mythical man who * turned grey in a single night, sir.’ Then Masterton makes a pathetic appeal to the House to pass his Wairarapa Hospital District Bill, begs the House not to be cruel. The is cruel. In fact the shoal is marked on the chart; is known to many experienced skippers who have by its agency realised the feelings of the famous Flying Dutchman, who never gets past the famous Cape. One of them sits opposite looking on with one eye of pity and one eye of grim enjoyment at Masterton’s laborious but futile attempt. By the dinner hour the Bill is as usual hard and fast on the 4 shoal. The last thing we hear is a pathetic complaint from Mr Buck* Lind, who ! does nob want to talk out the Bill,’ that there is too much noise for him to go on with his speech. It wets our appetite as we go off.

After dinner the debate comes back upon us, with Mr Sc >bie Mackenzie armed and ready for the fray. When tho word 1 Scobie ’ is wafted round the galleries there is a rush to get within view of the sport. Mount Ida is armed with a neat sheaf of papers, blue, white, and grey, pinned together in one corner after the manner of such collections. It is the Mount Ida arsenal, which remains in the custody of Ms left, while he keeps up the war on the enemy with his right. He draws supplies from the arsenal, which he shakes in the air with a regular motion on one side of him, while his right sweeps the enemy, Treasurer, Minister of Labour, Minister of Lands, the whole of them off the face of the earth. Every now and then ho transfers the arsenal to the other hand, and then his left devotes attention to the enemy. For the first twenty minutes Mount Ida is remarkably mild, businesslike, financial, of tho high order of Treasurers, who understand all the niceties of the accounts, and are above taking advantage of trifles. He keeps very close to figures ; the Minister for Labour, who is taking notes, asks questions, and Mount Ida answers with obliging taunts. At the end of twenty minutes he gets into hot water. ‘No retrenchment* is hia theme. He illustrates it with the famous Bangitikei Bridge, which lives in a certain famous letter. ‘ A meditated act of unblushing public corruption’ he Ccalla it. Mr Speaker is down on him. He must not make such charges. Mount Ida puts on his most ingenious air; he mixes it with humility, bending low to withdraw the words, but he would really like to know how, if the Speaker is right, any member can ever find an opportunity to impeach a Minister on a charge of corruption, a thing quite within the rights of every Parliamentarian. The Opposition hail this sally with delight, i Mr Seddon intervenes, speaking to the point of order, and the Opposition insist on his stopping.

The Speaker reads a number of precedents, and rules that charges of corruption can only be made under proper circumstances, Mr Mackenzie must withdraw.

Mount Ida argues. The Government benches bristle with ‘ withdraw,’ ‘withdraw/ He withdraws, and plaintively asks to be furnished with another expression to. clothe the idea. The Speaker orders absolute withdrawal. Mount Ida can withdraw the words, but he can never expel the idea from the House. The Speaker insists on unqualified withdrawal.

Mount Ida blazes up into a great fire of indignation—or what looks like it. As an honourable man he is indignant that a Government has sheltered itself under a quibble. He finds it impossible to express his indignation at that proposal to job away the people’s money to buy political support. At the outset of his second half-hour the warmth of the above exercise keeps him going at a prancing rate, cantering through the land fund, shaking the arsenal at ‘bona fide settlement/ * greater in our time—Mount Ida speaks as the inheritor of a long line of Ministers than theirsbringing down his right sweopingly on the * fair principle of interchange. 1 * They have inherited a surplus from us, and we have always inherited a deficit from them/ he says with ingenious triumph in his eye, while his people clap with delight. He arrives in high good humour at the Public Trust Funds, He has his ironic mask on, and he shakes his bead in that way he has when he is getting off a brilliant impromptu. ‘The Government criticism of the Government Policy* he says jeeringly, and he chaffs Ministers with that point, hoping they will not sack a secretary or anything of that kind. He proceeds to read from Hansard extracts of ancient speeches of the Premier, the Minister of Lands, the Minister of Works. He reads slowly with a raised voice, and much emphatic force, bringing out all the passages he wants ; he repeats these passages, he intersperses sarcastic comments, he adopts these criticisms as the criticisms of the Government Policy.

The Opposition simply shako with delight, laughing and clapping, and so well is the thing done that the other side laughs, too. Thus encouraged, Mount Ida rises into the denunciatory style, which he carries through finance, the surplus, the Customs, the insurance companies’ funds, the Testamentary Trusts Bill. He scowls at the Labour members. ‘How can they sit there and support a finance which will shortly put everything upon the Customs, on the shoulders of Labour in fact ?’

He reaches the Minister of Labour, whom he scolds for a time. The Minister contradicts, has to withdraw an expression, his withdrawal is accepted. Ho reminds Mount Ida of a certain letter. Mount Ida goes on with the scolding, evidently carefully prepared, apropos of strikes, newspapers and other things. From the Minister to the Labour Bureau he goes, warmer than ever, and finds it everything that is bad.

After a time be lays aside the heavier weapons and attacks the Minister of Works with light, sarcastic banter, which makes the House and the Minister laugh a good deal. He dwells a long time on the report of a certain interview in the Tuapcka Times, of Mr Seddon’s, and is very happy in his remarks, with many quiet sallies of epigrammatic force. He winds up with a remark he made once to a miner who had failed to get some favour from the Minister. ‘ Dressed that way, were you ? Serves you right. Don't you know that when you approach a Liberal Minister you must wear a belltopper and a swallow-tail coat.’

After which Mount Ida drops into a brief peroration of prepared and polished vigour about Liberalism and Truth, and gets his hearty thanks from his people, some of the other side joining. The return fire from the Ministerial side shows that the Minister of Education is up. Being up, Mr Reeves compliments Mount Ida briefly on his speech, and then loses no time in engaging him handsomely. He attacks the hon gentleman with a brilliant sketch of his position in the House. Like the British army in Egypt, which could be tracked through that country by its empty soda and brandy bottles, so Mount Ida can be tracked through Barnard by the adjectives he scatters about him as he goes. He chaffs him about these adjectives, and points his chaff with a pointed story of the Bruce election. Mount Ida had appeared at Kaitangata in a seedy get up, with his hands blackened, and had made a speech to the horny handed, one of whom was so struck with the performance that he declared he might have been the finest Christy Minstrel in New Zealand.

That it appears is just what the hon gentleman is politically : corner man ha calls him, and as he hovers about the idea, enlarging it and embroidering it, and building it up, connecting it with burnt cork, exaggerated collar, striped unmentionables, hia people shout with delight, and the House becomes very livelyThe Minister revels in the idea with great fluency.) He introduces the ponderous party known as Mr Johnson in these companies. Mr Rolleston is Mr Johnson it seems, and between him and ‘ Bones' the House has a pleasant time of it for ten minutes. But it seems that Mount Ida has no idea of his real character. He is under ths impression that he is a serious politician. When the House has done laughing at the sarcasm the Minister sets it off again. ‘That is the reason why ha distresses his people when he is serious, and why he delights them when he is bur-

league/ Before the House settles it gets more of the same kind. Mount Ida sitting in his place smiling, the whole House amused, and the Ministerialists shooting with laughter. After a quarter of an hour of this sort of thing, he goes with Mount Ida to Tuapeka and quietly takes the whole sting out of that ‘interview’ with which Mount Ida bad amused the House so vastly. The interview simply never occurred.

Mount Ida leaps up to observe that he was in another room of the hotel, and tint he heard all about the transaction from the editor of the paper in question. Mr Seddon rises with great promptitude and equal goed humour to hope that‘as the person most interested,’ he may be allowed to make a remark. He not only never had any such interview, but the very editor in question said to him after he had printed what purported to be the interview, * Didn’t I do that well. Even Scobie Mackenzie believed it.’ This seta the House off into peals of laughter, after which the Minister rubs in the salt, chaffing Mount Ida about his idea that he knows all about it because ha was in another room, and he reminds him of Mr Weller’s reason for not seeing throu h two pair of stairs and a deal door.

Having thus belaboured Mount Ida with humour fer some 20 minutes from his first hand shaking, the Minister takes that gentleman seriously. He aLo has an arsenal of papers in his hand. He does not appear to consult it, however, running carlessly over a list of Mount Ida’s points. Retrenchment, sly borrowing, Public Trust funds, sinking fund, property tax, sources of taxation and others.

He says he has no opinion of his own on these important financial subjects. He prefers those of one ■who has made finance a special study. He takes up his paper and reads. There are cries of ‘name.’ ‘You will have the name soon enough,* says the Minister, and then he reads. No. 1 is a very close contradiction of Mount Ida. It is read with just enough emphasis to indicate the points, and then we hare the name, ‘The member for Mount Ida, sir.’ Three times this performance is repeated, and three times there are roars of laughter. On one of these occasions that elaborate performance of quotation indulged in by Mount Ida is thoroughly routed, and the roars of laughter get on to both sides of the House. The Minister wonders at Mount Ida, that universal genius—why did he say that wheat had gone down to 20s. Mount Ida makes a disconsolate attempt to get out of that tight place, but the enemy, with inexorable laughter, holds him tightly in it. He takes him to another tight place. ‘Our finance/ Is it ‘ours? ’ And then we have an elaborate, brief, scorching description of the terrible obstinacy with which that very finance was resisted by Mount Ida and his companions sitting there; the Minister indicates them with that gently emphatic gesture of his. Why it was the party on the Government benches who came to their chief’s help, regardless of party considerations, and passed that finance for him.

Then the Minister passes on to Bruce and the Hutt, and knocks about the figures of these financiers vigorously. There is a tremendous rally when he gets them to the reduction of the Public Debt. The enemy, who has wasted hours over this business, resents his attack. He sticks to his guns, firing them again and again right into the mass opposite, which insists it is right. Tho House shouts with laughter, Mr Fisher being especially conspicuous for his enjoyment of the scene. 1 A conversion,’ shouts the Minister. * The first time in my life in which I ever convinced the member for Wellington/ and Mr Fisher rolls about in his laughter. Again the Minister tires his guns, and the enemy shout back, ‘You don’t understand,* ‘ There’s no difference/ When the Minister gets a chance to be heard through the shouts of delight all round him, he says triumphantly, ‘There's only the famous difference between the horse chestnut and the chestnut horse.' That last shot settles the matter, and we get other things.

Bruce does not like his punishment, and seizing a Financial Statement, searches, consulting Hutt and Geraldine. While they comfort him, evidently without enthusiasm, the Minister calls across that he is delighted to see his friend studying the Statement at last. He rides over Bruce roughshod for his attack on the Premier. Who is the child now ? If the Treasurer could not cipher, it is evident Bruce could not read. He congratulates Dr Newman on his discovery of a new tribe of Israel—‘Eleven tribes went over—natural desire to exaggerate the Opposition of that day/ He thinks that the mess these gentlemen make of Scripture is no worse than the mess they make of the Financial Statement. Of course, Doctor Newman being the Benjamin of this kind of financiers, his share of the ‘ mess 1 is at least five times as great as that of his brethren. All this is accompanied by shouts of laughter on both sides. Soon we get to the outflow of capital, and Waitotara comes in for his share of jumishment, and we have a few sharp words about the panic of the Conservative Party and their newspapers, and the attempt they made during the recess to make that panic universal. After which Mr Duthia and Charitable Aid get crushed by a heavy paper. Mr Duthie gets up to quote Mr Van Staveren, but the Minister says that gentleman may be very good for his own parish, but these are the correct figures for the Colony, Sir John Hall takes notes and asks a question. Before this the supper hour arrives, and the Minister evidently wanting to go on, relies on the courtesy of the House, which with alacrity from both sides requests him to do so. Twentyfive minutes brings him to a fine peroration devoted to his political views and his severest critics. Communism and Socialism pass in review, practical common sense takes their place, and the Minister ends an unflagging hour and forty minutes amid the loud applause of the House. As they go out members congratulate him, shaking hands. After supper Mr Rhodes labours to rehabilitate the dilapidated financial reputation of his friends, and during the course of his remarks pays a high tribute to the Minister of Education. He has known him a long time, has always respected him, is glad to see from his peroration, whLh has much impressed him, that the Minister may be one day ‘ one of us. After which pleasant reference he returns to finance and the House, on the motion of Mr Sandford, adjourns at 12.30,