The N.Z. Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1905. THE SHINING LIGHT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5728, 25 October 1905, Page 4

The N.Z. Times

(PUBLISHED DAILY). WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1905. THE SHINING LIGHT.

PITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE “ WELLINGTON INDEPENDENT,” ESTABLISHED ISIS.

From the top of tho tower of the House of Parliament, night after night, like tho torch of Liberty, there beams a great and shining light. The little gaily-chatting groups returning from tho theatre, the stolid policeman on his beat, the dork hurrying homo from his littlo “evening” in tho suburbs, the midnight roysterer reeling past—all these belated wayfarers see tho kindly greeting of that shining light. Night after night serenely aloof it sends its message over sleeping A Veiling ton, hour after silent hour it lifts its pillar of fire— a beacon of good hope to tho colony and tho world. And this is its glorious message: “Citizen and hack-hlocks settler, magnate and navvy, sleep sound,; while you take your rest,; Parliament, tho guardian of your liberties, is working, wo, your servants keeping faithful watch and ward!” And Wellington slumbers, and is content—Parliament is sitting; all’s right with tho world! And in a few days that grfeat and shining light will abruptly go out, the glorious beacon bo inevitably quenched. The guardians of our liberties will, like Satan and his fallen angels, bo driven from their comfortable accustomed haunts out into the bleak spaces of tho universe; there, through long penances of speech-making, to win their redemption, or by dread things called ballotboxes be implacably condemned. And for many long months midnight Wellington must quiver with a nameless apprehension as it glances on high, and sees no shining light. The sentries of Liberty will have been dispersed as by a whirlwind; tho colony will b© left to its own poor leaderless devices: we shall not sleep easy o’ nights.

But before that beacon for the last time is quenched, let ns, whose nights it fills with its beaming reassurance, briefly consider what wo pay to keep that lighthouse bravely sending its glad rays out over a darkened world of constituents. What do wo pay for the glorious privilege of our shining light?

And the keeper of the light makes no secret of its cost. Last week an unobtrusive return crept on to the table ol tho House, from which vc can approximately judge how muck of our money that great light hourly burns. Merely to keep the House open we pay £4(j 2s 9(1 every day; tho guardians of our liberties require a little trifle of £40,000 for their valued services; the attendants who carry maces and in other ways attend to their comfort also need some recompense for their trouble, and tho little book which the keepers of the light make about v hat they say to each other costs us £O-1 every day it is issued. Adding all these expenses up, we find that it costs ns nearly seven hundred pounds sterling to keep the torch of Liberty alight for ono night. It ought to be a good light for that! Let ns peep one evening into the lighthouse and sec what the keepers are really doing. The first impression a Messenger from Mars would receive from an inspection of the House would be that all the peculiar beings wandering about tho floor of tho chamber were -taking their relaxation after sonic hard hours of toil elsewhere ; while tho real work was being done by the feverishly busy femininity in tho ladies’ gallery—who at least after a. sitting have some 11 fancy work ’to shov and tho equally industrious disciples of "Hansard” and the press. When we. had succeeded in explaining to such a visitor that all that elaborately arranged and skilled staff was for tho solo purpose of recording the talk of the mon on tho floor, the Messenger would doubtless gladly hurry hack to Mars. A few statutes come slowly from the cogwheels of this intricate legislative machinery, but the hulk of its output is Talk. Just Talk. All that elaborate machinery, all .that solemn assembling of the guardians of our liberties, all that skilled body of recorders, all that attendant army of servants —for what? To make our laws! Such a remarkable, mountain, snob an uncertain little mouse, that never knows from the moment the mountain has brought it forth how long it will be allowed to remain tho same mouse—a mouse with an unamended tail! Tho irresistible question arises:—ls it worth while?' Would we greatly suffer if for a year —for three years—wo let that beacon die down, if, for a decade or so, we did without our great and shining light? There are many people in tho colony who would eagerly support such a suggestion. But it is hardly likely to hh made a plank in tho platform of any candidate in the , coining election. 1