INTERCOLONIAL NEWS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 1089, 16 June 1865, Page 5

INTERCOLONIAL NEWS.

(from our own correspondent.)

Meluootine, Saturday, 3rd June.

■ In my last communication I mentioned /that, in addition to the great dispute which maybe said to have been already commenced between the two Houses of the Victorian Legislature on the subject of the Appropriation and Tariff Bill tacking question, there was a further little quarrel on hand between those two bodies, namely, upon the subject of; an amendment made by the Legislative Council in the Public Moneys and Audit Act Consolidation Bill. The amendment, which rendered it compulsory upon the Government to expend the whole of the money accruinir under the immigration clauses under the Land Act upon the object for which it was so set apart, without leaving them the option of allowing any surplus of those funds to lapse into the general revenue, was refused by the Lower House; and at the date of my last letter a final Message upon the subject had been agreed to by the latter body, and was about to be forwarded to the Upper House. That message, containing the reasons of the Assembly for insisting upon disaentin" from the Upper House amendment, has been received by the latter body, and dealt with in that summary manner with which the representatives of our wealthy upper classes are sometimes wont to dispose of # subject that is not agreeable to them, for no sooner had the message in question been read by the President, than up jumped Mr Stracban, one of the most pugnacious of our Colonial "Lords," and moved that it be considered that day six months. The bold veteran John Fawkner seconded the motion, which was carried without another word from either side ol the House, nor did the representative of the Government (Mr Hervey) venture upon calling for a division. The decisive action of the Upper House with respect to this Audit Bill may, I think, be taken as an indication of the way in which they intend to deal with the Appropriation-cum-Tariffßill when it comes before them. The fact is, that the present Ministry just now, occupies a very singular and anomalous position, and that the Upper House is absolutely '* master of the situation." With a majority of something like two to one, in the Lower House, the Government are bo far from possessing even a working majority in the Upper, that at least two to one of the total number of members holding seats there, are opposed to the general policy of the present Administration. With this state of things, there must sooner or later have come a dead-lock between the two houses, even if there had been no quarrel anent the tariff ; and the only wonder is that matters have rubbed on bo smoothly as they have hitherto done.

There was something very much approaching to "a scene" in the Legislative Assembly, on Thursday evening last, upon the occasion of a ahort passage of arms between the Government and the Opposition, led on by Captain Dane, the subject under discussion being the alleged receipt by a member of the Assembly of money, by way of a consideration for services to be rendered in his place in Parliament. It transpired, in the course of the discussion, that the member referred to—Mr Jones, one of the representatives for Ballarat East—had been offered a cheque for LlO, upon condition of his undertaking to secure certain rural store licenses, an offer which, it appeared, had been indignantly rejected by Mr Jones as soon as it reached him. Immediately after the discussion of thnt subject had ceased, another question affecting the same member was put to the Government, and affecting a3 it did both the Ministry and the honorable member referred to, a good deal of further acrimonious discussion was aroused. It had become generally known that Mr Jones, almost from his first entrance into the House, had exercised the functions of Ministerial " whipper-in," an office for which it i 3 but fair to say, that the lion, member in question has qualifications that do not fall to (he lot of everyone, and apart from that, it was pretty generally known that his pecuniary position as an ex-tailor, who evidently had not " made his pile" in business,- would render any emolument that might be attached to the office, very acceptable to him. Humor said that the horu member was rewarded for the zeal manifested by him in the performance of the duties of a " whip,'1 by a salary of five pounds per week from the Government, but either from a desire to gratify their own curiosity or to annoy bath Mr Jones and his patrons, it wa3 resolved to put a question to the Ministry in the House, with respect to the salary paid to the " Whip." The Chief Secretary evaded a direct answer by stating that the government was not authorised to pay any salary of the kind, and that no provision was made for it upon the estimates. The most amusing part of the story with respect to the results of the proceedings of the evening, as affecting Mr Jones, however, remains to be told, and I will therefore proceed to tell it. In addition to exercising the duties of " Whipper-in," Mr Jones also acts as a Melbourne correspondent for the " Ballarat Sun," a circumstance by the way, that wa3 referred to in the House in no pleasant mood by certain hon. members whose conduct had been spoken of in anything but complimentary terms in Mr Jones's correspondence with that paper. Well, on the morning following, all those persons who were fortunate enough to obtain a sight of the " Sun" which is fortunate enough to have an M.L.A. for its own Melbourne correspondent, and who from an inspection of tke town morning papers had become tolerably well aware of what Mr Jones actually did say in the House when the subject of the charge of bribery was made against him, were astonished to find in the " Sun" a long and indignant oration reported as having been delivered by Mr Jones in the House on the evening in question, and which speech had never been delivered at all, although a very much shorter and altogether different one had. As may well be supposed, the matter created a great deal of amusement, amongst members of the Assembly, and the brilliant speech of the hon. member

forßallarat East, which was printed, but not delivered,'has become a standing joke in the Honse. ■'. :■ . :

Since the despatch of my last, the selections under the new Land Act have proceeded very satisfactorily. . A return,' furnished to the Assembly by the Government, on Thursday evening, gives the following particulars -with reference to this important subject:—Up to the last day in May the quantity of agricultural land, proclaimed open for selection under the new Act, was 208,446 acres; of that quantity 137,113.acres had been taken up under lease by 437 ordinary selectors, and 14,532 acres had been leased by 73 selectors under " Cummins's Clause.' 1 The total quantity of land selected since the opening of the areas thus being 151,645 acres taken up amongst 510 selector.-, not far short of three-fourths of the whole quantity of land offered thus being taken up under the Act. It would seem that the manifestly successful working of Mr Grant's Act has caused a good deal of ill-will towards it amongst the squatters of the old school ; those I mean of that class, the members' of which are, happily for the progress of agricultural settlement in the colony, rapidly diminishing in numbers from year to year, who still cling to the old Orders in Council, and upon these misty regulations set up a claim to the permanent possession of the pastoral lands of the Colony. The feeling of antagonism to the new Land Law existing amongst this class of persons, has recently found vent in the presentation to the Board of Lands and Survey of a protest, bearing the signature of Messrs Brodribb, Crisp and Lewis, solicitors. A copy of this extraordinary document has been read in both Houses of the Legislature; and the pretensions set up by the persons jepresented by the solicitors by whom the paper is signed, have exacted no little astonishment even amongst some of the most squattocratic members of Parliament. The 'claim thus set up amo'Anis to a denial of the right of the Legislature of the Colony to interfere, by any Act or Acts of Parliament, with the tenure of squatting runs, and calls upon the Government immediately to withdraw all the agricultural areas already proclaimed which may comprise squatting run?, or any portion of the same, until the question of the prior rights of the occupiers has been decided by an appeal to the Supreme Court. In reply to this very modest request, the Minister of Lands stated from his place in the Houae, that he would not withdraw a single acre of land from selection —an announcement that was received with hearty applause.

The Governor's annual ball, in celebration of Her Majesty's birthday, took place at the Exhibition Building, on Tuesday night last. The attendance was very large, comprising some two thousand persons, and the whole affair passed off well.

The question of " Free-trade versus Protection," continues to be extensively agitated throughout the length and breadth of the Colony, and lectures upon each side of the controversy have been delivered in most of the Provincial Towns. Mr Langton has been the leading advocate of Free Trade principles, and Mr Graham Barry, M.L.A., has found a large and attentive audience, while lecturing on the Protectionist side of the controversy at Sandhurst. In Melbourne itself, m.3st persons seem to have grown tired of the discussion, and to be willing, so far as the hornoejpithia dose of protection contained in the. ne.v tariff is concerned, to let the experiment have a fair trial.