Sydney Notes.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume II, Issue 166, 25 June 1894, Page 3

Sydney Notes.

(Special to the Herald.)

Since I last wrote the Bridge Street burglary sensation has passed, evaporated one might say, like an uncorked bottle of benzine. Publio opinion is very much like a bottle of soda water, it fizzles a good deal, but it soon settles down. Anyhow, Williams and Montgomery, the men now hung, were a bad lot and are almost forgotten. You will read or hear very little of them from this time hence. The petition presented soliciting their reprieve from the death penalty was signed by twenty thousand people, but had it been signed by three-quarters of the population, it would have been just the same to our old bull-in a*crockery*shop, Sir George Dibbs, who swears and smashes up regardless of the publio, or anybody else. I really think Dibbs isn't afraid of a policeman, indeed the sole calamity he is afraid of befalling him is of losing his billet and the screw attached to it. But even in that we can see his bull-like intrepidity, as we have noticed his sontempt for majorities and such like trifles in the house. Anyhow with all his faults he has saved us from Reid ike opposition leader who has felt bad for office some tune now, and has sickened all decent men by his shallow and indeoent overtures to get the Premiership. This haphazard paragraph has landed me into politics it seems. It has brought me to Parkes, Dibbs, and Reid, the three men who show prominently in our House of Parliament. Some people think that they are the Parliament, and one man (an hotelkeeper out Double Bay way) whom 1 met, thought Freetrade was nothing else than Parkes, and Protection meant Dibbs. He argued nothing else than Parkes and Dibbs, and did it so loudly and vigorously that uobody could stand a show against him. One evening he was returning home on top of the ’bus from having been down town to record his vote and he got into argument with a young Englishman who sat next to him. At last he asked the Englishman how long he had been in the country, and when he was answered “two years" he caught that young man by the collar and dropped him into the roadway as if he were a spaniel. “ How dare you argue with me, you dash, lash new chum, ma, who is an Australian born and bred.” Then he threw the new chum his umbrella and told the driver to go on us if he had done a patriotic action ami was glad of it if he died for it. The most interesting event in politics is ! the split in the labor cause over the • pledge. Before this the labor vote bid lair to be the highest at the next general I elections, but the capitalistic press have j seized upon all the petty misunderstandings I that have occurred between the central j body cf the labor leagues, and tho labor : body think that the cause has lost many j votes through it. The pledge split itself j will do it incalculable harm if it is not j patched up soon, and as yet both sides | have taken quite a decided stand, the | central league holding out that all the j labor candidates must sign the pledge, ; which is nothing more than a promise to I vote solidly with the party returned to J tho next Parliament on all questions that involve the question of a ministry holding office; but the present labor party seem equally firm in their deliberation that they cannot conscientiously do so, and in their determination to go before the country despite the leagues. Some month* ago the labor cause seemed the strongest of any, and the popular opinion was that it was to be a labor ministry that would hold office, but some of the cause’* best-well-wishers were in hopes that such would not be the case ; that a good stormy labor opposition would do more good than if it held office. However, the present aspect of their future success does not look so rosy. The labor party have some very able men about them, and as a party they have much more intelligence throughout than either of the parties. Indeed, I daresay that George Black, Joseph Cook (the Cann, Cotton and a fsw others are au good men as any in the House, the only thing needful being more Parliamentary experience. When the party was first returned the press picked out a couple of the gas-bags -Houghton and Fitzgerald—patronisingly reported their upeeches until the public held the impression that they were the intellect of the party ; but after a few speeches thsir ideas were worn out, and they receded into nonentities again and ws never hear anything about them now. The best ministry competitions art all the go now, but ths most original of political ideas ever hoard of was a ballot of who were the best men we could do without at the next general election. Crick headed the list, then followed Andy Kelly (labor), Schey, Haynes, Jupp, Gardner (labor) and Lcvisn. Dibbs was placed further down, as were a number of others, equally foremost ; but the interesting part of it was that Crick, Kelly and Haynes have the most to say of any men in tho House, so it appears that their jaws do not work a good impression anyway. I should take this us a growing sign that the public are getting tired of talk and that brains are getting ahead of the tongue again. Men of brains are not always good speakers, and many good mon never come to the front simply because they would not huckster to a political mob from a balcony, and thus the man with a ready tongue (or tho parrot species of individual) was generally the man returned to Parliament. I venture to prophecy that the age of the tongue is nearly past, and that mon of brains are coining to the front again after a century or so spent in the back ground.