N.S.W. POLITICS.

Thames Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 8221, 9 December 1895, Page 2

N.S.W. POLITICS.

THE LONG-SI ANDING DIS-

AGREEMENT.

Sydney, This day. After providing many mouths of grist for the Parliamentary windmill, precipitating the general elections, further straining the relations between the two branches of the Legislature, and imperilling the existing Legislative Council, direct taxation has become an accomplished fact. What were practically the last shots in the protracted struggle were fired on Tuesday night, when both houses finally adopted holus bolus, and without so much as a single division, the compromise agreed upon. At the free conference, considerable opposition was expected from the Moderate members of the Council, but when the final tussle came, they accepted the inevitable, and their hostility evaporated in rhetorical flourish and invective. The Attorney-General, in the coarse of a conciliatory speech, said the managers of both Houses went into the conference with an earnest desire to arrive at a solution of the difficultie?,andhe thought they had effected an honorable settlement, and one which would put an end to the dreary wilderness of fiscal uncertaiuty, into which they heid been drifting for too long, and it would also restore the amicable arrangements betweou the two Housep.

Mr Drawn, who had acted as one of the representatives at the Conference, said he would prefer to Mow the example of the celebrated King who, seeing the conditions that were impending, he'd his son in his arms on the brink of a sea and exclaimed he would prefer to die a prince rather tlian live a slave. IJhat view he asked Councillors to take. It was far better they should die princes than live slaves. If the Council were to be swept into the street, then, on the question of taxation, it was a splendid opportunity for members to declare themselves, and. if slain to die fighting at their guns. The majority of the managers of the Council made a grave error in not taking their stand on the question of exemption. Mr Heydon, another member, considered they had surrendered before any summons was made at all. They had been frightened by bluff, and like the walls of Jericho there was a blast of a trumpet and down they went, and the laurels that had adorned the brows of the leaders of the Council were transferred to the Premier. The Council had now no leader whom they cou'd recognise, and he for one no longer felt any honor in belonging to it. His pride was utter'y destroyed by the contemptible wretched, fiasco the Council had been 'ed into.

In the Assembly the Premier, when moving the adoption of the message, said it faithfu'ly represented the agreement arrived at by the two Houses. He had personally drafted fche who'o of the amendments adopt d by the Council in order to make perfectly sure his intention was carried out.

Mr Lyne, leader of the Opposition, asserted that the Assembly had been placed in a humiliating position and one fraught wi'h snob danger that it would be quoted on fu'ure occsaioDs, when the question of the Council's right 'o deal with money bills arose, The House, at'he dictation of the Premier, bad simply kuuckled down a^d subjected it-elf to the dictates of another House. He entered a protest against submit ting to the position taken up by the Pjemier, allowing the nominee chamber to dominate the elevted Assembly in reference lo the cons'ititionai question a<Tto the right of the Comcil to deal with money bills

The Speaker staged the whole cf the papers containing bis-ruling in the matter had been sent to the speaker of the House of Commons to obtain his ruling.