LATE PARLIAMENTARY.

Observer, Volume 2, Issue 42, 2 July 1881, Page 466

LATE PARLIAMENTARY.

(BY SPECIAL WIRE.) Wellington, Thursday Afternoon. - OVER THE SPEAKER'S CHAIR. The Hursthouse Motion.— lt was a wicked thought which entered into the head of Sir M. O'Rorke to make the Government whip a teller for the Opposition. He likes. in-aetical jokes of this kind. It was a stupid thing for a Government whip to make a whip to scourge his own party. It was a piteous thing to see a Premier appealing to the House in forma pauperis in vain to pass the previous question. Hnrsthouse is a relative of Atkinson's, which caused the Treasurer to moan that he had been wounded in the house of his friend. It was one of the most interesting features in the whole country to see Bunny come over the Government benches after the second division and tell Dick in an audible voice and tremulous tone that the Government were drifting — drifting they knew not whither. It was all the more interesting to observe this tender solicitude, when the Speaker remembered that Grey and Sheenan placed him in the House. George McLean intended to have gone South in the Hawea, but felt, from the divisions, that his foster children were in danger, and so remained behind. Hursthouse went over to Whitaker's file, and sought by consulting the standing orders, to see if there wore any escape from the position in which he was placed. The most amusing thing in the whole affair was the face of Spoight. It wore the peaceful beauties of a food man. After the Premier made his appeal to he House to let him off this time, Grey rose^ and told the Government that they did everything with a trembling hand, and advised the Premier not to trust to his prayer to God to maintain our institutions unaltered and unchanged. It is in those five or ten minuutes speeches that the " old man eloquent " excels. J. C. Brown walked with a more self-satisfied air after the division, commiserating, with that tenderness of heart for which he is conspicuous, the frailty of human institutions, and of Government in particular. Seymour George seemed to have got back to his old place of unrecognized whip, and this may be said of his whipping, he feels the piUse of the House as wisely as a physician does that of his patient. The dual defeat means nothing, but still the Government felt it keenly, and the Opposition rejoiced with moderation, though somewhat humourously. "Weak and miserable as are the Government, we will keep them where they are," said a leading member of the Opposition, to me, after the division. LOBBY GOSSIP. Strange as the statement may appear, many members of the House were sorry to see that Sheehan had so good a meeting at the Thames, as he is reported to have had. Representations have been made to the Minister for Justice that the administration of justice in Waikato, as administered by Northcroft, is unsatisfactory ; and it is understood that there are others in course of being preferred. On Wednesday, O'Rorke called a meeting of the Auckland men, in his room, at ten o'clock in the morning, and got cnided, by onr great pro-Consul, for his pains, it hardly being the thing for a Speaker to convene a caucus. Gordon is waiting for the incoming English mail before he lays his despatches, to the Imperial atithorities on Native affairs, before Parliament. His memo to Ministers, on the Waimato Plains and prisoners, will be found a refreshing piece of writing to the vigorous-minded. It will be seen in the Auckland papers that some enquiries are made of the Government as to the extra cost of printing materials indented to the Government printing office the last year from Waterlow and Son. The meaning of the enquires is this : When the last indent came it was found that the prices were all round twenty per cent in excess of those in the previous invoices. Some of the alterations in prico were ludicrously extravagant. The agreement was for three years, with. power to determine it on either aide by giving six months notice. When the last invoice arrived

the Government gave notice of their intention to terminate the contract. Some one in London evidently has been having a stiff commission j>ut on our printing material last October. Prendergast, as Acting-Governor, appointed Heaphy and A. Mackay Eoyal Commissioners to investigate some Ngatoro claims and determine some succession orders. A woman in the Waikato, who claimed through her mother, was not allowed to succeed on account of her illegitimate birth. It is satisfactory to see such discrimination and scientific knowledge spring out of a Royal Commission. The N.Z. Times, speaking of the death of Dr Skae, said : — " If he erred, he certainly was far from deserving the punishment of death, which has befallen him." On Wednesday afternoon was seen the novel and strange spectacle of a Government whip tabling a notice of motion which resulted in the defeat of his own party. It was on June 28th, 1870, that Yogel announced the principle which Hursthouse got the House to re-affirm eleven years and one day ago — I thought it was eleven years to the day until I looked into Hansard. The sting of the defeat was in Hall's appeal to the House not to press the question. The Public Accounts Committee are much exercised over Pollen's petition. Sounders has taken up the running- against Pollen, instead of Reader Wood.