PARLIAMENTARY

Observer, Volume II, Issue 44, 16 July 1881, Page 486

PARLIAMENTARY

OVER THE SPEAKER'S CHAIR.

BY ELECTRIC TFLEGRAPH. (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Wellington, Thursday. Dr. Pollen's Pension.— The most sensational debate we have had yet was that over Dr. Pollen's pension, and ye f . that was tame. Mr Moss did his best to make it assume a party tone by calling 1 the granting of the pension a " flagrant fraud," and Mr. Levestam, instructed by Mr. Whitaker, brought up the question of the payment of £300 to Mr. Rees again. Vindictively Weston made what he thought was a judicial speech, but there was so much of the advocate running through it all that John Hall the next day wrote the little ex-judge a letter of thanks and congratulation for his speech. Having backed the wrong horse in the Grey Election Stakes he makes a bid to purchase the winner. It was kno wn at once 1 when the amendment of Mr. Saunders' was made that the motion of Mr. Speight could be carried, and so the addition to the amendment of Mr. Saunders was determined on hours before it was made by Mr. Fisher. There was no way out of the net which Mr. Swanson made bigger to include Domett, Gisborne and Fitzherbert in its meshes. When Mr. Swanson was making wide the net one could not help wondering if he knew what he was doing. It is ten years since he rnada a row about the same matter, and then (although the story was not told in Gath nor on the house tops of Askalon) most men knew that the lawyers of Wellington had given it as their opinion that no pension could be legally paid under " The Civil Service Act, 1866." Some of the Government men were much pleased at the result of the debate, because, as they said, " Grey's friends were in the same mess as Pollen's," i and that a Validation Bill would have now to be passed to pay the four men alluded to. But then the broader question had not been raised, "Can pensions at all be paid unless under special Acts of the Legislature?" Can it be conceived that if the Civil Service Act is faulty in providing pensions, then the fault will be remedied. There will be a long fight over this matter of pensions yet. When the row was over a.t midnight men had come to the conclusion that Pollen's pension was safer than either Gisborne's or Fitzherbert's, thus Pollen was more! fortunate in his! enemies thanin his friends. The funniest thing in the whole business was the omission from the printed papers of the message from Hugh Pollen to his father, which was eighteen days before the House, that the voucher for payment had passed. Why on earth this little family episode should have been deemed unworthy of printing no one can divine. Almost as hard to understand is the reason why Stout and Whitaker both neglected to point out that their pensions could not be legally paid under the Civil Service Act. Stout going so far as to assert that Pollen could only claim some £60 a-year. Pollen would have had his pension long since had not Grey and Sheehan simply said to applications " No." ikLocal Government jDebate.— Exciting nights are becoming more frequent in the House as the time goes on, and perhaps Tuesday night was the most exciting of the session. We were to have two rival schemes of Local Government shadowed forth by the Treasurer and Sir George Grey, hence there was a large attendance, and eager expectation ran high. Atkinson began his speech with the wellknown tone of battle in his voice. He knew that he had nothing to propose that was new, and the anger was put forth as an apology for the barrenness of the delivery. There was only sound and fury at the birth. How I felt certain of this before hearing what others had to say was in this wise :— I had taken full notice of his speech for the purpose of telegraphing to some papers at length, but when I began to read them over I found nothing scarcely to wire out. Then I began to hear what others had to say, and found that most men thought the Treasurer had been trying to make ropes out of sand. Sir George Grey's speech was far abler then Major Atkinson's, but also not very consequential. The funny thing in his speech was that some jeered and many cheered what they failed to understand. The fault, in my opinion, in Sir George Grey's speech was that it concealed its purpose, which was to lay down party lines that men in the future must adopt or dissent from. The whole thing in his speech and meaning is government by the people, and not government for the people. The rigidity of the machinery in Provincialism was the partial cause of its breaking down. Grey's new creation, if adopted, is inflexible to the highest degree : a system, in fact, of political evolution. Though to my mind somewhat inconsequential, it was a great effort : a scheme thought over and brought out during the recess. Few people can see where he would lead them. Superficially it appears that he would create a large number of petty sovereign states in the Colony; but the answer, broadly speaking, is given thus : If the people like any special form of government, why let them have it, right or wrong, and make the people sole determinators of the form of government under which they shall live. Leaving, however, the political side of the matter, it could not escape observatioh that there were two rival showmen exhibiting their wares. Major Atkinson had poor wares to sell, and, like the man at the country fair, shouted to the yokels who stood around his caravan to come inside and see the one-eyed seal and the mermaid without a tail that he had to exhibit. On the other hand the unrivalled eloquence of the showman made you careless as to the wares he had to exhibit. You lost the interest in the thing in the charm of the exhibitor.