PARLIAMENTARY

Observer, Volume 2, Issue 52, 10 September 1881, Page 610

PARLIAMENTARY

OVER THE SPEAKER'S CHAIR. BY ELEuTRIC TFLEGRAPH. (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. St. Michael and St. George. — Friday last will long be remembered in our annals. The third of September has a significance all its own in the constitutional history of England from its being the day on -which the destroyer of parliamentary privileges in England went to his last home, and here it will mark the epoch when the freedom of debate in New Zealand was terminated. If the day when our Constitution was founded was remarkable to us as a people, the date of its destruction is equally worthy of memorial. I sat out twelve hours of the sitting on the Friday night and Saturday morning when the Knight of Onehunga broke up the Constitution, because I was told early in the day that that the Government had " squared matters " with the Speaker and Seymour. On my asking how this had been done, my informant coolly shrugged his shoulders and quoted from Pope : " Blest paper credit, last and blest supply, That lends corruption lighter wings to fly." On my telling Sheehan what was going to be done, and expressing regret thereat, he said, " You oiight rather to be glad instead of sorry. This Central G-overnment is like a rope stretched through the country, G-rey is pulling at the Northern end and Macaudrew from the Southern end, and they might pull for ever if they had not someone in the middle to cut away at the centre, and thats what John Hall is doing. Let him cut in God's name, and let us pray for strength to be given him to cut the rope in two. The more help we get for him the sooner will the rope be divided in the middle.." "But what are you going to do about O'Rorke ?" said I. " Do," he said ; " have not I now been 48 hours out of bed seeking to make them cut the rope that binds tis together." " But what," I urged, will happen to O'Rorke if the rope is cut." And then John said with a savagery ho rarely used, "Let him keep a school or a grocer's shop." Thus when the row took place in the House, and the members were engaged in pulling the constitution to pieces, I felt a good mind to call out at intervals, "Pull devil, pull baker!" when the rope was being strained. I asked Slicehan how long this tug of war was to continue, and he said, " I intend to keep them tearing away at the Constitution as long as possible." So I watched the night through, noting how men were the sport of circumstances when circumstances seem the sport of men. These things look to the outsiders in a very different manner to this. I have an acquaintance in Wellington, a man well known in English political life, who takes great interest in our affairs, and watches them very carefully during his sojourn amongst us. Talking about O'Rorke's manner and tone of voice M-hen he was cutting the rope, he said " The French Chamber rises about six o'clock. The French, although an abstemious people, have discouraged night sittings, as Michelet long ago remarked, 'In France the debates which take place after the evening meal are always characterised by great noise and excitement.' And Frenchmen admit that their character is sufficiently inflammable to render unnecessary in debate the artificial stimulant supplied by the juice of the grape. The same thing was noticeable in the Irish Parliament long since." My English friend regarded the cutting of the rope as a misfortune instead of a blessing, and thus continued moralising : " Abuses are generally of slow growth ; one precedent creates another ; they soon multiply and become law, and thus abuses are maintained ; the doctrine develops into a fact ; example is made to justify the most dangerous measures ; and precedents are created by analogy as well as by abuse. The disgrace of a Ministry or a party passes away with the authors of the disgrace ; the injury done to a legislature or a constitution is permanent. The domineering precipitation of your Speaker has brought your Legislature into contempt, and not the tactics of the stonewallers ; change and progress are different things ; the majority always

supports the change, the minority the progress ; every development of the liberties of the people in England has been produced by the influence of minorities ; minorities are of two kinds — the minority representing the views of the dead like the men whose views they represent, and the minority of the present day who are the representatives of the majority of the future. Public opinion will correctly judge between the authors and victims of this mischievous despotism ; (.lie men who are now resisting the rights of the minority with ridiculous clamour will have a long intervnigiventhemfor repentance and to muse over the political superiority to which they laid claim. No more sacred truth is to bo found in the English Constitution than the principle which gives the right of expression to the views of the minority. Gladstone told the House of Commons not many years ago, and I hoard him make the declaration, 'To prolong debate, even by persistent iteration on Legislative measures, is not necessarily an outrage or even an indiscretion, for in some cases it is only by the use of this instrument that a small minority with strong views can draw attention to their views. As an opponent of the bill it might answer his purpose to retire from the committee altogether and depart into the country, allowing the bill to pass with all its blemishes ; but such a course he held to be contrary to his duty, and he conceived it was incumbent on those .who objected to the bill to attend night after night, and week after week to debate line by line, and word by word if necessary, the details of a bill of such great importance.' " Here I broke in, " But Mr Gladstone introduced the cloture into the House of Commons, himself, to curb a minority/ " Yes," he said, " but he did so after three years obstruction, and now he is sorry he did so, he will never do so again. Here, your Speaker has done bo after three days debate good temperedly continued, and, like a weak man as he must be, he lays down the iron rule for his permanent use. It is only your weak ruler that wants an inflexible law. Mr Gladstone repressed the minority to avoid civil war ; Mr Hall repressed tho minority to alter the representation of the country, destroying the. Constitution he seeks to improve. We shall only slowly come to understand the result of the mischief your Speaker lias done. The power of your Legislature is limited not only by the veto of the Crown, but by the forms and principles of its Constitution. These forms and principles have all been swept away in a moment of ignorance and impatient irritation ; the standing orders of the House have been corrupted and destroyed, and, like the sullied virtue of a woman, leave but their memory behind. It was unlucky for Sir Maurice O'Rorke that his scrupulous regard for decorum should be united with this breach of obligation. It would have been wise for him to have placed on record, for the guidance of posterity, the all-sufficient reasons which induced him to violate the oath he took, a little more than twelve months since, and stand between the Crown and the rights of the people."

Hall's Pantomime. — The last scene was performed between eleven o'clock on Monday night and four o'clock on Tuesday morning. There was a thin House, and the performers were but few. The fooling was exquisite, of its kind, and yet conviction was forced on the mind, what a little fool governs the world. At eleven o'clock, when the question was put, Lundon took up the running, and made the last speech on Shechan's amendment. He was called to order twice, but he had succeeded in impressing on the mind of the Hoiise the conviction that the boundaries of the Northern electorates had been arranged in a bank parlour. He told the House frankly that he only spoke to his constituents, and aroused the wrath of the Premier by saying that some men could say what they liked in the House without being called to order, while others were called to retract their utterances on the slightest occasion. Then came the first division, when Hainlin was found voting against the bill. Sheehan had told me early in the morning he would be found voting against the third reading ; but why he should haA-e returned to his party, or left it, is a mystery quite unknown. A very funny story is told about him while acting as chairman of committees during the Stonewall period. It is said when the division bell was rung on one or more occasions he turned the glass twice, thus giving double time to the Government Whip to collect a quorum ; and Pitt told me on Tuesday morning that on one occasion he was told by Hamlin to go on with the debate when there were only eight instead of twenty members in the Hoixse ; thus on cither occasion the bill would have been killed had the standing orders been followed. " Bertie Saverna," however, while in the House displayed .the most sedulous care that the bill should become law, although he voted against it, he denied himself sleep to help to keep a House for the Government. He was the first man to answer the call of the division bell ; he would tell the Chairman at times that the bell could not be heard in the lobbies ; he Avas ever found exploring every echo of the Premier's voice, like the valet who seeks to impress on the chambermaid the importance and dignity of his master. He only appeared to run with the hare while he was hunting witli the hounds. After the bill had been read a third time the flood-gates of talk seemed loosened. Sheehan told the Premier that it was an innovation on the Constitution for amendments in the Representation Bill to bo brought down by a message from the Governor. Pitt charged the Premier with having obtained the passage of the bill under false pretences. Barrow, of Caversham, gave the House a lecture on political morality from the Ota go point of view. Turn.bull told the Nelson men that though they were with the Opposition they were not of them. Shepherd discharged all the spleen contained in a swollen political liver; and then Montgomery arose and made the best speech I have ever heard him deliver. In pompous tones and with wellselected language he told the Northern members that although they had forfeited their political birthright, the South would not prove a hard taskmaster. It was true that the voting power had gone to the South, but it should be exercised wisely and with forbearance. ' When the Maori was civilized he should have civil rights on his refusing to have any future connection with the Pakeha-Maori. Ere the sound of the clapping of hands, which marked the close of his speech, had passed away, Swanson sprang to his feet boiling with. passion and almost inarticulate with excite-

ment. He knew that he had voted for the passing of the bill, and saw that the Southern domination had already begun. The wicked leer with which Lundon regarded him, and the wicked taunt thrown out that Northern servitude had only commenced, made Swanson more vehement in his denunciations. He told the astonished Southern men that they were the authors of Maori wars and Maori difficulties ; that their fingers had painted with the stains of blood many orphan homesteads, that the allies they had sent to the field to help to suppress the strife which they had mainly fomented destroyed all that they were unable to consume or steal ; that they had turned, the most thriving part of New Zealand into a pauper settlement ; that they had ever sought to steal ' Maori lands under the semblance of law to obtain money to pay their debts ; that he knew something about the Pakeha-Maori, that he had half -caste children of whom he was not ashamed ; that if the Government would take his advice they would cause at least three more Maori members . to be added to those already in the House — strong and passionate outbursts from a strong and passionate man. The House looked on astonished, and the dignity of Montgomery collapsed. So time wore on till four o'clock when Hall arose and showed that Pitt had touched him on a sore place. He appealed to his five and twenty years conduct in the House as a rebutting proof of the charge that he would pass a bill under a false pretence ; that he advocated the adoption of single electorates to prevent an unscrupulous demagogue beguiling double constituences, carrying in a supporter on his tail ; that the best way for the North to adopt to regain its lost balance of power was to select good and trustworthy men to represent it in the House. Such men, it may be presumed, he had in his mind's eye as Reader Wood and "YV. J. Hurst. At ten minutes past four the pontomime of the Ministerial majority had dissolved.