Pre-sessional Oratory.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 24, 13 June 1901, Page 1

Pre-sessional Oratory.

The voice of the pre-sessional orator is howling in the wilderness of more or less deserted halls throughout New Zealand. Some are explaining how they saved the country, others are explaining how they are going to save it, by Act of Parliament. Others still are explaining things away. Mr. Millar, M.H.R., walked the tight-rope in Dunedin and ' came a cropper' in a vain endeavor to show how he failed to close the Catholic orphanages of the Colony or to make other political capital out of the furious sectarian howl against the Marist Brothers of Stoke. Mr. Arnold followed, but he was dumb as to his share in the disgraceful kulturkampf. So was Mr. Barclay. We are watching with interest for some explanatian from the remainder of the Parliamentary Boxers who turned the House of Representatives into a sectarian bear-garden and pushed to its furthest verge the effort at panic legislation to the detriment of the Catholic body in New Zealand. We refer to Messrs. Atkinson, Hutcheson, Pirani, Meredith, ' Tarn' Mackenzie, G. W. Russell, Buddo, Collins, Kll, Fowlds, \V. Fraser, Graham, Guinness, Hardy, Hernes, Hogg, Hornsby, Lang, Laurenson, McNab (the underground engineer of the troupe), Rhodes, Tanner, R. Thompson, and J. \V. Thomson.

* Some of these had their faces sprained and their jawbones tied up in bandages by reason of their clamor for legislation to wipe our Catholic orphanages oft the surface of the earth, and of the voluminous and ear-splitting howl which they raised against the Marist Brothers while the cases against them were still pending. It would probably — to use the words of Kinglake — ' dislocate the supple tongue of Satan 'to offer an adequate and satisfactory explanation ot the conduct which disgraced the House of Representatives during the last session. But every Catholic voter in the constituencies of the members whose names we have given, and every man, whether Catholic, Protestant, Hebrew, or Agnostic, who values common fairplay, equal laws, and the decent administration of justice, are nevertheless entitled to an adequate explanation or a frank apology from this group of noisy and not particularly brainful legislators whose fantastic tricks before high heaven have brought so much discredit upon themselves personally, upon the electorates which they represent, and upon the parliamentary institutions of the Colony.