The Scene in the House

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 31, 3 August 1905, Page 1

The Scene in the House

Disraeli once remarked that figures are not partymen. Nor is this a party paper. It is not pinned to the coat J tails of any political party. Mr. Sedckm is no more to us, nor, we presume, are we to Mr. Soddon, than Hecuba to Hamlet or Hamlet to Hecuba. We have from time >to time freely exercised c*ur right of sharply criticising the Premier and Ms ways. But we heartily join in the general chorus of condemnation with which the secular press of New Zealand, of practically every political hue, has \ iewed the deplorable exhibition of personal rancor and evil taste that was given by the little 1 not <f 'New Liberals ' in the House ol Representatives on last Friday night. Both in its substance and in its method, the apparently organised personal onslaught on Mr. Seddon made a sordid and degrading spectacle. It was marked throughout by extraordinary recklessness of assertion, eager and mbalanced credulity, intense partisan \indictivenes.>, ami a bountiful lack of every quality that should adorn a legislator and befit the dignity of a Parliament. Mr. Fisher ' fell in ' wof lly in the matter of his enthusiastically positive charge that public moneys had been improperly) jpaid to Captain Seddon, the Premier's son. When his 'proof was examined, it was found that the amount was lawfi I'y {aid to Mr. Sneddon, a contractor's agent, for work and labor done ]Vk. Fisher is a young man. He is still in the fresh green salad days, of politics. But ho was too eager in the clxase to get his nose close upon the scent— which, as he now knows, was a false one. The hoavy blow of exposure that has fallen upon him at the dawn of his parliamentary career will, however, not ha\e fallen in vain if it tea.ches him the lesson of prudence in speech that was couched in such quaint phrase by Sancho Pan2a. 'Let every man,' sa\s Sancho, ' take care what he talks, or how he writes to other men, and not set down at random, hab-nab, higgledy-piggledy, whatever comes into his noddle.'

Another juvenile politician, the senior member for Dunedin, slogged the Premier and the Ministry generally for exercising, in regard to domestic telegramis, an old-standing privilege which is shared by every telegraph o, erator in Ihe ser\ ice. Within our memory no greater outrage has been perpetrated against the decencies of debate in the New Zealand Parliament than the reading, by Mr Bedford, of one of the Premier's affectionate messages to his wife This ' typical ' telegram was stated by Mr. Bedford to have been supplied from memory by a telegraph operator— in violation, we may

Add, of the oath which bound the latter to regard as Inviolably secret every message entrusted to him for jtrapsmission. There are apparently in our public service some who reason as Ralpho did in ' Hudibras ' :— 4 Oaths are but words, an-d words but wind, Too feeble implements to bind, And hold with deeds proportion, so, As shadow to a substance do.' Politics are, in the main, an evil game. But— for New Zealand at least— a brand-new degradation has been added to it since that .evil night last week, when treaohery on the part of a State employee was (as one of our contemporaries has put it) ' exploited for political purposes.' Every sender of a telegram is hit by such a gross breach of trus-t on the part of ~a public official. And we hope— hoth for the sake of the general public and of the good name of the great body of the telegraphists who are faithful to their salt— that the Ralphos of the Service will be placed where a discount is put upon perjury.