PARLIAMENTARY BULLS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2679, 8 December 1909, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY BULLS.

SOME NEW ZEALAND EXAMPLES

Humor in .“Hansard” sounds like a contradiction in terms,, and so long as members of Parliament revise the proofs of their own speeches it is bound to be more or less unconscious. But a .'cilieb who sits: ampng them” has been “fakin’ notes,” and the result indicts not a few politicians on charges ot “bulling.”- Early in the session Mr J. B Hine, the elect of Stratford, expressed the opinion that “the Government is beginning to feel the boot pmclung and now their shoulders are not strong enough to boar it.’ ■ Mr O. 1 nchanan has evidently a wrong impression of the uses of the' domestic dog, for lie is credited with having taxed the Government with “letting loose a lot of bull-dogs in an endeavor to nde roughshod over the heads of the people.’’ Canterbury, of course, is more circumspect, but this did not prevent Mr J. Craigie from expressing ‘ pleasure at the sympathy extended to this, old man and his’widow.” Mr A. 'V •• Ho eg was distinctly plagiarists when he remarked “Sir, I begin to smell a rat : I can see it in the air” for a great Irishman had prevously elaborated the parallel. Mr G. W. Forbes, too, must have been emphatically sure of his ground when he committed himself to the statement that “In the .Taranaki district a family, of .four would be considered much better than a family ot none.” Mr W. F. Massey’s suggestion that “thel only way to keep our cradles full is to go about the matter in a business-like manner” savours of commercialism equally with truth. Even the Prime Minster apparently can be caught napping, otherwise ho would hardly have accused an'“honorable gentleman” of “wanting to go back to the Day of Judgmept Mr T. Y. Duncan, with appropriate frankness, confessed that “he always- had liis ears open to see the needs of country settlers” and Mr A. Dillon, not to be outdone, admitted that he too “by keeping liis ears open saw a good many tilings.” Finally, Mr J. Graham accused his supporters of a curious physical acrobatic feat when ho said that

many of them “did not know there was to be a second ballot and 1 had never since ceased biting their teeth over that fact.” Fortunately members ; take those little lapses with the greatest goodhumor in the very proper consciousness that ho man knows when his own turn may comer Political life teaches more quickly; perhaps, than any other the wisdom of refraining from stonetlirowing in glass houses.—-Lyttelton “Times.”