OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 227, 27 November 1888, Page 2

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

[from OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] Sydney, Nov. 14. A HUMDRUM SESSION. The present session of Parliament is one of the quietest and most humdrum on record. If one member were to slap the face of another or give vent to verbal abuse in unparliamentary forms of expression, the morning and evening dailies would find several columns necessary for reporting an event of such overwhelming public importance. As it is, however, they can compress their reports of Parliamentary preceedings into a very small space indeed. Sucfi a state of affairs, though not prolific in the sensationalism which sells special editions, ought to be eminently favorable to the performance of work. Physicians tell us that in a healthy body in which all the vital organs .are doing their work properly their very existence ia almost unknown. It is not until a man jg nervous that he knows he has nerves, not until he is bilious that he knows he has a liver. But lam afraid that the uneventfulness of our Parliamentary sittings is not so much an indication of unostentatious vigor and activity as of torpidity. A few private bills are being pushed throngh, but the main business of the session, the discussion of the estimates, is making very slow progress. Half of November has already drifted away, the Christmas holidays are close at hand, and we have only got as far as the reply of the leader of the Opposition to the Colonial Treasurer’s Budget speech. Stimulus of some kind is evidently necessary to arouse the flagging energies of honorable members. I wonder what form it will take, or if it will take any form at all.

.PAYMENT OF MEMBERS : A SIDEWIND. One subject of more personal and pressing interest than the estimates has been settled, so far at least as Ministerial action is concerned. I refer to payment of members. As long as Mr Garrett was a member of the Cabinet, Ministers were equally divided. His place, however, has been filled by Mr Brunker, who takes an opposite view. Five members of tbe team, therefore, are opposed to the measure and there are only three in its favor. Yet the Minister for Justice, Mr Clarke, hfil been empowered to bring down a massage from the Governor authorising tbe introduction of a bill for the purpose. According to the constitution this message is necessary before the money can be voted, and it would be interesting to know the intellectual process by which the majority in the Cabinet justify to themselves their conduct in the matter. They have suddenly become so tender of the right of minorities that it may be expected that their next step will be to request the Opposition to take charge of public business. The principle of payment of members ia I think thoroughly sound. Bui the principle which induces responsible Ministers to forego their honest and publicly avowed convictions is as thoroughly rotten. When the people themselves demand payment of members and a Parliamentary majority pledged to secure it is returned by the constituencies, it can be carried without reproach. But until then attempts to secure it by a sidewind present the appearance of surreptitious filching from the public Treasury, filching, too, on the part of those whose chief duty it is to guard the national strong-box from any attempts of the kind, Advocates of the measure are playing into the hands of their opponents by this indecent eagerness and haste. They are furnishing them with sound and solid arguments for refusing what, under more legitimate auspices, would ba a very reasonable demand. the strike: a closing incident. It is now hoped that the Newcastle strike is at an end. An agreement has been signed by the respective delegates of the masters and men, and it is stated that work will be resumed in a few days. One colliery, the Minmi, finds that the pay of the miners will be reduced by the agreement, and they, therefore, refuse to go to work, a decision which seems unjustifiable in the face of the fact that the agreement gives power to settle local differ, ences by local arbitration. But in this case the Minmi miners seem to emulate that historical Milesian, who, when congratulated that hie case was to be tried before a just judge, replied:—“ Faith an’ I wud prefer one that would lean a bit.” Men are willing enough to play at strike if they are assured of winning all the time, but it is only the nobler spirits who can abide the prospect of losing with anything like equanimity. I do not think it can be maintained that the results of the agreement now arrived at are such as justify the strike with tbe distress and stoppage of industry which it has occasioned. There is nothing in it which might not have been arrived at by negotiation, with collieries working, quite as well as by laying them idle. Still, it is matter for congratulation that owing to many doubtful points being now clearly defined there is now less opportunity for future disputes than existed previous’y. In the metropolis we are glad tn see a pros, pect of resumption of activity at Newcastle, and also to be relieved from the apprehension of having our supply of gas cut off. a possibL lity which the directors of the company have been industriously brandishing over our heads. They seem to forget that in so-doing they have been proclaiming their own imcompetence, and declaring to all and sundry that they have not enough resource or energy to make provision for a very obvious contingency.

TIJE WOLLONGONG SALVATIONISTS. The day after my last letter the Supreme J Court quashed the conviction of the Salvation processionists at Wollongong, declaring that the by-law was ultra vires and unreason, able, and also, which seems to me much more significant, that the sentences under it were excessive. Injustice usually leads to vindictiveness, and many men find it harder to forgive those whom they have injured than those who have injured them. It is satisfictory that an episode which at one time threatened to fill our gaols with eager martyrs, suffering for no offence against morality, has been terminated by the summary action of the highest tribunal in the land. FOOLS AND THEIR FOLLYFrom time immemorial fools have rushed in where angels might well have feared to tread. And their successors keep up the ancient precedent, and sometimes I think they better the instructions of tradition. Perhaps one of the biggest crops of folly is to be found in the crowds, who, on every public holiday, betake themselves to boating as their chosen diversion. Profoundly ignorant of the most rudimentary principles pertaining to the management of oars and sails, they venture forth with a sublime audacity that would be heroic if it were not ridiculous, and ludicrous if it did not too often lead to painfully distressing results. Shopmen and clerks who have seen some of our rowing clubs disporting themselves, or who, from the deck, say, of a manly steamer, have watched the white sails of the u canvas

dingies ” skimming over “our beautiful harbor,” think it looks amazingly easy, and vow that on their next holiday they ayitl try it for themselves. So, when the holiday comes down they go, taking with them, in all probability, their sweethearts to witness their prowess. Sometimes, indeed it is the sweetheart herself who gives her 'Arry no peace until he has consented to appear, for “ positively the first time ” in the character of a “jolly young waterman.” But when the amateur rower finds himself “catching crabs,” instead of propelling his craft, when the sails come fiat aback, in the most unexpected contingencies, when instead of “ walking the waters like a thing of life ” the crazy cockleshell evinces a sudden and obstiq de determination to turn turtle and go to the bottom, the realities of the position begin to assert themselves, and well is it for the amateur boatmen and their passengers if they vet off with nothing worse than a ducking ? Scarcely a week parses that some lives are not lost through recklessly venturing in this manner on literally “unknown seas.” A very p >inful fatality occurred in thia way on Prince of Wales Birthday, when two yoqng men, evidently novices, pu'.led In front of a steariitug. Their boat was cut in two and they were drowned. A young girl who was with them was, however, fortunately rescued at the risk of his own life by a spectator, name Burne, whose gallantry has deservedly been the subject of general oommendation.