Looking Backward.

It fell to the speaker to review shortly the past, to deal with those questions that had had to be dealt with during the last ten years. What had been placed on the statute hook of the colony spoke for itself, and he had nothing to add to what had been so well said by Mr Macdonald and supplemented by Dr Findlay. He thought the people knew sufficiently well for ten years that the legislation had been in their interests. They know their own position better than he could tell them. If it had been for their good, his services had been cheerfully rendered. (Loud applause) It might be in keeping with the fitness of things if he gave them a few words that he said in his first speech to the New Zealand Parliament. He said: "I stand in a responsible position as the represeniative, of a class of men who are the first in this colony to whom has been granted the right of manheod suffrage. That responsibility alone ought to have to say because it is an experiment that has been tried since the year 1865. I allude to the Miners' Representation Act, which was passed in that year. That measure gave manhood suffrage to the miners of the colony, and being as I am purely a miners' representative I say that I am responsible to the constituency I repre sent, which is a very important one." That was some time before manhood suffrage was granted to the people of the colony. The first experiment was on the goldfields, where every holder of a miner's right was entitled to vote. As the representative of that body of men, returned by them to Parliment, he owed a great deal, and if what his services had done was for the good of the people, for the good of the colony, and a little for the Empire, then all credit be given to the good men of the West men to whom alone manliness is known and who stood by their friends in adversity and prosperity. (Applause.)