Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 039

Transcript

The first Council in 1853 or 4 was composed entirely of early arrivals. Mr Fitzgerald, Capt. Simeon, as Speaker, Mr Tancred, Mr Hall, Bealey, Hamilton, Cass, Aylmer, I.T. Cookson, Dampier, C. Bowen, R.H. Rhodes. Captain Simeon was I think, an official, under the Association. Mr Cass surveyed Chch. Mr Aylmer was a member of a well known Home family. C.E. Dampier was a solicitor. Mr Cyrus Davie, was Clerk (surveyor) I.T. Cookson (Bowler & Co)

The description given by Mrs Mulrooney of the Old Provincial Parliament is a very correct one. The sketch of Mr. Charles Bowen, the Speaker, is himself to the life. He was a most painfully proper person. Not a man of any talent, just an ordinary respectability. Mr Tancred, later on, was also Speaker, he was said to be an able man but he had a great drawback in his voice which had a peculiar nasal twang which people had to get used to. Mr William Thomson was a burly Scot, with a large voice and a big laugh, who made a grand picture lounging at his ease. Mr Leonard Harper was once Clerk and later on a Mr Quinn, a dark, swarthy Eurasian looking person, with a sly eye who gabbled over Clause X Section 2 in grandly unintelligible style. Mr Joseph Brittan was undoubtedly a man of talent, but an unpopular one. His features were not winning. There was a rat trap like expression about his mouth and a tongue always ready with a bitter jibe, that caused people to take the other side. Mr T.W. Maude from Chief Clerk in the Secretary’s office was made Secretary and got in for Heathcote probably. He was not a success as a Parliamentarian, and in the fierce fighting over the buying of land at Heathcote for the Railway, which was surrounded with suspicion, he had to stand the onslaught of much abler men. In that battle royal, Mr Fitzgerald, Brittan, Harman and others assailed the Moorhouse administration.

Mr Rowland Davis, the landlord of the Canterbury Inn, Lyttelton, was a devoted follower of Mr Moorhouse; as a politician he was a nobody.

[“Mrs Mulrooney” is a character in a series of newspaper articles by “W. Ernest Messervy”, thought to be a pseudonym of Burke’s.]