The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Saturday, June 8, 1889.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 309, 8 June 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Saturday, June 8, 1889.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou alm’st at be thy country's, Thy God's, and truth's.

QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY. Mr Fergus touched the keynote of the great trouble in New Zealand politics, when, the other evening, he said that it was the intention of the Government to introduce few Bills next session—to go in for quality, not quantity. The statement is in itself an admission that in past years there has been a large quantity of laws passed into operation, and that very little could be said of their quality. But no admissions of the kind are required. We know full well that by the bundles of slipshod measures that are rushed through the Honse, the amendments and amendment of amendments, a host of complications are created when these things might have been well let alone. It has been often urged that successive Parliaments do more mischief than good by thair continual tampering with the laws, the result of which is in most eases not to clear up confusion but to make it worse. The mistake in the Loan Bill was a fitting illustration of the carelessness that characterises the whole business, and when each individual member thinks it incumbent on him to try and rush through some unnecessary Bills, and make long speeches to Hansard in relation thereto, it is not to be wondered at that the quality has no comparison with the quantity, The Loan Bill blunder proved of inestimable service to the colony; now the Premier can boast of having a surplus for the year, but if the Loan Bill had been workable when first passed we should have been drifting on in the old course to ruin, and most likely a further loan would have been under negotiation at the present time. But because a little blindness in one direction reacted beneficially, affords no reason for hoping that a repetition of it would be satisfactory. Everyday experience proves the reverse, and the sooner quality is made a more important consideration than quantity the better it will be for us all—excepting the lawyers.