Ministers and Measures.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 351, 14 September 1889, Page 3

Ministers and Measures.

We have undoubtedly to look back in this colony upon many wasted sessions of Parliament, and upon some in which much more mischief than good has been perpetrated, but it will be hard to recall one more utterly barren in results than that about to close. The House has from first to last been wrestling in a kind of general melee, in which it was often extremely difficult to ascertain the sides, and in which the only discernible purpose was to reject as much of the mischievous legislation proposed by the Government, as could be rejected without abso’utely forcing them into resignation. The result has been that nearly everything which the Ministers proposed has been thrown out, and what has not been thrown out has been so altered as to carry scarcely a feature of its parentage upon it. No one can complain that Ministers have failed in submissiveness, The face of one after another has been presented with the most Christian meekness, alternately, to friend and foe, and the process has been so often repeated that it has ceased to have any longer the charm of novelty, or to yield any gratification to the smiter. And while all the pretentious Bills of Ministers have been contemptuously torn up by the House, or shamefacedly withdrawn by the authors, the local and private bill legislation has been ruthlessly crowded out, or hurriedly pushed into law; so much so, that we regard with considerable mistrust and suspicion every Bill of the kind which has passed the House. There has, infant, been only one work which has been thoroughly and effectually done this session, and that is the persistent and unrelenting discrediting of two members of the Ministry. Probab'y more real energy has been devoted to that object than to any legislation public or private, One Minister has been driven from office and the gods still demand the sacrifice of another victim. The approach of the prorogation will probably enable the latter to save his scalp and to retire during the recess with at any rate the semblance of dignity. It is said that Mr Hislop will go down to his faithful constituency, that they will spread themselves out in protestations of unshaken affection, and that returning to the Premier with all the tokens of their love, the latter will take the stricken wanderer again to his heart and place in his hands again the portfolio he has been compelled to abandon. Sir Harry takes pleasure in flouting public opinion when he can do so with tolerable safety to himself. We should not advise him to reckon this among the occasions in which he can play at Van Amberg with the Parliamentary Hon, But it Is useless to call over the roll of the wasted hours, unless we can also point to some means of preventing a repetition of so fruitless an expenditure of time and money. It is perfectly clear that the first cause of the evil during this session is the complete incompetence and the utter unfitness of some at least of the occupants of the Ministerial Benches. The people of the colony are quite able to see how great the waste of time and money has been. Can it be at all denied that Ministers have been chiefly responsible for it ? And if this is admitted must it not be clear that the Ministers are to blame, and that they are either perverse, wrong-headed or incapable. We believe that they are incapable ; that men are invited to join a Ministry without any claim whatever to the confidence of the colony at large, or the slightest fitness for office. There is an idea abroad that any man is fit to be a member of the House of Representatives, and that if he can only persuadesomefiOO or 600 men as ignorant as himself to vote for him. he becomes, by the mere force of the combined 500 man power ignorance, a po’itical genius and a statesman full of the divine afflatus. The worst of it is, that it does not end there, for when once a man . gets. into the House, he instantly imagines himself the equal of the oldest and best and most experienced member, and he cannot conceive that he is not just as fit to become out of hand a Colonial Minister or to hold the portfolio of Justice or Education as any other member in the House. It is not altogether wonderful, it is one of. the inherent diseases of Democcies ; where newly breeched Tom knows as much as his father, and where science, learning, knowledge, wisdom, and experience have to lower their swords and bend their heads before a successful sheepfarmer, a popular road contractor, or the burly robustness of the possessor of a good physical digestion, aided by the happy absence of any excessive morality. But it is to be hoped, that it will gradually force itself on the public mind that this state of things is not really compatible with good government ; that good government is a thing quite other than the mere corrupt distribution of public money, or blusterous self-assertion; that public welfare can be immensely pro* moted by good government, and that an immense amount of real injury is done to the people by bad government. If the people want really good government they pipet be content to abandon the theory that a 1 ballot □ fl? 1 ! oon ??, ?t » 010 into a statesman, and that good laws and wise administration can be obtained by the shaking together of a ° f “ atme « o -