The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, July 8, 1890. NEW NATIONAL PARTY.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 477, 8 July 1890, Page 2

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

Tuesday, July 8, 1890. NEW NATIONAL PARTY.

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

An ably written article appears in Friday’s issue of the Wellington Press, making a scathing denunciation of the utterly demoralised condition of the present Ministry, and marking out lines which are likely to characterise a reform in the present state of things. The article is well worthy of being reprinted in full. It is as follows :—The position of the Ministry becomes weaker and more manifestly untenable every day. It is useless to attempt to disguise the enormous loss that they have sustained in the absence of Sir Harry Atkinson. His colleagues have endeavoured to persuade themselves and their followers that the Umbra of Sir Harry is the same thing as Sir Harry himself, that if they can only keep on saying to themselves and the country that Sir Harry Atkinson is Premier, that association will be sufficient to maintain their own strength and to secure the loyalty of their followers both within the House and without. The House is realising, and the country is realising, that this is mere fatuous deception. Sir Harry is not in the House, Sir Harry is not leading, Sir Harry is no longer a power operating upon the House or upon the policy of the country. The Ministry is really an utterly broken and discredited Ministry. It has accepted Mr Mitchelson as its leader, and the fact that Mr Mitchelson sat with his head down while Mr Kerr charged him with purchasingthe Rotorua lands while having regard to the interests of a bank, sufficiently defines the position of such a leader. Mr Hutchison formulates the general charges against the Ministry, again asserting them to have sacrificed the colony to the terrible necessities of a financial institution, and challenging them to appoint a committee of inquiry. The Minister of Public Works makes an angry speech complaining of personal attacks, and leaves the charge unanswered and the challenge lying on the floor. We are asked to excuse the inability of Ministers to defend their land policy, because the Minister of Lands was not well when he made his defence; and when the monstrous appointment of Mr Edwards to be Judge and Commissioner, in_ defiance of law and constitutional principles, and without the least provable necessity for the appointment, is cast in their teeth, we are told that a Bill will be flung upon the table to legalise the illegality and whitewash the job. As for the Colonial Secretary, the least said about him the better; if his constituents were persuaded to send him back to the House, the country has not adopted the act of the constituency, and remains of the same mind that it was before. The presence of Mr Hislop in the Ministry is an offence to the colony. Captain Russell is an honorable man, and Mr Richardson is a painstaking and capable administrator ef a department, but it. is ridiculous to

suppose that these two are capable of redeeming such a Ministry in the eyes of the country. The Ministry have clung to the Benches with a tenacity that says more for their obstinacy than their wisdom. Had they dissolved before Parliament met, or had they accepted a defeat when the Financial Statement was delivered, the country might have remained undeceived as to their true position and character, and they might have kept up the pretence of being what they once were, —the Atkinson Ministry. The debates of the last four days have utterly dispelled the illusion. The country knows now that Sir Harry Atkinson has definitely abandoned the arena, and that the gladiator has retired upon the laurels he has won. The colony now, it is said, has not Sir Harry Atkinson to deal with, but the representatives of a power once greater than Sir Harry, and which now, even in its mangled condition, has enormous interests to guard and an extraordinary power to exercise. The last few days have shown the Ministers powerless, and almost inanimate, unable-to meet the heavy charges against them, and daily becoming weaker and more discredited. It is said that the country has no one to put in their places. Well, if that were true the country would be in a parlous state. If it were true that the country, looking upon the disarray of the Ministerial Benches was compelled to say: “ These are the only men we possess to form a Ministry,” then the position of this colony would be indeed an evil one. But it is not so. There will not be again attempted the mad alliance between Conservatism and Liberalism which was effected by the Stout-Vogel Administration. That alliance ended in the discrediting and damaging of one of the most able of the Liberal leaders of this colony. It led him into inconsistencies which were intolerable to the country and fatal to his reputation. He has suffered terribly from the experience and will not again repeat it. The colony is now prepared to give its confidence to a real Liberal party, to a party which shall have the courage that has animated in past days the great Liberal party of England, the party that through half a century made its history the history of one long triumphant pro gress in the advance of liberty, in the cause of education, in the development of enterprise and in the freedom of labor ; the party that found England in the depths of despair, of poverty and of commercial ruin, with disordered finances and a corrupt Parliament, and which after 50 years of hardly interrupted power left it, the richest, the most prosperous, the most powerful of all European countries, with a system of finance which is the admiration of the world, and a purity of administration which has no equal in history. We say that New Zealand has men who can do this for her, but these men must unite for the service of the colony. Sir Robert Stout’s known generosity of character and great ability point to him as the leader, and if Sir Robert thinks himself justified in sacrificing his private interests to do this work, and will courageously discard the unhappy economic fallacies into which he was le<T by his fatal partnership with Sir Julius Vogel, a Liberal administration may be formed which shall be worthy of so great and honoured a name, and he will gather, to him all forces of that great public opinion in this colony which so earnestly longs for reform of abuses, for purity of administration, for financial stability, for fearless progress, for a steady advance of the welfare, material and social, of the working and middle classes of the colony, and above all the wise administration of the Crown and native lands of the colony in the public interests and in the public interests only. On this head Mr Ballance undoubtedly possesses the confidence of the people. We repeat that it is possible now to form an honest and powerful Liberal Party ; the colony is prepared for it, and if Sir Robert Stout will undertake the task, it will be ddne. That party will be the foundation of a National, Liberal and Patriotic Party in New Zealand.