A PITIABLE CONDITION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 480, 15 July 1890, Page 2

A PITIABLE CONDITION.

The miserable plight in which the Ministry is now placed is pitiable indeed. The Wellington Press has on the position a trenchant article, of which the following is an extract: — If ever the condition of a Ministry claimed the pity of the House and the country assuredly it is that Ministry which now occupies the Government benches. Unfortunately for them, indignation and contempt are still dominant in the House, and as long as the obstinate and fatuous attitude of individual Ministers continues, it is impossible that any other feeling should prevail. It passes our comprehension how any man possessed of a sense of tell-respect and honor, as we really believe two of the occupants of the back Ministerial benches are, can sit night after night to be pelted with opprobrium and obloquy by their opponents, lectured by their friends, and subjected to every humiliation which it is possible for men to undergo. It is not enough that the conduct of the business is taken out of the hands of the Ministry, not enough that the maynum opus cf the Financial Statement is held up by the wits of the Opposition to ridicule and treated by others with an ironical admiration even more galling than contempt; not enough that they have to reply to question after question, every one of which to a man cf honor would be regarded as the grossest personal insult; not enough that at the orders of the House they abandon their motions and set up Committees to adjudicate on their own misconduct of public affairs, or to inquire into the honesty or dishonesty, the probity or disgrace cf one or other of thi Ministerial fraternity—they must now have recourse to the most miserable to buy the support of small factions in the House. They have given up all attempts to deal with Parliament, and have adjourned the discussion of the weightiest question in all their policy to the Premier’s room in the Government buildings. Tnere the financial policy of the Ministry is overhauled; there the discontents of cabals are soothed, there concessions are discussed, promises made, pledges exacted, bargains sealed, and the affalis of the colony made to fit the exigencies of a dozen dissatisfied and recalcitrant members of what was once a Ministerial party. When the Government ran away from thair Registration of Electors Bill no one was surprised, when they abandoned their first attempt to validate Judge Edwards’ appointment the House laughed; their submission to the charge of dummyism in land, was greeted with a cheer ; their denial of the “ Buckley ” " Truth ” charges was resented as an impertinence, and the House, getting at last angry, forced them to grant rhe committee of enquiry they had refused—but nobody anticipated that they would go back on their financial policy. Surely on that, if on nothing else, the Ministry would take their stand. The financial policy cf a Government is the keystone of the arch of the emire policy. Destroy that or weaken it and the whole fabric of the policy will fall Public works, land settlement, local government, education, charitable aid, even the fortunes of Judge Edwards all fall prone in one huge unseemly ruin if the financial policy is destroyed. And the financial policy >s destroyed. That Statement that looked so fair and substantial, that was so strong as the work of a cunning hand, and was in fact declared to be the highest effort of the great architect, is bicome a mere shifting sand heap. Parliament, it is true, may as yet lay no sacrilegious hand upon it, but behind the baize door of the Premier’s room any dofen members with votes, may pull down, alter, and construct it just as a child plays with his buildings and wooden bricks, What a really marvellous thing it is to be an Atkinson Ministry, even though you had to keep your leader behind a baize door in the Government Buildings and call somebody " Acting Premier ” and put him in the Premier’s seat on the Government Benches M a cockshy I When will the power ot the Ministers come to an end? , , > There they «ft, while hour after hour the

story of their weakness, their incapacity, and their disgrace is being spread abroad from Auckland to Invercargill. Not a day bnt some new defeat is flashed along the wires, north and south, east and west, and every morning and every evening men seize tbeir journals and scan them in the expectation of reading the final defeat and route of a Ministry so discredited as no Ministry has ever been in the history of this colony. Their fall is certain and near, and they know it. The country is not to be hoodwinked, nor is it to be deterred from its demands for a dissolution by thecontemptible plea that it will cause expense. To sna-tch the reins of Government from those poor palsied hands is a necessity for the colony. To return to power a strong, vigorous, liberal, and national party, instinct with the life of tho present and the hope of the future, is the one work which the colony has before it at the coming elections.