Nemesis.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 543, 11 December 1890, Page 3

Nemesis.

[WELLINGTON POST.) We can fully understand the Premier being perfectly appalled by the result of the general election. It means the close of his political official life, under circumstances of ignoble defeat, and with every attendant incident of complete humiliation to himself and hie party. Although we have for a long time past expressed the firm conviction that the present Ministry did not possess the confidence of the country, and that the ballotbox would at the first opportunity conclusively demonstrate the tao'., we have no desire to exult at the manner in which our predictions have been so fully realised, for, indeed, in many respects we regret the triumph that has been achieved, almost as much as we should have deplored a result strengthening the hands of the present Administration. The new House ig . not at all what we should have liked to have seen it. It contains many most undesireable elements, and we should as soon expect to see brambles produce to see such a House turn out good legislation or initiate satisfactory administration. But the new House is, we hold, the distinct creation of Sir Harry Atkinson and his colleagues. It, no doabt, fitly represents the country in the present conditions of political demoralisation to which the Premier has done more than any other man to reduce it. The result of Friday’s polling was the natural reaction against the policy and administration of the Atkinson Cabinet, the inevitable product of the bad government under which the country has so long suffered, Popular tea

bounds of this kind are apt to be over violent, and to go to extreme lengths, as hue been the case on this occasion. We do not expect good government under the conditions now established. The political health of the colony may in all probability have to become worse before any signs of improvement appear. We greatly doubt whether the lowest political depths have yet been sounded. The effects of long-continued mis-government are not easily or quickly surmounted. A healthy tone is not readily restored in a constrution every nerve and organ of which has become more or less unhealthy by abuse and vicious treatment. The Atkinson Government has demoralised

the Legislature and through the Legislature the country. The result of the general election just concluded is the natural outcome of that demoralisation, and it is impossible to feel either sympathy or compassion for those who now find themselves overwhelmed, crushed, and strangled by the elements with which they have themselves charged and vitiated the atmosphere of public life. We are sorry to even appear to perform the unthankful office of throwing water on drowned rats, but on an occasion such as the present it is our duty to speak plainly, even if we have to say unpleasant or ungracious things. It is right that the country should clearly understand the causes which have produced such an effect as the House of Representatives elected on Friday last, and should know who are the persons responsible for the creation of conditions which have operated in producing that effect. We unhesitatingly lay the major portion of that responsibility, and of the responsibility for the worse things which we fear the political future may have in store for this unfortunately misgoverned country, on Sir Harry Atkinson’s shoulders. He is the Frankenstein who has called into life the monster which has now destroyed its author and creator, and bids fair to work a large measure of evil amongst the community. No man has had so much to do as he has had with the government of the country during the last twenty years. For the largest portion of that time he has controlled its finance and exercised a despotic or a most potential voice in the administration of its affairs and its public policy. The new House of Representatives is the direct product of his long administrative career, We are not going to review all the details or incidents of that Career, so as to trace step by step the deterioration in public morality which has new culminated in the late election, but shall confine ourselves to noticing a few of the more modern circumstances which have operated powerfully in bringing about the present condition of affairs. When Sir Harry Atkinson in the first hours of the late Parliament was called on to take helm of Slate, he had a noble, a glorious opportunity of retrieving past errors and wrong-doings, and steering ihe ship on » naw courea to the haven of assured prosperity. Every olroumstance was in his favor, but he took advantage of none pf them. He surrounded himself in the first place with colleagues whose selection was prompted by tsuneiilerations altogether apart from their fitness for office or capacity for public usefulness in tha positions in which he placed them. He sought to disarm

opposition which he feared on other than public grounds, and to secure complalsa'l tools rather than intelligent co-workers. as colleagues, His desire was in fact to have no rivals near bis throne, and to rule absolutely and alone. His first step when the House met was to ehow his utter disregard to al! principle, and to set expediency on higb as tha idol of his undivided worship, Elected sad placed in office as a Free-trader, attaining to power mainly through his opposition to and denunciation of tha Protectionist taxation proposals of the Stout-Vogel Ministry, ha no sooner felt himself securely seated than he proceeded to throw over his friends, out-Herod Herod in his Protectionist proposals, and, with the aid of his opponents, force on his friends and the country a weight of Protective taxation far mors oppressive than that which bis predecessors had ventured even to hint at. The immorality of thia course was absolutely astounding. It sapped tha conscience of the House, destroyed all respect for principle, and produced a condition of political demoralisation which influenced the whole course of the late Parliament's existence. In his dealings with the country party over the representation question, with the Skinflints in the late session and in many other proceedings which apace now precludes more specific reference to, the Premier openly, almost ostentatiously, sacrificed principle to expediency and showed his determination to cling to office at any cost, and to endure any humiliation rattier than resign. He threw self-respect to the winds, or he would not have submitted to the indignities heaped upon him and his Ministry during the last two sessions. Unable to do anything useful, dictated to and treated with open contumely on all sides, he yet clung to office, and preferred under-going all tne humiliation of last session to the adoption of the more manly and siraightforward course of appealing to the country by a dissolution. He has secured a few months’ additional enjoyment of office by the course he fo lowed, but he has done so at a terrible cost to himself, and a still heavier one to the country. We do not pretend to assert that had he appealed to the country prior to the last session of the late Parliament he would have come back at the head of a majority. We are quite sure he would not have done so tfieu, on at any time since the first session of last Parliament, but the House which would have been elected eight or nine months•ago would have been a very superior one in its component parts to the one which has now been chosen, It would have been one more worthy of the traditions of the New Zealand Parliament, and one more equal to the standard previously maintained. The events of last session, and the strike, completed the process of political demoralisation set up by Sir Harry Atkinson long previously, and the present House of Representatives is the natural product of the forces which he called into operation. Even lhe latest Ministerial sin, the postponement of the elections in defiance of tha most solemn pledges, although it secured a month’s extended tenure of office, has intensified the bitterness and degradation of the present defeat, because it afforded Sir Robert Stout time and opportunity to perfect the labor organisations whose success in the Southern constituencies has been so marked. For what evil effects may'yet flow from the new House Sir Harry Atkinson will be primarily responsible, The colony may have to suffer much yet for his misdeeds, but we do not think it will have to suffer long from the new House, for even at this early stage we think we can perceive in it the germs of early dissolution, and we shall be much surprised if it runs its allotted space before being resolved into its original elements. This prospect at least affords some gleam of consolation in a condition of political affairs otherwise far from reassuring.