THE NEW COUNCILLORS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 961, 5 June 1883, Page 2

THE NEW COUNCILLORS.

In the course of an article treating of the recent appointment of Messrs Richmond and Barnicoat to the Legislative Council, the Timaru Herald says :—“ It may fairly be said that Mr Richmond’s long experience of public affairs and past political service entitle him to a seat in the Council ; and if he had not been superannuated or Major Atkinson’s brother-in-law, or a defeated candidate for election to the House of Representatives, there would, indeed, have been no objection to his appointment. But Mr Barnicoat has no experience of public affairs, and has never rendered any political services, and he is, on the other hand, long past the age of public usefulness, and wellknown, besides, to have no capacity for public business. For the Colonial Treasurer to say, therefore, that Mr Richmond and Mr Barnicoat are the two best men that the Government could find for Legislative Councillors, was either to play off a joke on the intelligences of his audience, or else to pay a very poor compliment to the Legislative Council. It was as much as to say that the Upper House is an asylum for old fogies, who cannot get into politics by any other way, and that, taken as old fogies, Mr Richmond and Mr Barnicoat stand supreme. On no other supposition can we account for the Treasurer’s assertion that any Ministry wishing to appoint Councillors in future, will have to take worse men than those two. We have reason to know, however, that the Government have given quite a different explanation from that, in justifying these appointments to some of their supporters. They do not pretend that Mr Richmond and Mr Barnicoat are the fittest men they could have found ; but they say that they appointed them in order to give Nelson its fair proportion of representation in the Legislative Council. A more extraordinary explanation could hardly be conceived. The theory that the Legislative Council ought to be constituted on the basis of the proportionate representation of provincial districts, is one which we never heard advanced before. It certainly is one which never was acted on before, even during the period when the provincial boundaries really indicated the political divisions of the colony. The Legislative Council has been from the beginning essentially a colonial and a nonpolitical Chamber; and for a Ministry who, Major Atkinson boasts, are to be credited with the passing of the Abolition Act, to undertake now to place it on a provincial basis, is decidedly one of the funniest notions that could well be imagined. But it is, in point of fact, an absurdity on the face of it, for the obvious reason that nothing short of a total redistribution of seats in the Legislative Council would place it on a footing of proportionate provincial representation. The Council at present consists of fifty members, who are thus distributed as to provincial districts : Auckland 7, Taranaki 1, Hawke’s Bay 4, Wellington 12, Nelson 4, Marlborough 1, Westland 2, Canterbury 8, and Otago ix. It will be seen at a glance that this is nothing like a proportionate representation, and that the recent addition of two Members to Nelson’s contingent, only makes the disproportion greater than it was before. This pretence that Mr Richmond and Mr Barnicoat were appointed in order to equalise the representation of provincial districts in the Council, is, therefore, actually a shallower excuse than Major Atkinson’s bold assertion that no better men could be found. Now for our own explanation, which we give for what it is worth, but which we are pretty confident is the correct one. When the Representation Act was passed in 1882, two of the small Nelson constituencies were abolished, and the three Nelson members who had previously supported the Ministry, forthwith went into Opposition. Mr Hursthouse was the only one of those three who was returned at the general election that followed, and he only secured his return by pledging himself to oppose the Ministry. He did nominally oppose the Ministry last session, but

only in a very hgrpiles&Hyay ; and it was well known that he’ would much rather have supported them. It was impossible, or at least very difficult, for him to go over to them, however, so long as the sore feeling caused by the passing of the Representation Act prevailed among, his constituents. How was that sore feeling to be removed? The Government could not restore Nelson to her old position in the House of Representatives, for to do that would have required a new Representation Act, and a complete undoing of the work of 1881. But they had the power to nominate whomsoever they pleased to the Legislative Council; and accordingly they gave Nelson two additional members in that Chamber to make up for the two taken away from the House of Representatives. This, of course, was a gross violation of the spirit and principle of the Representation Act; but 'it was necessary in oj-der to enable Mr Hursthouse to return to his allegiance to the Ministry without breaking with his constituents. The appointment of Mr Barnicoat and Mr Richmond, the latter of whom, if we mistake not, is Mr Hursthouse’s uncle, is, in short, theconsideration for the vote of the member for Motueka. We may be quite wrong in this supposition; but we do not think we are ; and we shall be very much surprised if Mr Hursthouse is not found once more working cordially with the Ministry in the ensuing session. He is a man of considerable ability, and, is one . of the very, few Conservatives m the House who have; the courage of their opinions. He is entirely out of his elerafcnt in the present Opposition, and his proper place undoubtedly is behind the Ministerial benches. But it is a pity some means could not have been found for restoring him to his proper place, which would not have saddled the country with two more ‘ pensioners for life’ and stultified the action of the Legislature in passing the Representation Act.”