The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1888. NOMADIC MINISTERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1779, 2 March 1888, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1888. NOMADIC MINISTERS.

Cabinet Ministers is likely to take place | during the next few days. The Minisier for Education and the Defence Minister will probably leave for Auckland on Friday, and tho Minister for Public* Works expects to be able to go up North on Tuesday, while the Colonial Secretary hopes to be able to take his departure for the South during the next few days." Of course the business which takes all these gentlemen to " a' tho airts " may be legitimate enough, but if Parliament is to meet m the first week of May, that is to say only nine weeks hence, there must be pressing business m Wellington which should, bring them all together again after aj very brief interval indeed. For unless, presuming upon their supposed safe tenure of office, the old Atkinsonian policy of delaying all large measures till tho close of tho session is to be again pursued, if, as should bo the case, the principal work of Parliament is tobe laid before it promptly on its assembling then there is, even now, not a da? too long a time to enable that work to be prepared. For there are some very ! knotty questions to be disposed of during the coming session, '1 here is mth Tariff question alone plenty of work cv out, to say nothing of some very trouble Borne matters m connection with th North Island Trunk Kailway, the Utag Central Bailway, tho New Plymout Harbor and, not improbably two o three more harbors, the proposed repea of the Crown and Native Lands Ratin Act, the passing of the New Electora Bills, and tho question of the Canter bury runs. There is work m connectio with oil these matters which is bristlin

with difficulties, and work which cannot be performed successfully without much and careful consideration, and that careful consideration m ill be an im-i possibility unless Ministers restrain their highly nomadic tendencies, and stick a little more closely to their offices than at present they seem to be disposed to do.

We reprinted the other day from an English paper an article headed "In and Out of < ffice " which showed m startling and amusing contrast the inconsistencies ot no less a statesman than the Hon. W. E. Gladstone, and we need not go beyond the bounds of our own colony for evidence that m the matter of piping our tune m Opposition and dancing to another when m power political Pompeys and Cossars all over the world very much resemble one another. For example, one of the oft reiterated charges made m the Press and m Parliament by the opponents of the Stout- Vogel rleitnc was that under it, Ministers spent a great deal too much time and money m gadding about the country, and that it would be infinitely better if they would concentrate themselves at head-quarters a littlo oftencr and a good deal more continuously. It was pointed out that unless Ministers spent the most of their time togethct it was impossible that they could take counsel of each other as they should do, and that for want of such counsel they were led into all sorts of inconsistencies to Bay nothing of extravagances, and so on, and so on. Now it is undoubtedly quite possible to err and to err very grievously m this direction, but we have never, no matter what Party was m power, joined m the chorus of condemnation so often thoughtlessly raised against Ministers for travelling about the country— on the contrary, we hold that m order to the intelligent administration of the departments— -those of Lands and Public Works especially — it is absolutely necessary that Ministers should visit the localities and make themselves personally acquainted with local wants and conditions ignorance of which must necessarily lead to many and costly blunders, but at the same time we agree that it is also desirable that the whole Cabinet should have frequent opportunities of exchanging ideas face to face, and that the personal presence of all the Ministers m Wellington at one and the same time and for perhaps the greater part of the time

during every recesß is imperatively nec-

cesßary.— -Yet it is not a little remarkable that the present Government are apparently more given to running about the country \han their predecessors were, and that only for very short periods since Parliament rose have all its members re-

mained m the Empire city at any one

I time. Recently they have beeu co I gathered together, only* however, to /disperse again, for ihe << Wellington ' r Fort " e»ys :—« Quite a scattering of