The Evening Star. SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2582, 27 May 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star. SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1871.

The position of the present Provincial Executive is peculiar, and will test the honesty of those professions made so liberally at the hustings that the real welfare of the Province is what the member’s elect have at heart. The ministry accepted office without any knowledge whatever of the’leading ideas of the majority of the Council, for the questions so fiercely debated during the past two years are virtually put out of court by the Land Act having been brought into operation and action having been taken under the Public Works Act. There may be differences of opinion as to modifications of them, but we trust the lesson of the last few years will be pondered deeply by the members of the Council, who must now be aware that nothing can be more distructive to prosperity than the stagnation of a dead lock. The question of government by party has frequently been debated, and where great principles are concerned, it is at times unavoidable. And not only so, it is desirable that there should be opposition, so that every doubt may be cleared up before those principles are adopted as a groundwork for legislation. This is the safety of representative institutions. Parliament or the Provincial or City Council is the school of the people in political and social economy. Every idea clumsy or refined, sound or unsound, is enunciated, canvassed, elaborated and developed in the course of a debate. This is the use of party; but in this respect it differs from mere faction. Party may give way to reason, but faction never does. Faction, like superstition, does not understand reason. It adopts a cry, not a principle; and like the crusaders of old, abides by it without clearly comprehending its meaning. The leader is all in faction, and the end is victory, not utility. This unmanageable motive to action is evidently not altogether absent from our new Council, although we hope it will not be allowed to develop to any great extent. If the Council has the real advantage of the Province at heart, every member will feel it his duty to put it down. Faction will accept a measure from one person as a boon, which from another would be regarded as a curse. Yet its operation for weal or woe upon a community would be the same, no matter whence it came. What difference can it make in the operation of the Public Works Act, assuming its administration to be the same in both cases, whether it is directed by the Provincial or Genera] Government ? Yet faction would accept the action of the one and condemn that of the other. Principle, on the other hand, would approve or condemn, according to the merit of the administration of the measures themselves. Opposition in the Council cannot yet be based on principle, because the Executive have not had opportunity of doing more, excepting in one instance, than giving an outline of what they purpose proposing. It required no small amount of self-

sacrifice to accept office under the circumstances under which their assistance was asked. They had to follow a popular leader, who had not resigned because his principles did not accord with the majority of the Council, but because his ministry was broken up through the accident of an election. It does not by any means follow, therefore, that they may not, to a certain extent, walk in his footsteps and receive his support. They do not hold office as opponents of Mr Reid. They are merely his successors. Much of what he must have done, they will have to do. The modus operandi may differ, the extent to which they propose carrying certain measures may be greater or less than he would have gone, but that is a mere difference of degree, not of principle. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether there is any ground for that organised opposition of which our morning contemporary spoke so confidently yesterday. Mr Barton, may think it right to show that what he said on the hustings he feels bound to put in practice in the Council ) but he should not forget that he may be, really fighting with what an Irishman would term a shadow of no substance —a crotchet forged in his own fertile brain. In opposing the present government, if he has any principles at all, for what he knows, he may be opposing them ; for the formation of party is at least, for the present, premature. As a leader of a faction tight, he has shewn himself ready and apt, but the qualities required for that position, differ materially from those of a leader of party : the one will do if there be plenty of hard words, and a smart dashing way of using them ; but the other requires a calm, clear head, sound political knowledge, self-command, and tact. In these solid qualities he does not at present shine.