The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3198, 21 May 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1873.

There is something very specious in the ground taken by the Opposition party in the Council. It has the appearance of being a stand by the representatives of the people against a breach of Constitutional usage, and as such is paraded by them in their speeches, and in the memorial signed by, wo believe, twenty-nine members of the House—certainly a formidable majority. It is possible, however, taken into consideration the motives by which men are actuated, their educational [status, their modes of life, and their opportunity of acquiring correct ideas, that a large majority may have altogether misconceived their relative position to the Superintendent, and,with the best intentions in the world, have been led into error. It is our duty to endeavor to strip the whole proceeding of its falsehood, because in all probability the electors will have to decide upon the merits of the case ; and we shall endeavor to do so without bias on either side, and altogether apart from the peculiar position of parties. Let us, therefore, treat both the Superintendent and Mr Reid as mathematicians do unknown quantities. X and Y, in an abstraction, are equally eligible for the purpose. We need not, therefore, introduce the personal question ; what we have to do with is the position : let our readers correct us if we state it unfairly. So far as we can gather, notwithstanding the high ground at first taken, the power of X, as Superintendent, to dismiss Y is admitted on all sides, but not the right. Now, it. must be plain to the least skilled in dialectics, that this is what logicians call a reductio ad ahsurdum. By express enactment, in contemplation of a by no means remote contingency, a very salutary provision has been made, by which the chief citizen of the Province, elected by the people, is authorised to protect their interests by dismissing from office one who, no matter on what ground, is likely to act to its detriment. It is presumed that when X is chosen chief administrator of the Province, the people who have placed him in that position are so convinced of his ability to judge of what is best, and of his desire to serve them, that he will not use the power vested in him arbitrarily. If ho cannot be trusted to that extent, be is not worthy of his position ; but when he is placed in such a position, with that power, the right to use it, and the duty of using it, when in his discretion he deems it necessary, are clearly conferred. Nobody but a lawyer, whose avocation it is to Belialize common sense, or a fool willing to be Belialized, could acoept any other position for a moment. The legislative enactment, whatever it was, Provincial Ordinance or Act of the General Assembly, clearly contemplated a contingency in which some Executive officer might stand in an adverse relation to the Province, and conferred upon the Superintendent the power to remove him, with the expectation that when in his private judgment that power ought to be exerted, he had not onty the right, but it

was his duty to use it. In the issue which the majority of the Council have raised, therefore, they have not arrayed themselves so much against the Superintendent as against the provisions of an Ordinance which their predecessors considered wise and expedient. The framers and supporters of that Ordinance may have been wrong : whether or not we think they were, we may perhaps say hereafter j but it is not the present question. The Council was elected subject to that Ordinance : they accepted their seats subject to its provisions; those provisions, therefore, formed part of the compact between themselves and the electors, and they are bound to submit to them so long as they remain law. Yery frequently contracts entered into with the fullest intention onboth sides offnlfilment, are found very inconvenient when a forgotten or unknown law stands between the contracting parties. But it is only when the occasion arises that necessitates bringing the law into operation that its inconvenience is experienced. When Aor B, or Xor Y feel its pressure, the natural tendency is to resist. So far as we are able to judge impartially of the situation, it is that precisely such a position may some day or other fall to the lot of an X, elected by those who now so loudly clamor against the action taken. The sides would then be changed, and lawyer A or leader B, assuming the Ordinance unrepealed, would be quite as loud in praise of the wise foresight of the early Councils, who framed so salutary an Ordinance as they are now clamorous in condemnation of it. Every law presumes that in its incidence it will be adverse to the party acting in opposition to it: but that -would be a very poor argument in favor of evading its provisions or repealing it, because one or a number of persons felt aggrieved through its operation. It is either right or wrong. If right, so much the better ; if wrong, there is a strong necessity for repealing it, but so far as it is law, it is every man’s duty to submit to it, and especially the duty of those to "whom is entrusted the destinies of the country. If they set the law at defiance, on what ground do they expect others to submit 1 It is idle to say they are not bound by the Ordinances of previous Councils. The Council, as the expression of the opinion of the people, has a continuity of existence, equivalent to that of individual personal identity. It may change its views; if so, let its Ordinances be changed. But so long as they remain intact, just as an individual throughout a future is bound by the action of the past is a Provincial Council bound to abide by its own doings. The Ordinance which empowered X, as Superintendent, to dismiss Y, was part of the doings of the Council, approved by the constituencies formally or by non remonstrance, and formed part of the Constitution under which both X and Y were elected. The people are, therefore, bound to sustain the power they have confirmed, and, by their votes, to assert their voice in the Executive, in ’the personality of the Superintendent.