The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3210, 4 June 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1873.

The Daily Times has had a lucid interval. After having suffered for above a fortnight from the prevailing epidemic of responsible Government fever, which manifested itself in alternate fits of rage and plaintive melancholy, the poor dear patient, on the morning of the 2nd inst., gave signs of returning sanity. Amongst other things which the patient then said indicative of returning reason, was the following utterance: “ We owe this lamentable condition of things to the establishment amongst us of a mimic Parliamentary Government, a system which is as absurd for Otago as it would be for Manchester, or, to pursue a closer analogy, for an English county.” This is most hopeful; let us trust there will be no relapse. This plaintive melody of “ responsible Government ” is the surest sign that a patient is smitten with the epidemic which now assails the less robust and less nourished members of the community. The tune was vigorously played the other day by a “ gentle shepherd,” amidst the rural shades of Tokomairiro. We were pleased to observe that our friend the late Speaker availed himself on that occasion of so good a note-book. We can assure him that if he persevere in the study of it, he will find more solid matter than the grand fantasia on which he lighted, and which seems so to have enraptured the swains around him. So much trash has been said and written about this same responsible Government, that we propose, by way of anticipation, to relieve our friend the Speaker of some of the labor of investigation. Our gushing friends who have piped to this tune will probably be a little startled by the following deliverances as to the legal prerogative of the Crown :—“ In the exercise of his lawful prerogatives,” says Mr Chitty, “ an unbounded discretion is, generally speaking, left to the King, and in using such discretion His Majesty is irresistible and absolute.” (Royal prerogative.) Again, an eminent historian tells us : “ The theory and practice of the Constitution are essentially at variance with each other; if the theory were carried out, the Government of this nation (Great Britain), instead of being the purest and the bfcslt, would become one of the most corrupt and degrading tyrannies by which the world has ever been oppressed. For what is the strict law of our boasted Constitution 1 The Sovereign can do no wrong ; he is absolute—irresponsible.” The Crown then is, within the limits of law, quite irresponsible for the exercise of its discretion. This ever was, and is to this day the law of England. It is easy to perceive how in this very large discretion of public administration which the law gives the Crown, abuses numerous and intolerable might arise, without the smallest (ffiapce of fixing the charge of illegality on any of its servants. Negligence, ignorance, fraud, might bring the country, as indeed they often did, to the verge of ruin, and yet the arm of the law be powerless to avenge. This was the difficulty felt in its full intensity by the great statesmen of the Long Parliament, in whose graves are set the stately pillars of that wellordered and proportioned freedom, in whose majestic and far-reaching shade we live, and move, and have our being. These great men did not wish in the least to paralyse the arm of the Royal power, which the law had nerved with might and anointed with dignity, to execute the nation’s behests. They only desired, without impairing its strength, to direct its efforts in unison with the nation’s will. Standing thus at the headwaters of our noble constitutionality, and looking with the eyes of statesmen afar into the coming

time, they saw, in all its breadth, the problem before them. On one hand they perceived the danger of disturbing the equilibrium of the State by diminishing the Royal power, and on the other the overwhelming inexpediency of leaving it to be wielded by the mere personal will of a fool or a tyrant. The struggle which they made opened a source which, gathering [lower and volume as it flowed, and broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent, has issued at last in the settled form to which we give the name Responsible Government —rightly called responsible, because it has furnished a mode of subjecting to restraints, in its exercise, a power which by law is irresponsible. The principle is very simple. It is this: that the Queen shall exercise the large prerogative which the law gives her, through Ministers who are politically responsible to Parliament. This is the whole affair, as will be clearly seen ; something of this sort is necessary, simply because, in strict view of law, the Crown is still as irresponsible as it ever was. Queen Victoria is, in this sense, as irresponsible as Edward I. or Henry VIII. There is no direct responsibility. The control over the Executive, which, under responsible Government the representative Uody exercises, is purely indirect. The Ministry comes in, as a sort of buffer, between the Crown and the popular Chamber. After this statement of the rise and necessity for the English system, it will be almost sufficient to point to the broad contrast between it and the system of the United States and the Provincial Governments of this Colony. The English Crown is hereditary, and the tenure is for life. The President of the United States and the Superintendents of New Zealand are each elective, and the election is made on the basis of specific opinions and sympathies. They are each brought periodically to the bar of national opinion and subjected to its tests. The President, again, can be removed even before his tenure expires, by impeachment for misconduct. To this latter power there is a precise analogue in our Constitution Act, for by the second proviso to the 4th Section the Superintendent may, during currency of his tenure, be removed by Her Majesty on an address from the majority of the Council.

There is no such thing in America as responsible Government, because with an Executive head periodically elected, and a power of removal in emergency by impeachment, it is quite unnecessary. In this Province, with the close analogy of an Executive head periodically elected and removable on address of the Council, the attempt to introduce responsible Government is as absurd in theory as it is mischievous and expensive in practice. Where is the analogy, we ask, between the irresponsible English Sovereign and the elective, removable Superintendent of New Zealand? “Gentle shepherd, tell me where ” ? The system of responsible Ministries exists where it is absolutely necessary, in order to bring an exercise of the Royal prerogative, which is by law irresponsible under the checks of popular control. With an elective administrative officer, who is by law under the obligation of submitting his official conduct to periodical judgment of electors, and at any moment liable to removal on address of the popular Chamber, this system is not only absurd, but absolutely impracticable. When, therefore, the gentle swain of Tokomairiro, or that fatherly young man, Mr Stout, again pipe in this strain, they will be pleased to address their skilful hands to the little anomalous stops and discords in the music which we here point out. When they do so, we shall perhaps be able to give them entertainment to their heart’s content.