The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1885. The No-Confidence Debate

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 35, 1 September 1885, Page 2

The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1885. The No-Confidence Debate

• I This debate has done something towards consolidating parties in the House. The resolutions of Major Atkinson have brought to tha front the whole of the more talented or brilliant members. Mr Oemond made a characteristically bitter speech which thoroughly roused the Premier, and drew from him an equally bitter, but more forensic reply. Sir George Grey and Mr Ballance had a passage at arms which elicited for both gentlemen the applause of the House. Some of the lesser lights were even excited into a display above their ordinary mediocrity. But the knowledge that the Ministry had a majority of four, given by the Maori members, made it uphill work for the Opposition. We endorse the following quotation from the Post — " We congratulate the colony on the result of the division, not because we are particularly enamoured with the policy of the present Ministry, but because we feel convinced that the accession to office of any administration formed on the lines laid down by the various Opposition leaders who spoke in the recent debate would at the present juncture prove disastrous to the country, be injurious to the public credit abroad, and produce stagnation, productive of wide-spread ruin and misery, within the colony." Although the Government have escaped a defeat yet they are far from being clear of their difficulties. On the question of the East and West Coast Railway certain of their supporters have demanded that this vote should be made a Ministerial one, and another section of them, who are opposed to the scheme, have warned Ministers that if they comply with this request they will be obliged to vote against them. The position is a delicate one, bat we | have no doubt will be made tenable. It is certain now that the two things equally dreaded by members are — the return of the Atkinson party to power, and a dissolution. So that if Ministers are on the horns of a dilemma, so are the members. The question as to whether there shall be a railway joining Canterbury, Westland and Nelson is quite important enough to go to the country on.