ENGLISH OPINIONS OF THE VICTORIAN CRISIS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1351, 13 June 1878, Page 3

ENGLISH OPINIONS OF THE VICTORIAN CRISIS.

Writing of the late Victorian crisis, the “ Pall Mall Gazette” of March 22nd says : On the Bth of January nil the county court and other minor judges were dismissed, and their courts closed. The police magistrates were removed, and the services of all coroners dispersed with. Nearly all the ablest and oldest civil servants in the colony found themselves without employment. Not a single public office or public institution but was depi jvid of its head, wherever the Ministry had the power to interfere. It is safe to say that such a roup d'etat had never before been attempted in an English colony. People wondered what was coming next; and they had little security that they had seen the worst. Th> 3 ■ extn me revolutionary measures have been adopted—Mr Graham Berry himself is our authority for this statement—in the hope that the Council may give in from sheer alarm at the ruin which is being wrought throughout the colony, and thus the Ministry may carry their point without further trouble. But the question would naturally bo asked here, what is the Governor about F He, too, forms part of the Constitution, and such measures ns these could never have been carried out without his active and not merely tacit assent. Sir Bartle Erere has just dismissed the Molteno Ministry, and shown his readiness to appeal to the Cape 1 Colony on a far smaller issue; how is it, then, that Sir George Bowen can exercise no control F These, wo say, should be reasonable questions. The answer for them is not far to seek. Sir George Bowen throughout this whole crisis, lias unfortunately acted upon what we consider an utterly false conception of his position as representative of the Queen and the Imperial Government. Nat only does he consider that lie is bound to not in all tilings absolutely in accordance with the advice given him by his “ responsible Ministers,” so far as it is legal —which is in itself scarcely the view Englishmen at home take of the duties of a Governor—but that Ministers themselves are to dtcide through their AttorneyGeneral what is legal and what is not. These, also, Sir George Bowen has stated both in public and in privat e are (he inst ructions transmitted to him in black and white from the Colonial office. Wo cannot but think there is some misapprehension here. If the Governor of an English colony is bound to bo guided in his conduct ns a constitutional ruler entirely V;y the view of the majority in the Lower House of Assembly for the time being, and the limits of his constitutional powers arc to be determined by the law officer (too often a barrister of inferior standing and character) nominated practically by flesh majority, then the Governor of an English colony ceases to ho a representative of thiJ Queen or of England, and becomes, as in the

present instance, no better than the mere registrar of mob-law. Allowed that Sir George Bowen could not, acting on the ground of the strictest technicality, interfere with the dismissal of the civil servants, it was surely his bounden duty to have in sisted on a dissolution of Parliament rather than submit to have the whole business of the colony thrown into disorder by the closing of the county courts, removal of the coroners, &c. To grant his assent to such a course of deliberate terrorism was beyond all question to take the part of one House of Parliament in its endeavor to coerce the other. But it was even worse. If a Governor is of no use to mitigate such factious and dangerous agitation as that which we are now witnessing in Victoria, of what use is the Imperial connection at all ? Surely the Governor of Victoria is not paid £IO,OOO a year merely to countersign such enactments as those which Mr Graham Berry has just laid before him. We shall refuse, at any rate, to believe that this is the opinion of the Colonial Office until we hear it officially stated in the Imperial Parliament. Meanwhile, however, it is high time to take some steps to correct the mistake into which Sir George Bowen has fallen, and to endeavor to bring about some such compromise as wo suggested the other day. To do this it is quite possible that an immediate dissolution may bo necessary, and possibly a change at the head of affairs in Victoria; but grave interests are at stake which affect the future, not of this colony only, but of our whole colonial empire, and under such circumstances hesitation and delay become dangerous and culpable rashness. The whole press of Australia and all private letters are agreed as to the main facts. What is even more significant, the only journal in London that supports Sir George Bowen and Mr Graham Berry in their highhanded action is the “Daily News; and it does so upon grounds which wc should imagine can scarcely be satisfactory to a Conservative Administration.