THE PROMISSORY POLICY.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1389, 29 July 1878, Page 3

THE PROMISSORY POLICY.

[“New Zealand Times.”] From the tone of all the voices that are heralding the session, it is to be feared that the majority of the members of the Assembly coming up to support the Government are Hushed with the hope of plunder as well as with the triumph of party victory. Promises have been made and suggestions of good things held out by Ministers and their confidential friends ; and the cry throughout the recess has been the pernicious war-cry of American politics, Vm victis. At the very time that Mr Hayes, the new President of the American Republic, is endeavoring to remedy the most crying evil of American public life, and to govern for the country and nob for party, we have a Premier in Now Zealand endeavoring to introduce the abuses that have prevailed in the Great Republic, and bidding for the office of elected President. We have already had a foretaste of what might bo expected from a Government constituted on his model, and a large section of the community evidently believes that patronage and public expenditure will be entirely regulated by the party prepossessions of different parts of the country. Members have been professedly elected to be “ companions ” for Sir George Grey, on the ground that ho now has the power so also ho has the will to reward his friends and punish his enemies

by a partial distribution of the public funds. The newspapers in which Ministers are pecuniarily interested, or by which they are politically supported, are shamelessly subsidised out of the public revenues. Officials have been made to understand that if not politically subservient others will be found to take their places, and worst of all, the electoral roll, in one district at any rate, has been stuffed to secure the return of one of the Grey “companions.” The Government organ asserts that “ there is now in office a strong united Government, bound together by well understood principles, and with a definite aim and object before it,” Recent events give a very ludicrous color to this assertion ; although in one sense the Executive is for the moment strong, exactly whore previous administrations in New Zealand have been weak. Hitherto, whatever their sins of omission or commission 'may have been, no Government has avowedly determined to use their position for the benefit of their friends and supporters. The late Ministry were often taunted with not having done enough for their friends. In that they always endeavored to administer their offices without regard to party interests they were in the eyes of the present holders of office very weak. The time will come when the vigor the Government boast of will fade away like the fictitious exhilaration that follows the toper’s morning dram, and when the public will bo “weak” enough to insist on evenhanded dealing, and an administration unbiassed by party favoritism. For a time the public taste has been debauched, and the Government arc “strong” and jubilant.