THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT IN VICTORIA.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1595, 31 March 1879, Page 4

THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT IN VICTORIA.

[Melbourne " Argus."] Some revolutions are effected without beat of drum. A change of this nature has occurred in the system of government under which we live in Victoria, and it is of the first importance that the alteration, unauthorised as it is, and highly improper as it is, should be plainly stated and clearly recognised. Hitherto Ministers, no matter to what party th->y belonged, have exercised their executive authority for the benefit of all. They have regarded their administrative powers as held in trust for the community as a whole, and upon thiß understanding power has been largely conferred upon them and upon the Governor in Council. The majority has legislated according to its views, but in the administration of public affairs under the law the majority and the minority have stood upon the same footing. This is the rule which prevails in Great Britain and in all British colonies, and up to May 1877, it was observed here. Party government has meant government by a party for the community, which consists of many parties, but party government under the present regime means government by a party for that party. For the party everything is to be done, for the minority nothing. The men and the districts outside of the dominant section are to be injured, humiliated, and, if possible, crushed. Every man, whether constitutionalist or ministerialist, pays his quota to the Treasury, and has a right to share in the benefits which flow from the Treasury, but to-day the public Treasury and the public service are both used as machinery to coerce the one party and to consolidate the other. The innovation is groat and alarming, and requires to be promptly dealt with. In view of it, American history appears to have been written in vain. Englishmen and Americans alike deplore the prostitution of politics in the United States, and yet we are moro than drifting, we are rushing headlong, to the American results, with all the evils of the Amerioan example and all the protests of the American press in fall view. In the States the party is everything, and it seizes upon everything. From the President down to the lowest postmaste| there is a clearing out in favour of |the side that triumphs. Each officer pays a portion of his salary for thr purposes of the party campaign ; the Customs the Treasury, the departments generally, are all worked in the interests of a section and not of the people. " The spoils to the victor." "Woe to the vanquished." In these sentences the situation is described, with the result that the party contests are conducted with an unscrupulousness and a bitterness which it is the merit of constitutional principles honestly applied to mitigate, if not altogether to remove. Hdw unscrupulous the political practices have been may be judged of from the fact that at the last election, the party in power, finding their Presidential candidate defeated, fraudulently counted him in under circumstances which, if disclosed at the time, when the excitement was at its height, would inevitably have led to bloodshed. America, which might have had one of the best governments in tbe world, has had one of the worst, and her troubles have mainly arisen because the Executive serves its party and not the State. Party men have been allowed to, apply the public authority and the public funds to party purposes. And now, when there is an uprising in the United States against this system, and honest men of all parties protesting against it, the Victorian Government is boldly adopting it. We have the minority refused that correction of a returning officer's error which they can claim as a right under the law ; and refused because the correction would have seated their candidate. We Bee that capability and fitness for posts are n© longer thought of, but every office, from that of Parliamentary librarian down to that of an electoral registrar, is given to a pronounced partisan, who can be depended upon to serve the cause. So with the public funds. For specific instances we have to go no further than West Bourke, and take notice of the unconditional promise of waterworks to Barry's Reef when other districts cannot even obtain a loan in aid, and observe the Lancefield railway scandal. " What is the use of authority unless you use it?" was the exclamation of Mr John Woods, to whose coarse cynicism we are sometimes indebted for a clear statement of the Ministerial position. On the principle thus betrayed, Mr Woods and his colleagues are acting everywhere. The telegrams from England paid for out of the public funds, and therefore the property, so far as they can be published, of all contributors to these funds,are given, not to the public press, but are made use of to subsidise the party journal, and though this is a small matter, it illustrates the situation. The whole community contributes to the Treasury, and the Treasury is used as a party agency. We do not write with any idea of shaming Ministers into a return to honest and constitutional courses, but rather to induce the reflecting among their supporters to ask themselves if it is well that the system of government for a party should be established here as against government for the whole. Ministerialists cannot expeot a monopoly of the practice their leaders have seen fit to introduce. \ The minority here represents interests, and possesses claim • which would entitle it to respectful treatment in most lands, and not only that, but it is strong in numbers at the ballot-box. Under our electoral arrangements, which permit of a handful of men turning the scale in all the constituencies, it makes comparatively a poor show in Parliament; but then such a scale admits of being easily returned. A comparatively small accession to the numbers of the minority would win it many seats. After the West Bourke contest there can be little doubt on the point that it does not require much to give the now defeated party a fair amount of Parliamentary power. And Ministerialists must be conscious that what their leaders are doing at present is to embitter their opponents, to sting them into exertion, and they must realise that when the minority has become a majority, reprisals must ensue. We should deplore such a result, we protest against its being made inevitable, and in order to avert the evil, we invite the citizens of Victoria, irrespective of their political creeds, to assist in maintaining the honest British rule, that the Executive shall administer the public law and the public funds, not for party purposes, but in the public interests, and in those interests alone. All else is injustice and corruption, and must end, as injustice and corruption have always ended, in the destruction of confidence and national ruin.