THE TASMANIAN CONSTITUTION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 407, 27 September 1856, Page 5

THE TASMANIAN CONSTITUTION.

(From the Tasmanian Daily News, July 25.)

Tasmania was the first of all the Australian colonies to receive the royal confirmation of her enlarged Constitution. She seems likely to be the last in which the new system of legislation and government will be submitted to the test of practical experience. By the Electoral Act, 1856, the writs for the return of members to both Houses of the new Parliament, must in any case be issued by the first of October in this year. There appears every prospect that the colony will have to wait the expiration of the full legal period before any steps are taken by Government to assemble the first elective Legislature. There exists, so far as we are able to discover, no reasonable ground for this delay. On the contrary, much might be said to show why it is every way expedient and proper that the Tasmanian Parliament should be summoned immediately. We are quite prepared to be told that nothing can be done to this end until after the revision of the electoral rolls by the banisters appointed under the Act, and that those rolls have not yet been completed throughout the colony by those officers. The" lists, for instance, for this city have not yet been revised and officially promulgated. But, we may ask, have the revising barristers received any intimation frra head quarters to expedite their work with all convenient despatch? Has the Government been at any pains to convey to these functionaries an impression that it is anxious to allow the Parliamentary representation of the people to be consummated without the intervention of a single hour of unnecessary delay ? The revising barristers

cannot hold a court in this year later than the 14lh of next month. Within three weeks, therefore, their labours must necessarily be completed. We shall then see whether Government is really disposed to call the Parliament into existence at once. The country will not fail to recollect how readily certain members of the Government availed themselves some months back of the precise words of a clause in the Constitution Act, to grasp "with characteristic decision " a large portion of the public money by way of bonus for an " increased liability to loss of office." which they yet continue to hold with all the emoluments and advantages thereunto belonging, as firmly and pertinaciously as ever. With admirable consistency these same officials seem now resolved to procrastinate the inauguration of the system, which may possibly endanger their official position, and convert " liability to loss " into actual deprivation of place— to the utmost limit permitted by a literal interpretation of the language of the law.

It looks like an attempt to put off to the last possible moment the inevitable necessity for rendering an account of their stewardship to the representatives of -the people. There is no doubt much of this kind of feeling at work in the minds of those who thus retard the advent of Parliamentary Government, from which the syrstem of officialism is destined soon or late to receive its coup-de-grace. But there is probably another and a wilier motive which prompts the Executive to avail of the delay allowed them by the words of the Acts. Mr. Champ has not sat so long on the Treasury benches- as a Crown nominee in a semielective chamber without learning the use and the value of passive resistance. He has learned that eagerness and readiness to explain, extenuate, or defend the conduct of Government, are often only conducive to the exposui _ of its weakness and the exasperation of its accusers; while steady and imperturbable endurance of imputations frequently deludes the public into a disbelief of their reality, and even tends to create a sort of sympathy for the unmerited sufferings of patient aud maligned virtue ! This theory is the guiding principle of Mr. Champ's political creed. He is perfectly Conscious of the prevalence of the disparaging comments which have been so generally passed upon the conduct of, himself and his Government throughout the whole of the Convict Department Enquiry and the Privilege Question, and more lately in the matter of thel Bonus. He beli ;ves ' that reticence on his part is the surest game; that if he only held his tongue judiciously, he will better his position a thousandfold more than by any premature and indignant defence. He thinks.to live down the injurious impression created by these comments upon his public and official reputation. He hopes that the length of time which will have elapsed between the circumstances to which we refer and the meeting of Parliament will soften down the original, aggravation of the offences imputed to him ; and that in an Assembly, where many members will have no personal cognizance of the transactions of th_ latter sessions of-the whole Council, his conduct will not be subjected to hostile criticism, or visited with deserved, though tardy censure- He is doomed, we predict with confidence, to be undeceived in all these points. The first Parliament will find its work cut out for it, to use an expressive conventionalism. But it will seriously and lamentably misconceive its dignity and its responsibilities of it fail to review 'whatever portion of the acts of the present Government may seem to require the investigation, or deserve the censure of the Commons of Tasmania. And however it may be attempted, and perhaps not unsuccessfully, to prove the acts of Mr. Champ's government exempt from, the

formal rebuke of the new legislature, he may yet rest assured that those acts must be made the subject of future discussion in Parliament, and the tenure (f his office, " liability to loss" of which he has valued so highly and insured against so profitably, must be depended upon the votes of the representatives he seeks to keep so long out of their seats.