To Dissolve or not to Dissolve?

Manawatu Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1635, 15 February 1886, Page 4

To Dissolve or not to Dissolve?

To be or not to be— that is the ques tion at present troubling . the Govern ment. Whether 'tis better to bear th*slings and arrows of victorious opposi tion, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and b^ a dissolution end them ! To dissolve— to win, of course-- and by a dissolution to say we end the headache, and the thousand caturnl taunts that office without a majority is heir to — 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.. To dissolve — to appeal—perchance to lode ! Aye, there's tlio rub ; for m that. appeal to the people what losses may come when we have shuffled off these good benches must make us pause. There's the consideration that makes our troubles last so long. For who would bear the scoffs and sneers of the press, Wakefield's tongue, and Atkinson's arithmetic ; the pangs of rejected bribes, the law's restraint, the deficit of revenue, and the spurns that loans and tariffs of the unworthy take, if he himself might his quietus mike with the stroke of a pen ? Who would grunt and sweat under these burdens but that the dread of something after dissolution; the 'secrets of the ballot box — from which oracle some travellers hare not returned — puzzle the will, aud make us rather beat the ills we hay» than fly to others that -we know not of. Thus good salaries do make cowards of us all ; and thus the native hue of our one' virtuous resolution— to save our country twice ten thousand pounds — is sicklied o'er with tho pale cast of second thought, and this enterprise ot great pith and moment turns its current away and does not ripen into action. — Mataura Ensign.