POLITICAL DELIBERATION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 44, 25 November 1871, Page 12

POLITICAL DELIBERATION.

To pause ! How simple is the act how pregnant at times the consequences! To pause, constitutes one of the national traits of the Englishman. It is a virtue which he pushes to an extreme. It causes him to stand hesitating on the brink, instead of boldly plunging into the stream. But if it makes him slow, it also renders him sure. Pause, before determining on any enterprise, and you render its prosecution less rash, and its success more assumed. It is one of the points obtained by the division of the Legislature into two Chambers. It has prevented many a foolhardy duel being attempted, many a desperate deed from being perpetrated. It is a virtue which has not distinguished the conduct ot our legislators. They have seldom adopted the precaution of looking before leaping. They have not been sufficiently far-seeing to enable them to- discern what will be the remote consequences of the measures they adopt. They seem not to have been aware that one false step, if not at once revealed, will lead to others in natural sequence. They have felt that it would be better to pause—to stand still—than to proceed in what may prove the wrong direction. This was never rendered so manifest as it was in the debate which took place on the eve of the prorogation of Parliament. Members all at once then became alive to the evils which too long and too frequent sessions occasion. They then became, for the first time, aware that'these evils were the natural consequences of their own acts. I he framers of the Constitution Act foresaw those evils, and guarded against their occurrence. Had our legislators paused before tinkering that act, before usurping the powers of the Provincial Legislatures, and before adopting a system of Government which rendered annual session unavoidable, they would not have been called upon to meet so frequently, nor would they have had so much work to hurry through when they assembled together. It was precisely because Sir George Grey foresaw the evils of annual sessions and peripatetic Parliaments that he recommended the Provincial system. The virtual abolition of that system has rendered annual sessions unavoidable, has made them much longer than would otherwise have been necessary, and has raised the cry for peripatetic Parliaments. A persistence in a similar course will inevitably lead to the division of the colony. Would it not then be well for the Government and Legislature to pause before assenting to further organic changes ? Would it not be well, before taking any further steps in that direction, just to pause a little in order to discover to what point they must inevitably lead ? It is because we believe that this would be a most advisable course to follow, that we are so little inclined to regret the rejection, or withdrawal of so many of the measures which were introduced into two Houses during the past session. Every bill is now required to be read three times in each House before it can be made lew ; and we are inclined to think that if the rule had been adopted from

the first, of requiring all bills, proposing constitutional changes, to be passed in three consecutive sessions before being carried into effect, it would have proved equallv as wise and prudent an arrangement. * Would not such a provision supersede to a great extent the necessity for a second Chamber ?