New Zealand Times. SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1875.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4446, 19 June 1875, Page 2

New Zealand Times. SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1875.

Provincial Institutions in Canterbury are now presenting, for the second time at least in the history of that province, a most paradoxical aspect. A triangular duel is, as we write, taking place. The belligerent parties to it are the Superintendent at one angle, his Executive at another, and the Provincial Council at the third. AVe do not wish now to enter into the merits of this "pretty quarrel," but to point a moral which can be safely deduced from the mere existence of such a state of things. Antagonism between an Executive and a Provincial Council is to be expected, and its occasional occurrence is a healthy sign, but what can be more repugnant to the essence of Constitutional Government than open hostility between the Superintendent and his Executive Council, both remaining in office, and working against each other in the Provincial Council. A house divided against itself cannot stand. The true theory of constitutional government is harmonious and practical. The head of the Government chooses advisers out of a representative body ; these advisers must have the confidence of both, or they lose office. The head of the political community and his executive officers constitute as much one being as do physically the brain and the body ; if the brain and the body cannot agree, it is time that the brain should get a new body, or the body a new brain, but as that cannot be done in material life, the unfortunate victim of such discord is generally consigned to a hospital or a lunatic asylum. In political life, however, in the British dominions, the remedial alternative of a new body is easily obtainable, and has generally the desired effect ; and in provinces here a double facility exists, for both Superintendents and. Provincial Executives are removable and replaceable without any violent dislocation, as would occur in the ease of those prototypes of Superintendents, Kings and Governors. In Canterbury this twofold valve of safety is, however, metaphorically sat upon by an incubus in the shape of a provincial law which precludes the Superintendent from removing an Executive in which he has no confidence. Desertion, cruelty, infidelity, may dissolve a matrimonial union, but will not in that province separate a- Superintendent from his Executive so long as it suits those officers and the Provincial Council that they should retain their places ; they can voluntarily resign, or they can be removed on a vote of want of confidence in the Provincial Council, but otherwise, so far as we can see, Sinbad the Superintendent must for ever carry on his shoulders his Executive old man until death (or dissolution) do them part. This exceptional feature of provincial institutions in Canterbury no doubt to a great extent justifies his exceptional attitude. "I am deprived," v he may say, "of my constitutional power of removing my Executive when on a vital question I differ from them, therefore my only resource is to try, by constitutional means, to win the majority of the Provincial Conncil to my side as against them, while still acting in their Executive capacity, and the responsibility of the public scandal and public injury resulting from such an anomaly rests exclusively on their shoulders. They alone can relieve me, by resignation, from this embarrassment, and leave its solution to myself and the Provincial Council, and they decline to do so." As we stated before, occasional conflict between-..an Executive as a whole, and the representative body, is a healthy Bign. The Execu- ! tive has to give way, or appeal must be made to the people. But whoever, out of the regions of provincialism, ever heard of the head of the Executive fighting that I Executive in the Legislature ? The sight is about as edifying as a conjugal quarrel in a Police Court. Provincial authorities are certainly not setting their houses in order, in anticipation of impending death, for from North to South, excepting the Province of Wellington, we never saw. a scene of more admired disorder. In Auckland the lamb, (the simile is borrowed from Sir George Grey,) has chosen as his executive, (we were about to write executor,) the wolf, and the wolf, at present in sheep's clothing, is becoming a model custodian of the flock. The case of Canterbury we have already stated, and in Otago we see two Ministerial crises, quite unintelligible to outsiders; and, what is much more serious to the rest of the colony, an authorisation of expenditure at the rate of about one pound for every one penny of income.

The truth is that tho Provincial Constitution, as a Legislatnro, has; never been, and never will be, successful. It is neither limited monarchy, nor republicanism, nor good despotism. It is a hybrid of Englivnd and America, a foreign element foisted into a constitution of English growth, a fly in amber, uncongenial and unproductive. Two elective estates, executive and legislative, seldom agree, and certainly executive government, as carried on in provinces, cannot bring about that agreement;—if this would be tho case when a Government

and. a Legislature are supreme, how much more so when the institution is a subordinate, or rather, insubordinate part of the whole. To render confusion worse confounded, we have a Superintendent, in his executive capacity, quite independent of the Crown, and yet, in his legislative capacity, representing its representative and required to be obedient to his orders. We excepted Wellington from the present general self-condemnation of the Provincial Constitution, and we have done so because, admittedly, in this province the Provincial Executive and Legislature have been acting merely as a large . Board of Works, usefully investing public funds in opening up and settling the country, and not occupying themselves in miserable shams, or dangerous realities. If other provinces followed this wise example, abolition would lose its sting, and be' merely promotion into a more useful sphere.