CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4809, 21 August 1876, Page 3

CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES.

BT A SILENT POLITICIAN. ■ NO. I. “ ‘The truth, friend,’ Arthur Raid, imperturbably, ‘Where is the truth? Show it to me. That is the question between us. I see it on both aides. I see it on both sides of the House. I see it on the Conservative side of the House, and amongst the Radicals, and even on the Ministerial benches. I see it in this man who worships by Act of Parliament, and is rewarded by a silk apron and five thousand a year ; in ' tfikt man who, driven fatally by the remorseless-Logic of his creed, gives up everything.’”— Thackbkay in Pendennis. Abolition of the provincial system is all but accomplished. The intrdduction of a substitute has begun. The task is one not so much of difficulty as of tact and discrimination. The •worst of revolutions all the world over, it has been truly said, is restorations. Much of our comfort, and something even of our prosperity, depend upon the spirit in which our statesmen shall now build up the institutions of the country. The matter may be good, and yet the manner may do much to mar its beneficial effects. I do not expect that legislators can always be as decorous as an Episcopalian conclave., They can hardly help occasionally saying strong things, but they should avoid saying nasty things. Human forbearance, of course, has its limits. A few members (not many) are perhaps intolerable. There is Mr.- Wakefield,, for example. ■ His very mode of address is an. irritation to sensible men. When Hogarth • quarrelled with Churchill he drew him as a, • bear in canonicals. : Had he lived with this Wakefield, and thought it , worth while to

quarrel with him,, he would certainly have drawn the unfortunate man as a padded puppy in stays and evening dress. Sir George Grey, I daresay, will hardly give the writer credit for the reluctance with which he writes his honored name in this connection. But Sir George should know that his best friends lament the course of action he is pursuing. Most men have their hobbies. One is addicted to a private brandy bottle ; another indulges in open-handed hospitality. One is great, or rather excessively little, on points of order ; while Sir George Grey, it appears, has chosen the advocacy of posterity. No one can have other than the best wishes for the coming race, still it is allowable to bestow a passing thought upon the race that now is. We must be permitted to live somehow, in order to give a chance to those who will come after us. Seriously, Sir George Grey’s present action is unworthy of his past career. If he could only be persuaded to see that liberty and the disintegration of the colony are not one and the same thing, he might yet do great things for his fellow citizens, who are quite satisfied of his patriotism, however much they are compelled to question his prudence and foresight. With inevitable exceptions, I would still venture to insist upon the necessity of those who desire the success of constitutional change avoiding cause of offence. 111-feeling is terribly infectious. When William 111. on one occasion lost his temper at a review, and so far forgot himself as to swear at a subaltern, the outraged officer forthwith fell to kicking the shins of a private near him. On being remonstrated with, he defended himself by saying that “he kicked when he dared.” It is human nature for a man to kick when he has cause to be angry, and can dare to do so. A majority of our representatives persistently refused Mr. Kees a seat on a finance committee. It was a blunder. Mr. Rees may not be a horn financier, but he is a representative man, possessed of good parts, and by no means so ill-natured a person as he makes himself out to be. Besides, his knowledge of finance must he small indeed if it does not equal that of a large number of the committee, and the desire to have him placed upon it, instead of being resisted, should have been acceded to with themostungrudging readiness. Thj Government need notmarvelthathetakeshisrevenge. Highhandedness in any form cannot be too strongly deprecated. History teems with illustrations of its self-defeat. I do not know that any better administration could have been devised for Ireland at the time than that of Strafford. It enforced justice vigorously and impartially. It largely developed the resources of the country. It led to the establishment of the linen trade, which continues the chief Irish manufacture to this day. But this policy was too “ thorough ” even for the seventeenth century ; that is to say, it made no allowance for national sentiment and feeling ; and failure was the consequence. There is a vaulting ambition which always and everywhere o’erleaps itself. Large allowance should be made for an Opposition at such a crisis in our history as the present. Some of its members may be coarse, others envious or ungentle ; no-matter. Noblesse oblige / Honest differences of opinion are entitled to respect. It would not be desirable, even if it was attainable, that men should be as alike and as material as Wordsworth’s cattle, “ forty feeding like one.” Continual exposure of inconsistencies and offences is a mistake on the part of the strong as against the weak. No one is ever the better for being made to feel his insignificance. lam afraid that some of our leading men are not sufficiently alive to carefulness on these points, and are too apt fatuously to blink the fact that there will be a to-morrow very different from to-day. Hence this word of friendly remonstrance. The problem of future administration is not to be solved by sarcasm, but by chivalrous forbearance.

Never jeer at a falling 'or a fallen cause. “There is an end of an auld sang,” said Chancellor Seafield, when, in 1707, the doors of the Scottish Parliament were finally closed. The speech was indiscreet as well as heartless. The effect is not over when a song is ended. Its echoes linger about the memory and fills the house with ghosts for many years. In making necessary changes some one or more will be injuriously affected. The song of the worker is therefore suggestive. In our case it should not be a poean of triumph but a refrain of brotherhood and welcome. It strikes me, reasoning from the greater to the less, that a more apt historical parallel could not well be found than that of the union between England and Scotland, to which I have incidentally referred, and the abolition of our provinces. It holds good even to the proposal that the Auckland members should leave the House of Representatives in a body, and return to it no more. Hume, speaking of the Act of Union, tells us that the lower classes of the Scotch were almost universally opposed to it, “ and offers were made to Hamilton from various quarters to.march to Edinburgh and disperse the Parliament. But that nobleman though loud in debate was timid in action. He would not listen to such vigorous counsels ; and he even shrank from an agreement which he had made with his adherents to protest against the measure, and quit the Parliament in a body." Discretion or indecision in this case proved the better part of valour. But this Act of Union was a hitter pill for. Scotland, and the unskilful leech made no attempt to sweeten it, although—small thanks to him—sweet uses came of it afterwards.

Had the politicions who carried through that union been possessed of a clearer vision or a broader tolerance—had the writers of that period, “ the twopenny authors,” as the irate John Dennis was pleased to call them, been as anxious to advance the progress of the Empire as to indulge in biting invective—the benefits of the measure they adopted would have been felt at least a quarter of a century earlier. The gifted and witty but truculent and really witless Dean of St. Patrick’s, in ringing the changes upon “Scottish scoundrels” and “ greedy Scottish dogs,” probably thought little and cared less for the mischief ho was doing ; just as our present journalists, sparing no one in the fierce light that beats upon public life, think only of the sensation of the hour. They do not mean much harm, but even those who are most conscious of the little value of newspaper censure are not altogether proof against its influence. Clever and sarcastic, sometimes untrue, articles, good and bad jokes—every Opposition speech underrated, every motive befouled—dishonest panegyric of one side, undue depreciation of the other : these things occurring day after day will tell, fight against them as a man may. Let him be ever so honest, he' can hardly help in the long run losing confidence even in his own integrity when it is continuously discredited. Abolitionists, I repeat, should be sparing of hard words, even if only for the cam e they seek to carry to a successful issue. Personal invective in debate especially enfeebles and exasperates political controversy.* Showing that a man expressed himself differently-to-day from what he did ten or twenty years ago, proves little more than that he is wiser now than then. It would be a poor thing if it were not so. “ Are not the gleanings of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer ? ” Con-' sistency is oneness of aim and purpose, not similarity of words or phrases. Besides, a man may be speaking at one time of a principle in its general bearing, at another time in its exceptional aspects; and these often look unlike it, just as a front view of a face is different from a profile. At all events, two parties can play at a game of this kind. H either of them will find it worth the candle. Let me not be misunderstood. lam not dissuading abolitionists from plain honest speech. And vaceillation would be neither patience nor generosity, but simple weakness. Mr. Stout, I am told, remarked in the separation debate that a statesman should defer to prejudice. Mr.

•Illustrations crowd upon one. Canning, in an unhappy moment, once ventured to speak In Parlialiamont of a political adversary as “the revered and raptured Ogden." The Tories of the day cheered ecstatically, but the decent sense of the nation was outraged by it even then, and Canning was never forgiven that phrase, which brought him an eviller reputation than anything ho ever spoke besides. Later, when Cobbett said of Lord Castioreagh, op.tho morning of his suicide, “ that Castlercagh had happily done for himself what many desired to ,do, for hira—cut his throat," even Liberals, who hated Csstlereagh and rather liked Cobbett, were ehockod.at the rullianIsm of the sentiment, and never cared much for what Cobbett afterwards had to say.

Stout could only have said so in the unpreparedness of viva voce discussion. He no doubt cherishes a higher standard of statesmanship, True, the statesman cannot afford to omit prejudice, any more than other obstructive elements, from his calculation. He must work with the materials at his disposal. Opposition of all kinds is simply a thing to be overcome—always gently among a free people—gradually, if need -must—but to be overcome. He cannot safely propound Utopias out of his study, but he should never fear being considered visionary or speculative. Your Gradgrinds alone dread the imaginative faculty. There is, more especially in seasons of excitement, a limit beyond which the statesman cannot venture, even in judicious reform, —he must bide his time, —and he is beat fitted for his high position who can most accurately hit that limit, and by yielding a little here, take a little there, in pursuance of the course he has mapped out for himself. It is the well-ballasted ship that makes most headway.