The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1877.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5185, 3 November 1877, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1877.

Her Majesty's , representative in this colony must make up his mind to have a bad time with Sir George Grey if lie continue in office as Premier. He signalised his return to public life four years ago by a quarrel with Sir James Ferguson, and he has not ceased on all possible occasions, in season and out of season, in his place in Parliament and when on the stump, to be as offensive as possible to Lord Normanby officially. Whether or not the public interests of the colony will be served by a calculated antagonism between the responsible advisers of the Crown and the Governor, remains to be seen. At present the prospect is not hopeful. And Sir George, it must be admitted, has lost no time in carrying out his purpose, and thereby verifying the predictions of those who said that his first work on getting into office would be to go to war, first with the Governor, and then with the Colonial Office, so as to have out his old personal feud against Lord Carnarvon, with, if possible, the New Zealand Parliament as his bottle-holders. The aim is not a lofty one, and it is but thinly disguised. Meantime the occasion has been dexterously used for the purposes of delaying the business of Parliament, and warding off for a few days the inevitable vote of no confidence, in the hopeless prospect of being able by one means or another to gain a stray vote. Of the means adopted to gain votes, and of the persons openly and shamefully engaged in attempts at corruption, we shall have more than one word to say hereafter, and wo shall say it without fear or favor, and with absolute disregard of all persons who are the transgressors. Sir George Grey was pleased to tell the Houso of Representatives that he regarded it as an august assembly. His respect for individual members will be increased, we trust, by the knowledge thi.t: they have scorned to barter their free opinions arid their dignity as representative men, or to betray their constituents, for the temptation of place or pelf, which has been so freely offered outsido on this occasion. We have heard a good deal about the late Ministers sticking to their seats when they had a majority at their back, but they never—even then—attempted to intercept the expression of opinion by the House of Representatives on! their conduct of the public business by the expedient of talking against time, which Sir George Grey and his friends have now adopted; nor did they ever announce a determination to stick to their seats in spite of an adverse vote, as Sir Georok Grey has done, —and has done with a full knowledge that he has not tho confidence of a majority of tho House. This is not

Parliamentary Government, and the responsible Minister who is capable of so acting has no right to appeal to'a House whose authority ha scorns, to take his part against the Governor—a constituent part of the Legislature to whom officially he has always been studiously offensive, and with whom, upon the first occasion when he is brought into official relation, he speedily makes a quarrel. It will be found, we do not doubt, and be so pronounced by the committee to whose consideration the subject has been referred, that the Governor is constitutionally and technically in the right. The fiction that he ought not to know what is passing within the walls of Parliament in regard to gentlemen who are members of his Excellency's Council and his sworn advisers, is, in these days, merely childish. He does know it. If he were kept in ignorance of such a fact as that there was a vote of no-confidence pending, his Ministers would fail in their duty to him. Knowing it, we hold that he was in every way right under the circumstances in refusing to use the Queen's prerogative for the appointment of Mr. Wilson to be a member of the Legislative Council. We do not know that Mr. Wilson has any claim on public grounds to be distinguished from a host of other men in his profession of the law who have made money ; and judging from the result of experience in the House, lawyers, in numbers, are by no means an unmixed good in a Legislature. Hawke's Bay's interests have no want of representatives in the Legislative Council. Colonel Whitmore, Mr. Heney Russell, and Mr. Stokes are all Napier men, and Mr. Randall Johnson may be said to belong to that place also, for the reason that he has large interests in the neighborhood, at Poverty Bay. Auckland, with six times the number of population of Hawke's Bay, has four members only in the Council. It has been the policy of successive Governments for a long time to abstain from making additions to the Legislative Council, the present number —about forty—being held to be sufficient. That of Sir Francis Dillon Bell, whose position as a retired Speaker of the House of Representatives entitled him to such consideration, may be said to be the only appointment, except that of a member of the Executive Council, which has been made for years past. The appointment of a member of the Council is, as we have said, a prerogative act, and in the early days was made directly by the Queen. In 1868 an Imperial Act was passed, which recited that doubts had arisen as to the validity of the appointment of members of the Legislative Council who had not been named by her Majesty in any instrument under the sign manual. That Act validated all such appointments, and conferred upon the Governor the power, " in her Majesty's name, by an instrument under the public seal of the colony, to summon to the Council such persons as he shall think tit." The Governor, then, cannot divest himself of resonsibility to the Crown for his action, and although he would under ordinary circumstances be guided by the advice of his Ministers, he has clearly a discretion reserved to him in the making of a Councillor. That the late occasion was one, under all the circumstances, which imposed upon his Excellency the necessity of exercising that discretion, every reasonable man will admit.

From the printed paper, which, by the way, does not bear the usual note that it was presented to both Houses by command, it appears that in conversation or in consultation Sir George Grey was made aware of the Governor's disinclination to make the appointment of Mr. Wilson or any other gentleman whose services as a Minister were not immedialy required, and that the Premier proceeded at once to force his Excellency into a hostile correspondence. This incident has been adroitly used, as we have said, for the purpose of delaying the business of the House. Sir George Grey talks of economy. The General Assembly, thanks to his labors, has been now considerably more than three months in session. The money cost to the country for every wasted day is something very considerable. We venture to assert that he has actually wasted more money by his factious opposition to business in this session than he will be able to save by docking the salaries of Ministers and of poor Government officers in all the remaining years of his life, if he were to devote himself exclusively to the great business of cheese-paring in which he professes to have so much faith.