The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1877.
The House of Representatives adopted the report of the Select Committee on Privileges yesterday without debate. It appeared to be the desire of the reasonable men on both sides not to allow the Question to be made an occasion for delaying the public business, or an excuse for postponing the inevitable decision that “ the House has no confidence in the present Government.” From the minutes of the proceedings it appears that the report was adopted by the committee in its present form, after many attempts to alter it, by seven votes against five; the ayes being Messrs. Ballance, Gisborne, Montgomery, Rees, Stout, Wakefield, and Reader Wood ; the noes; Messrs. Harper, Johnston, Moorhouse, Rollesion, and Stafford. Mr. Stout, in committee as in the House,- appears to have been, as might have been expected, prominent in the. advocacy of extreme views, and dogmatic and overbearing in his assertion of them. It is not long since there was a motion of his upon the Order Paper for making the office of Governor elective, and another condemnatory of the constitution of the Legislative Council. Both reforms have been considerately postponed for a season by the hon. and learned gentleman; but he has been fortunate on this occasion in having been able at the same time to air his Radical opinions and to serve his party by helping to obstruct the public business in the Assembly, and give time to Sir George Grey wherein to play his game. We are still of opinion, with all due deference to the views of the House of Representatives, that his Excellency the Governor was absolutely right in declining, under the peculiar circumstances, to appoint Mr. Wilson to a seat in the Legislative Council, and that if he had acted otherwise he would have failed in the right discharge of the duty imposed upon him by her Majesty, whom he represents, i If the addition of a lawyer were on public grounds desirable to be made to the Legislative Council, there are two retired Judges—Mr. Justice Chapman and Mr. Justice Gresson— one, or both of whom, might with public advantage be called to the Council. The claim of either to that distinction is greatly superior to that of Mr. Wilson, and these claims would, we have reason to believe, have been long since recognised if the need of any addition had been apparent. Ho one, we presume, acquainted with Hawke’s Bay politics is at any loss to understand the object or purpose which Mr. Wilson’s appointment was intended to serve ; the honorable Legislative Councillors must feel gratified by the expression of opinion of one of their number that the presence of a Hawke’s Bay lawyer amongst them is necessary to enable them to discharge efficiently the duties imposed upon them. Colonel Whitmore might with not less propriety have proposed to add the editor of the “ or the whole of the staff of that independent journal. We have great respect for precedents, and like to walk in the old ways. Precedents stand in Parliamentary practice somewhat in a similar relation to that which the decisions of Courts of Justice stand to the common law. They are evidence of that law or of that practice. But is the practice of a Parliament deriving its existence from Imperial Statute, and whose powers are limited and defined within the four corners of the Constitution Act, the same as the practice of Parliament in England in the days of the Tudors and Stuarts, or before the complete establishment of Parliamentary Government in later days? The relation is something like that between the rivers in Macedon and Monmouth, which was said to exist in the fact that there were salmon in both. Has Sir George Grey now again the same terror which found expression in his celebrated Wairarapa letter ? Does he think that the Governor wishes to poison him, as he supposed that the Government of that day intended to poison all the Superintendents of provinces in order to facilitate abolition ? Does Mr. Stout fear that Lord Normanby, heading a force of one policeman, will take him out of his place in the House beside the hon. member for Tuapeka, and commit him to the clock tower in the Government offices in order that he may there learn to moderate the rancour of his radicalism ? If these things are not ' possible in these days, nor anything like to them, it seems somewhat of a farce to appeal to precedents of a time when the rights of the people and the liberty of their representatives depended upon the caprice of a tyrant, Sir George Grey or Mr. Stout himself is a greater danger to freedom than any Constitutional Governor of a British Colony can possibly be. , If we want evidence of Lord Hormanby’s desire to exercise the authority of the Crown in strict accordance with law and with constitutional practice, that evidence will, wo think, be found in his reply to the address presented to his Excellency yesterday after the adoption of the report of the committee. The Governor acknowledged, the receipt 'of that address, said that he had forwarded it to his constitutional advisers, and that as soon as ho had received the advice of ; his Ministers he would Wake his reply to the House. As the error, if any were committed,, lay in disclosing to the Parliament what
ought to have been regarded as a confidential correspondence, and as that error was committed by the' advice of his Ministers, we are curious to see how they will get his Excellency out of the difficulty into which they have led or forced him. The whole responsibility is now clearly with them. The ‘ ■ gentle lamb” of Mr. Fox has strayed “promiscuous” into a trap, an'd the situation would be provocative of nothing but laughter if it were not for the fact that all the trickery tends to delay the public business, to increase the public expenditure, and to postpone the commencement of public works, provision for which was made upon the Estimates that have now been for three months before the House of Representatives untouched.
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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5187, 6 November 1877, Page 2
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1,029The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1877. New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5187, 6 November 1877, Page 2
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