THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A DISSOLUTION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5540, 30 December 1878, Page 3

THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A DISSOLUTION.

(From the Press.) Along with the other subjects referred to by Sir G. Grey, and to which he came back more than once in the course of his speech at the Thames, was his inability to obtain a dissolution. The Premier was evidently anxious all through his remarks to make it appear that he had not been vested by his Excellency with those constitutional privileges which are always understood to belong to the first Minister of tho Crown. At Home, he tells us, it has long passed into a tacit understanding that whenever the Prime Minister considers that his position on tho Government benches is such as to require a dissolution, the Queen accords it as a matter of course. Under different forms of expression Sir George lays down this principle more than once, and refers to the results of a careful search which has been made among the writings of modern statesmen as conclusively establishing this principle. Now, we deny this principle point blank. It is not understood to be the constitutional right of any Minister, whenever he conceives that his party interests require it, to demand a dissolution, and it is not under all circumstances held to bo constitutionally binding upon tho Sovereign to grant it if he chooses to do so. And we go further. We assert that in so far as it is true at home that the right and the duty do constitutionally arise, the circumstances in which they do so do not form absolutely binding precedents in the case of a colony. It is no use iu a question of this character to fefer to isolated speeches or scraps of sentences from the utterances of this or that statesman, or some one or other political writer. We have read, of course, the correspondence between his Excellency and Ministers upon this question of dissolution, and we must own that we aro surprised at the extreme weakness of the arguments employed by Ministers. The authority quoted by the Premier consists of perhaps a dozen sentences, or rather parts of sentences, in which Disraeli, Todd, and others undoubtedly use language amounting to a general expression of opinion that if the Prime Minister saw it to be bis duty to advise a dissolution, the Queen might be expected to grant it. But such,, sentences as these, token without their context, prove just nothing. What is wanted to bo known is the circumstances which the speaker or writer was referring to when the Queen's concurrence in the desired dissolut&n was thus confidently anticipated. We undertake to say that no precedent can ty found since the date of tho Reform Bill H which a sovereign, personally desirous,, to refuse a dissolution, found himself nevertheless compelled by his constitutional petition to grant ono at the instance of a person who owed his position as Premier to bio accident of a snap majority. The truth ie'that at Homo it is almost of course for the Qdoen to grant a dissolution when the Ministry desires it; and the reason is because at Hcdio the principles upon which tho power to jllas.olvo may be constitutionally demanded hsfe beoeme so well settled by established jisage, and so well known amongst all those who take active interest in party politics, that a dissolution has never in fact been pressed upon a hesitating sovereign, unless tho right to claim it has been constitutionally clear. And this marks the grand distinction between such a colony as our own and the mother country. There everything is settled ; hero everything is tentative. A Minister hero cannot certainly be depended upon to ask a dissolution only when ho ought properly to do so, and the Governor must bring own experience to ljc;uin order to aid in deciding tho question. In Sir George Grey’s case he has been notoriously regardless of anything in tho shape of a constitutional restriction when it happened to stand his way. The well-known facts which hayo displayed this part of Sir George Grey’s character to tho whole colony, have no doubt happened since the Governor’s refusal to grant tho dissolution; but they afford ample evidence of tho kind of man with whom his Excellency must have felt that he bad to deal, in accepting or refusing to bo guided by his advice. In the course of one short session the Governor was asked by Sir G. Grey to create members

of the Upper House out of the ordinary course, and to veto a Bill supported by his own Government and passed by both Houses of the Legislature. What everybody knows now, we may be sure that the Governor knew well beforehand, and in refusing the dissolution to Sir G. Grey his Excellency was amply justified, not only by the entire absence of any constitutional precedent for accepting advice in the actual case before him, but by the me i • able distrust which any advice emanating from that quarter must necessarily have created. Sir G. Grey would apparently have us infer that it was not in this single instance only, “ ut that ever since he has been in power he has been in need of a dissolution, and that it naa been of no use for him to claim it of the Governor. This is a question of fact, and on this again wc are compelled to express our entire disbelief of Sir George Grey's statement. The notorious facts point entirely the other way. During the last session his Government did not need a dissolution. Before it commenced the result of several elections jilaced in hia hands a sufficient working majority, and the Opposition—if we may so term them—steadily refrained from all those tactics which might be expected to embarrass the Government. It is well-known fact, too, notwithstanding the T-> mier’s assertion, that the Grey Cabinet, durirg last session, were strongly averse to a dissolution and an appeal to the country. What demand there was came notoriously • from the independent members. Sir George was repeatedly challenged by them in the face of the House to dissolve, and up to this moment he has not done so. The truth is, that is conscious that he has exhausted his popularity and fears the result. What we are saying will not be denied either by the more respectable amongst his own supporters, or by the more respectable portion of his own Cabinet ; and the denial of it by the Premier himself can hardly be regarded as in the slightest degree helping us to arrive at the exact truth of the matter.