“LIBERALISM” AND PERSONAL GOVERNMENT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5711, 19 July 1879, Page 2

“LIBERALISM” AND PERSONAL GOVERNMENT.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES.

Sir, —Fortunately for the colony, it is rapidly finding out that what Sir George Grey and his admirers are pleased to call a “ liberal policy ” is in reality an attempt to delude the country into an acceptance of a system of personal government based upon popular ignorance. To say, as Macaulay did in one of his speeches on the Reform Bill, that the great mass of the people in any country are usually “eager for immediate, relief, heedless of remote consequences,” and are more apt to follow those who flatter than those who would serve them, is merely to recognise the teaching of history in all ages. That a Tory Democrat —for that is what Sir George Grey really is—should have succeeded in misleading the electors for a time may cause regret, but cannot excite surprise in those who know human nature not as it might be but as it is. To tell the man without capital that the capitalist is his enemy, and that the landowner has that which the man without land ought to have, is sure to produce the effect intended upon that large class of persona to whom abstract reasoning is almost impossible. Whan, however, the conclusions of science are found to coincide with a more or less painful personal experience a reaction is sure to follow. In various directions there are signs that this reaction has set in, and Parliament, and to some extent even that portion of the Press which the present Government has sought to corrupt—in many cases with only too much success—is evidently yielding to the changed current of public opinion. We have still a certain amount of “ clap-trap ” talked and written about “ liberalism,” but its head is admitted to be a failure, if not a fraud, and what the country, no less than the Opposition, demands is the formation of a Government which will conduct its affairs in a common-sense spirit, and on business-like principles. For after all is not the rational government of any country an affair of business ? In themselves representative institutions are only a Tneana to an end, and that end can only be secured by obedience to natural laws physical and social. To select a Ministry with the capacity to perceive, and the character to act in accordance with these fixed conditions, with a single eye to the public good, is one of the most important functions of Parliament, and it will be performed well or ill, just in proportion as Parliament itself is enlightened and patriotic or the reverse. It is not too much to expect that in this matter it will prove itself as capable as the shareholders of a successful joint stock company are in electing a board of directors. It is true that in such cases mistakes are sometimes made, but a successful company, like a successful man, does not make the same mistake twice. Character and capacity can be found if they are sought for, and an honest administration would soon secure the confidence of the people, who, in the long run, prefer fact? to fine phrases. The Government which, _to secure its continuance in office, set class against class, threw away its revenue, destroyed its land fund, frightened capital away from the colony, and all but plunged it into a native war, is now seen to have injured all and benefited no one. Personal government has been tried and found wanting, even by those who shared in it. With all its vices, government by the people for the people has at least this virtue—that it can repent. Happy is the country that can repent of its folly ere it is too late. That the people of New Zealand are doing so is a proof of the innate manliness characteristic of Englishmen “ who have but changed their skies and not their minds.”—l am, &c. t (Economist. Wanganui, 18th July, 1879.