The Oamaru Mail. SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1880.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 28 August 1880, Page 2

The Oamaru Mail. SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1880.

The session, of Parliament is virtually at an end, and the taxpayers of the Colony may again breathe freely. The waste of money in endless talk and abortive attempts at legislation is almost over for a time at any rate. Never in the history of iNew Zealand -was there a session of Parliament so 'fruitful of talk interminable and so barren of legislation of any kind as that which has been condemned to death and now only awaits the performance of the executioner's office. Most certainly there never was a session that so richly merited an ignominious death. For three months has Parliament been in session, but in vain do we look back in the hope of finding one really important or useful Act that has been passed. And yet the sessional Hansard is a bulky volume. AVhy is this so 1 "What are the causes that have led to &uck an unsatisfactory result? Is it because our laws are already perfect at so little has been done in the way of legislation 1 Is it because there are no wrongs to redress, no national evils to crush out, no reforms to effect 1 Most certainly not. The people cry aloud for reform on every hand, but ! they are only met with a cry —not an echo of the \miversal request, but empty promises that the reforms should be carried out. Then from what cause arises all this want of legislation 1 It is admitted that there are a multitude of objects upon which the legislative proclivities, if they possess any, of the Government and the members of Parliament might profitably have been exercised, and how comes it that nothing has been done during the three months that Parliament has been in session 1 There are many ways of apparently accounting for the meagreness of the work actually performed, but most of these may easily be proved utterly fallacious if we care to analyse them critically. Of course the Ministerial trumpeters have laid the whole blame upon the shoulders of the Opposition, and they have freely stated that nothing but the factious opposition the Ministry have received from "a minority of malcontents,''' to use the elegant phraseology of some of our contemporaries, has prevented the passage of the scores of bantlings to which Ministers have given birth. Some have said the waut of an organised Opposition has been the cause of all the mischief; others that the end has been brought about through the dogged obstinacy of those opposed to the Ministry ; but all alike have foiled to strike the right nail upon the head. Had the disintegrated atoms forming the Opposition been brought into unison under a thoroughly competent leader, it is quite possible that the session might not have been so ban-en of results; but the work of legislation would have sprung from an entirely different source. Had the opponents of the Ministry been enrolled under one capable chief, the present Ministry of incapables would long ere this have been relegated to the cool shades of opposition, there to pine and wither with the sole consolation that theirs was the golden opportunity, but that they failed to avail themselves of it. The real cause of the want of greater things on the part of Parliament is the innate weakness of the Ministry, which, though strong in point of followers, lacked the ability to lead the way to victory. The emptiness of the session. is simply the natural outcome of a want of a master mind capable of devising a policy j and leading the House. If we take the roll of members and go carefully through it from one end to the other, we cannot meet the name of one man capable of filling the position. Herein lies the key to a proper solution of the problem which numbers of our contemporaries have been struggling to solve. As a Premier, the Hon. John Hall has been an utter and ridiculous failure. Where he should have commanded he has beseeched; where he should have insisted upon the Ministerial measures being taken up in j earnest he has given way to puny attempts at parental lecturing. He has neither .shown the tact, wisdom, nor firmness of a responsible leader; he has played the part of a petulant | partizan. More than this there has been a want of unanimity amongst Ministers themselves, who have not shown any agreement upon definite and well defined lines of policy. Indeed of policy they have none. Their whole political creed has been composed of miserable shifts and degrading expedients. They have had no welldefined and settled lines of policy. Each day has seen something abandoned and something else substituted, but nothing done. Individually and collectively they lack the tact, ability, political honesty, and every other attribute that goes to make up the successful politician. They have had at their command a large army ready to do battle, but they have lacked the commander whose directing mind is so necessary an element in the obtain-

ment of success. The Ministerial party is. in fact, a big body •without a head—a redundance of flesh but no brains. The want of legislation during the expiring session is but the natural outcome of a weak and vacillating Ministry, who have sought to govern the Colony by means of irresponsible commissions, and to legislate by means of secret caucuses. The opprobrium which now attaches to them is therefore exceedingly well merited. That they professed a desire to do something is no sufficient rejoinder to make to the accusation that they have done nothing. Had their measures been acceptable to even their own followers they might have placed many Acts upon the Statute Book, but taken as a whole their proposals were so utterly distasteful to the House that they could hope for no better fate than that which had befallen them. Their measures were but crude ideas cast in cruder moulds. No Parliament in the world, if composed of men of ordinary ability, could possibly accept them, and the very natural result has followed. One by one their bantlings have been strangled by their own hands. The deformity of their offsprings proved sickening to the House and the country, and to save themselves from ridicule, Ministers have been forced to commit infanticide, and hide the bodies of their murdered monstrosities in the dusty recesses of their official pigeon-holes. Begotten of incapacity, conceived in error, and delivered in haste, the promised prides of the Ministerial family have been ruthlessly put to death by the hands tli at should cherish them. "What wonder, then, that Parliament should have so little to show as the result of three months' labor.