PARTY COMPLICATIONS.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 542, 6 July 1880, Page 3

PARTY COMPLICATIONS.

One curious feature about the no confidence debate seems to have escaped notice. We allude to the remarkable difference between the present attitude of the House towards the existing Ministry and that assumed last year towards their predecessors. In the two sessions and two Parliaments of last year, both sides of the House generally agreed in approving the measures proposed by the late Ministry, but the majority declared their entire want of confidence in Ministers personally, a view which was emphatically 7 endorsed by (he country 7 , the measures being cordially accepted but the men distinctly rejected. This session all that is totally changed. Members on both sides now seem to agree in condemning the Ministerial proposals. Yet a large majority declare their intention of supporting Ministers themselves. This is a very curious complication. Even most of the Opposition members profess unwillingness to displace the present occupants of the Government .benches, while some of the warmest supporters of the Ministry are the bitterest denouncers of their financial proposals. It may seem at first sight as if the way 7 would be smoothed by such a position of affairs, hut a little more thought will show the fallacy of the supposition. That Ministers will have a majority of at least ton appears tolerably 7 clear, but if the sequel of their victory 7 is to be their being lorn in pieces by 7 their own friends, the triumph will be both barren and inconvenient.