The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1882.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4216, 6 July 1882, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1882.

Thbee seems no great objection after all to a recess in a session. .It gives Ministers time to recast their measures, and to re-consider their lines of action. In the present instance Ministers felt before the recess the pulse of the House, and during their leisured interval can diagnose its future temper. The Opposition can have a short time to devise new modes of attack; to meditate over their past lock of success, and to arrange some fresh com* bination of forces that will be more effective in the future than in the past. The House gets time to sweeten, the reporters & chance to recover their health, members an opportunity to regain their temper (and they have lost it), and the country a chance to hope that their representatives may do better after the recess than they did before. Many of the members are engaged io trade, and some want to marry a wife, some to build a house, or to buy a yoke of oxen, and so the recess avails for these purposes, Besides too long attention lo the affairs of State turns members into " a lazy lolling flort of listless loiterers that attend no cause, no trust, no duty, and no friend." But the recess in this session of Farlift. raent was especially needed. Ministers had many weighty matters to determine. Should the Native Land Office go away from Auckland; should Otago have all the loan, or how much of it; should Te Whid have ft monkey jacket; should the railway be made from Te Awamutu to New Plymouth; should the Public Works portfolio be offered to Mr Fish ; should the Native Reserves Bill be allowed to drop ; should Winiata be scut to Taranaki to be hanged; should Mr Montgomery ba offered a seat in the Cabinet; should they try an Elective Governor-rail weighty and important matters, requiring careful thought and patient consideration. When these cir* CBmstances are borne in mind, and the cares of State are adequately estimated, : the necessity for a recess is apparent. ' The House, moreover, had been nearly 1 seven weeks in session, and scarcely anything bad been ventured, little attempted, : and nothing done but what were better undone. The country objected to a poor law: Major Atkinson intends to make men insure against want and old age, a pregnant and ticklish question. " When atjy great design tbou dost intend, think on the tneaos, the manner, and the end," wrote Denham over two hundred years since, and the Colonial Treasurer has evidently seen his maxim. Then it would take members at least a week to under-

-tand tin* Land Bill,' at least if they had nothing else to do, and some of them would pot be able to know what it meant even then. So the idea of the recess was hitupon b? the Government, and there really was no reason vrhy the members should not go to Christchurch, as they were doing no good in Wellington. Besides, they might come back anxious to pass the Estimates and get away again. .6 .