The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. TUESDAY, JULY 25, 1882.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4232, 25 July 1882, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. TUESDAY, JULY 25, 1882.

The Government seem to be anxious for a beating, and probably will hare it if they pursue the ridiculous tactics of last night. But their defeat will be attributable, not to a failure in administration or unsound policy, but their childish behaviour in the House. To declare Sir George Grey's Constitution Amendment Bill a no«confidence motion was bad enough, but to construe the unimportant matter brought forward last night by Mr Smith, a nobody, into one, was a manifest absurdity. It will be remembered that our Parliament correspondent in all his .telegrams affirmed that no such motion has hitherto been arranged or definitely intended to be brought down, and that all assertions to this effect have been guesses on the part of ignorant persons or canards manufactured to order, and spread abroad through the agents of the Government retained for the dissemination of untruths. We are now almost prepared to agree with him. What has really been the case is this: The Government have been anxiously waiting for the Opposition to bring down a vote of want of confidence, and -have been much chagrined that they have not done so. So far has thig chagrin gone that apparently a determination had been arrived at to make any subject that possibly could be obtained a vote of want of confidence. In 1880, Mr Saunders, as the {instrument of the Government, and it has been hinted the employers of labor, brought into operation, under force of the resolution of the House, a reduction of ten per cent, on all salaries, pay, and wages throughout ihe colony among the civil servants. The object of the resolution was twofold : to decrease expenditure and reduce wages. This fact of reducing wages was broadly stated, not hinted at, when the resolution was passed. Since then civil servants in the higher ranks have had the 10 per cent, restored to them, but the railway servants, or many of them, have not, and Mr Smith, of Waipawa, asked the House by resolution to restore what the House by. resolution had taken away. On this motion, Major Atkinson cried "No-confidence." The reason is very plain. Many of his supporters depended on the 10 per cent, to decrease servants' and laborers' wages permanently. Even Sir John Hall, it will be remembered, on the passing of the resolution, was commonly reported to have reduoed all his female servants 10 per cent, forthwith. Major Atkinson would lose his chief supporters if the platelayers and linemen had their sixpence a day restored to them. To get out of the difficulty the Government drew* a distinction^ between salary and wages, and while asserting that salary should be maintained is* silted that wages should be g reduced-

These mixed motives and considerations kept the Government through the night, the Opposition, rejecting thenotion that it was a no'confidence motion. The result was this: although the Government wanted to forot> a division, the motion was allowed to-be negatived on the voices, the Govern mept bringing on themselves all the odium of resisting the resolution of an increase of 10 per cent. One characteristic of the ; debate was the political influence of railway servants. Another was the Government conceding 1 what they resisted, as the Hon.- Walter Johnston did before the motion was negatived on the voices.