" MEASURES, NOT MEN."

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 280, 12 June 1873, Page 5

" MEASURES, NOT MEN."

From several of the addresses of candidates for the forthcoming election, we can see that we are destined

to be bored with no end of bunkum on the. great (?) constitutional question, as between the Superintendent and the member for the Taieri. Now it appears to us that the constitution has very little to do with the whole affair. It is a matter of pure personality, and to make that a constitutional question si trifling, if not something worse. There are various fallacies lying at the foundation of the reasoning employed by the heroic constitutionists. Verily, one would think, in listening to these men, we are in a fair way of being enslaved, until we put a few plain questions to them and elicit the facts of the case. The first fallacy that lies at the foundation of the bunkum is that we have got in the Superintendent a representati/e of the Sovereign, whose duty it is to act in her place as her deputy, whereas the Superintendent occupies no such place. He is the elect of the people, having previously come before them with a policy, which the people have endorsed. Well then to make a man announce a policy and then tie up his hands, so that he has only to sanction what the Council chooses to impose, is absurd. If he has no liberty to carry out his programme, why ask a programme from him % If he has difficulty with the Council in the matter of his pledged policy, why raise a hue and cry against his right of appeal to the people ? If the people are not satisfied, of course he will be set about his business, and is not that, we ask, sufficient guarantee for our liberty? But another fallacy is the relations which the Superintendent and the Secretary for Lands and Works are alleged to sustain to the province while fulfilling their duties at Wellington. When Mr. Donald Reid was taxed with his want of respect to the head of the province on accepting office in the Stafford Government, and informed he could easily have consulted him, he replied " the Superintendent was not in Wellington but the member for Port Chalmers was. 5 ' When Mr. Reid's satellite, Mr. Gillies, was asked if he did not think Mr. Reid ought to have consulted Mr.Macandrew when he accepted office in the General Government, he replied " No. When these two men stepped on board the steamer to go to Wellington, they became private individuals." Now we may be very ignorant, and very boorish, and perhaps very obtuse, but we ask is it so? Does the Superintendent receive no applications for instructions from his substitute during his absence ? Does the Secretary for Lands and Works receive no such applications from his deput} 7 ", or, receiving such, does he ignore them ? If they do not, then this superlative finessing may have some show of reason; but if they do receive such applications and reply to them, and if the Government papers show that they did receive such in the affair of selling the Island Block and many other transactions, then this finessing becomes only a clumsy trick to cover the unworthy failing of Mr. Donald Reid. And now we put it to our readers if these men deserve the credit for pure patriotism involved in this claim of standing up for constitutional freedom. The Superintendent may not in all things have acted wisely — far be it from us to take the place of his apologists. When treated with rudeness in the outset, as he undoubtedly was, he may have allowed, and no doubt did allow, certain failings to control his actions to a certain extent ; but we hold it to be unjust and onesided to saddle all the political failing on his Honor, and to give Messrs. Reid and Co. all the credit of martyrs for constitutional liberty. There is another matter arising out of the defence put forth by Mr, Reid, and in his behalf — viz., that it is time for the people to look after their own interests. If it is so that the Superintendent and Secretary for Lands and Works ignored their responsibilities while acting as members of the House of Representatives at Wellington — having left the province to sink or swim in the hands of their deputies — it is » piece of unfaithfulness to their trust, calling for censure. At the same time we ought to make a distinction. The Superintendent has never so put the matter, neither has he acted in this business as if he had taken this view of his position. Are we then to believe that Mr. Reid has carried out his own doctriue in this matter — that not only in the business of his discourtesy to the Superintendent but in all things else affecting his office ? Did he get a glass from Lethe when he stepped on board the steamer and became a " private individual," so that for three months at least he was to forget that he had special responsibilities towards Otago. If so,

it is time Mr. Reid was civilly asked by the people of Otago to abstain from Lethean waters for the future, and told that his resposibilities to Otago were incompatible with his j duties as member of the House of Representatives. Moreover, the election ought not pass without the J people calling the attention of candidates to this very important point. To allow the province to sink or swin for three months in the hands of any nominee to gratify the ambition of any man is to pay too high for our whistle. To all this we shall hear " the Constitution Act ! the Constitution Act!" To that we reply, if the Constitution Act does not condemn such doctrines as we have condemned, it is because the framers of the Act never dreamed of allowing them.