THE WHITAKER MINISTRY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 7, Issue 376, 7 January 1864, Page 4

THE WHITAKER MINISTRY

There can be no doubt that the composition of the present Ministry in the General Government occasioned considerable surprise all over the colony. The names of Fox and Whitaker presented a somewhat startling conjunction of celebrities, and politicians have been somewhat puzzled to know how men who had been so long at the antipodes in the world of party politics could have agreed to lie down together in the same Cabinet. All governments which are the result of a coalition of men or of parties subject those who form them to the charge of tergiversation, of incousistencv, and sometimes of baseness. And yet there are times in the history of governments when coalitions are not only useful but are positively necessary. Such a time is in our opinion the present ; and the next year or two will probably demonstrate the foresight of those engaged in public affairs who advised and at last effected a union of members of opposite factions in one government. Party government is the soul and life of our representative system. But if parties are formed simply around personal leaders struggling for office, then pasty degenerates into faction. Party, to be genuine and to be useful, must consist of a real union between men not only of the same opinions on the passing and transient matters of the hour, on which opinion is formed to a great extent upon considerations of temporary expediency, but whose similarity of views is based upon unity in political principle, upon sympathy with common objects, and upon a kindred belief in those broad philosophical truths which underlie and support all political faith. Where men abandon these fundamental principles, especially when they do so cpincideutly with, if not directly for the sake of, obtaining power, no language can be used which is too strong to characterise the desertion. But a coalition of parties does not always necessitate such sacrifices or involve such treachery. The question is, of what nature have been the parties which are destroyed by the coalition ? Now it will be admitted that the two great parties into which the colony has been divided for the last four years have not arisen out of any distinctive agreement or disagreement of our public men on the leading or fundamental doctrines of political faith. Some of our leading men were fonnerly closely united upon the general policy of the colony who have more recently been driven into the extreme of opposition to one another upon the miserable question of the Waitara purchase ; whilst those who had formerly little political sympathy have found themselves, for some time past, fighting in the same ranks. The Native question intervened as a sort of euisode in the history of our politics, and parlies gathered round

it and fought with the utmost fury. But it has long been obvious that that question has been dying out as a battle-field. The colony is sick of a struggle which ignores the interests of its European inhabitants, and which assumes that our relations with the aboriginal race is the only question, which is to dictate the political sympathies and party alliances of our public men. The attempt to form a coalition Government in the session of 1862 indicated a perception that the time was approaching when the parties which had clustered round the Native difficulty must he broken up, and men who differed on that question, arid on that only, should be set free to unite on those other great questions ou which they cordially agreed. The coalition of 1863 has justified the prediction of those who attempted it in 1862, and it has already done one part of its work by restoring other great questions to their proper prominence in the councils of the Colony. It is indeed quite true that this condition has not been effected without a great sacrifice. It was not at all necessary that Mr. Fox should appear as the proposer of the wild, panic-stx-icken, and unconstitutional legislation of the past session, in order to effect all the benefit which must have arisen out of a union of parties. But Mr. although taking office under Mr. Whitaker by the advice of his political friends, made a mistake in that he failed to strengthen himself in the Ministry by other members of his own party who would have given some weight to his views ; and thus lie placed himself in the position of appearing to go over singly to the enemy’s camp, and of becoming the organ and mouthpiece of their most violent measures. Every coalition involves the sacrifice of some amount of opiuion, but this union was one in which all the sacrifice was on one side. That one who had been the most loud speaking defender of constitutional rights should appear as the proposer of the Suppression Act now in force, only proves how feeble a will may sometimes be combined with the greatest intellectual capacity and vigor. There'is something so ludicrous in the idea that the Habeas Corpus Act must be suspended, and the most precious rights of Englishmen set aside, here in this quiet market town in Canterbury, in order to enable twenty thousand well armed Englishmen to beat three or four thousand half armed and half-starved natives, 500 miles away, that we can only conclude that Mr. Fox became, in an exclusively Auckland cabinet, affected with that feeling of panic which pervades all Auckland dealings :—not let it be believed an insane or uucalculating panic, for as there is method in some madness, so the panic of Auckland at present is both far-seeing and prudent enough. In many respects the coalition of the present session has been unfortunate and unsuccessful. A 3 an attempt to introduce more moderate counsels into a cabinet under a leader of the extreme war party, it has been a failure, for no measures could have been proposed of a more violent and unjustifiable character, had Mr. Fox remained in the opposition. Had he been able to introduce other members of his party into his Government those measures would never have been proposed ; had he not been in the Ministry the opposition might have been sufficiently formidable to have compelled the Government to modify them. But Mr. Fox’s presence at the Government table not only placed himself in the false position of advocating measures which his whole previous career called on him to oppose, but shut the mouths of those of his own friends who, umv il!ing to attack him, were compelled to grieve in silence over the inconsistency of his conduct. At the same time it would be a very unjust charge to bring against Mr. Fox that he had sacrificed his opinions or betrayed his party for the sake of office. We are informed that he accepted the proposal which placed Mr. Whitaker at the head of the Government, by the advice of his political friends, in opposition to his own judgment. His only fault was that for the sake of the measures he was induced to propose he sacrificed that support which in any equally-balanced coalition he would have received. Still, the concluding half of the session shewed that the coalition, imperfect as it was, had done its work. The great distinction of the war party and peace party is destroyed.