The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1885. AN IGNOMINIOUS RETREAT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2039, 11 July 1885, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1885. AN IGNOMINIOUS RETREAT.

The Ministry, though claiming a majority, has acknowledged itself thoroughly beaten oil the tariff proposals, and all its proposals for increasing duties have been withdrawn, The Premier had an unpleasant task to perform in announcing this to the House, but he certainly might have said something better than what he did. To brag about a majority immediately after the moat severe defeat that has ever been sustained by a Ministry in New Zealand was worse than folly. There was a woeful want of logic about it that must have tickled therisible faculties of many honorable members not a little. However, it really mattered very little what the Premier said. The House was determined to prevent the imposition of henvy Customs duties by the Government, and it carried its point, It did not want Ministers to rosign, and Ministers have graciously consented to retain their seats, and to carry out the instructions that may be given them; and that being so, it was hardly necessary for Mr Stout to make an explanation at all. Evidently he is afraid of his majority, because, in the same statement, when referring to the Local Bodies Finance and Powers Bill, he B aid that it would be made strictly a Ministerial measure; at the same time, however, he took care to announce that the only rag of his policy that still clung to it was cutoff. Ministers will be sent into the recess as administrators, without a policy that they can call their own, and with the full conviction in their hearts that their schemes have proved lamentable failures, Their consolidation bills will probably be carried, but their Local Government and Charitable Aid schemes will almost to a certainty follow in the wake of their Customs Duties proposals,