Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878] MONDAY, AUGUST 22,1892. MINISTERS AND THEIR MASTER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XIII, Issue 4198, 22 August 1892, Page 2

Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878]

MONDAY, AUGUST 22,1892. MINISTERS AND THEIR MASTER.

Being the eitended hue or the WaiRiRArA Daily, with whioh it is IDENTICAL.

Whatever may be thought of His Excellency's literary aptitude, there can be no,two opinions about his oaution and common sense, It must have been a shock to Ministers, to find that the quiet nobleman, whose public life in the pjfst hud never strayed beyond the superintendence of some local affairs in Scotland, could hold his own in a grave constitutional argument and—beat them. Nor could the bitterest partisan allege, with covertly impudent reference to the naval antecedents.of the Governor, that his method of meeting Ministers suggested reminiscences of the quarter-deok. Nothing could be less apposite than a bitter little jocosity of this kind; nothing mote damaging to the Ministerial cause in the minds of right-thinking men, The conduct of this discussion has been characterised, on Lord Glasgow's aide, by a remarkable display of solid information on constitutional points relating to colonial Responsible Government, by very considerable argumentative power, and by the most desirable dignity of tone, Point by point, the Governor has met his present advisers, and shrewdly turned their weapons against themselves, In his first memorandum, for instance, he lays his finger upon the very core of the matter; he throws upon Ministers' real aims a moEt inconvenient search-light, Taking their own statement that the preference of nine new Councillors to twelve is an " inadequate " ground for with-holding his confidence from his responsible advisers, His Excellency reminds those gentlemen that, inasmuch as the responsibility for such preference rests absolutely upon himself, as answerable only to the Crown, the difference as to numbers is equally " inadequate" as a reason why Ministers should quarrol with the Governor. Herowehavo the truth luminously expressed, so that the whole Colony may understand it, Lord Glasgow's Bngaoity was able to read between the lines of Mr Balance's most florid and argumentative paragraphs, tho obvious determination to fall out with the tivo of the Queen, That the Legislative Council, obnoxious to the heart of mrj true " Liberal," should be the casus belli, was of course so much the better for Mr Balance's purpose, bat even if some other subject had been in dispute, the purpose of our present Miuistry would not have been wholly defeated. The greatest longing of Colonial Liberalism is to rave about the iniquity of "GovernmentfromDowning Street"; the many-headed mob can be depended on to follow faithfully in any attack upon. constituted authority; and Messrs Ballance & Co, are furbished with a now war-cry for the next geneial election. Much light is thrown, by the way, on the value of those ealculated commies connected with the tineipa, wljose display cost i the Colonial tnx-pnyer an apprepjable sum.

It is interesting to notice the laggard unwillingness of the Ministry to iurnish the Governor with information about the actual strength of parties at present in the Council. They insinuate that His Excellency mußt have formed an opinion on this point from irresponsible representatiuns; but they do not offer the only possible corrective to this, an explicit and authoritative tabulation of the members of the Upper House as" Government" or '.'Opposition," until they receive a direction frojp the Governor which it is impossible to dodge. Even when th.e statement teaches him, Lord Glasgow sees sufficient reason to doubt the accuracy of their estimate. We do not desire to deal in complimenta of the kind fashionable in our present Parliament, so we refrain from impugning the

good faith of the Ministerial return; bat it is no unfairness to' say that when Mr Balance represented the Government following to be numerically beneath contempt, the wish wbb father to the thought, Facts are only less easily manipulated than figures, when a given conclusion is desired, The Governor, on the other hand, who possesses a vory proper reseinblanco to Gallio in his official capacity, caring for none of these things, is far more likely to arrive at a trustworthy calculation of the relative position of patties in the Council than a Ministry whose very life depends on the acceptance of their own statistics and the advice involved therein.

But in truth Mr Ballance'g piteous tale proves too much, If we are to believe that there are only two Councillors—one of them an aboriginal native-to vote with the Colonial Secretary on Government questions, we must be allowed to believe also that, the Government policy is distasteful to the country. It is too much the fashion to speak of the House of Eepresentutives as though this Chamber alone represented the political opinion of the Colony. As a matter of fact, the Lower House represents the constituencies ; but the Colony is greater than th» constituencies. With no private interests in the way of reelection to serve by voting this way or that, the Councillor is certainly entitled to represent a proportion of the intelligence and political knowledge of the country as a whole. Hath not a Councillor eyes ? senses, affections, passions ? Is it forgotten that a majority of the members of the Council bad attained eminence in the other House before receiving the call from the Governor? When the aggregate wisdom of this Chamber is represented as markedly hostile to the measures of the present Government, wo cannot avoid a suspicion that this very circumstance forms an indictment against the policy of Ministers, which will compel a little attention. The Premier's plea for retaining office is highly ingenious. He asserts in ono and the same breath that, while the responsibility of suggesting appointments to the Council rests with the Cabinet, the Cabinet cannot be held accountable to Parliament for the non-acceptance of such suggestions. _ This is only another way of thrusting unpopularity upon the Governor to serve the Ministry's selfish ends ; it is a device for creating & buffer between Ministers and public opinion, in the person of His Excellency. It remains to be seen how far the Ministerial views will prevail with the Secretary of State. Ministers cannot complain that their side of the questionhas been imperfectly set forth. Their own memorandum on the whole subject haß been forwarded by the Governor to Lord Knutaford; and His Excellency's own communication to Downing Street is studiously devoted to the constitutional principle involved. We think, with all respect, that His Excellency is almost unnecessarily on the defensive in this Despatch, He seeks to assure the authorities in England that he has taken pains to do right, while the facts combine to show to demonstration that his conscientious effort to deal with a difficulty is only paralleled by his aouteness in detecting a fallacious argument. Perhaps it would be too much to hope that for once a cable message has told the truth. At all events, a cable message dated "London, 17th August," says;" It is believed that the Colonial Office will not veto Lord Glasgow's decision with reference to the appointment of additional members to the Legislative Council of New Zealand,"