The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1864.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1193, 6 February 1864, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1864.

In our leading article ot Saturday last, we endeavoured to lay before our readers some considerations connected with the nature and working of Responsible Government. "We now resume the subject, looking upon it as one of especial importance to the Province of Canterbury at this particular time. Believing the province to be possessed of the amount of population, of intelligence, of wealth, and of commercial importance requisite to make the maintenance of Eesponsible Government practicable as well as desirable, we cannot but think the establishment of this institution among us is being hindered and rendered abortive by the ill-judged conduct of some of those who have acted a prominent part in public affairs. Although the province has long since passed what we have called the lower limit of population necessary for the introduction of Eesponsible G-overnment, we must not forget that such Government will exist among us for many years to come in a state of infancy. This is not an accident of our particular case. It is the normal state of things in all such young communities as our own. It has been an error into which many among us have fallen to think of Responsible Government as if it were a complete piece of mechanism which has only to be set down in any locality where there is sufficient population, and then wound up, that it may go. We cannot get Responsible Government as any one might provide himself with a watch. It has not only to be used by those who live under it. In a great measure it must be created by them also. Its theory is well understood, having been practically worked out for centuries in England and elsewhere. But each new application of the theory depends for its success on the capacity of those by whom the'application is made. We assume that any population which has been brought up with the habits and ideas of English citizens is perfectly competent, with ordinary prudence, to inaugurate Responsible Government within itself. But an absolute requisite to success is that of discarding entirely the idea that the selection of certain representatives and officers is all that is necessary, and that Responsible Government may be left to work itself out into permanent shape and consistency.

Such an idea is about as near the truth as that a child has only to be born to ensure its life and prosperity. As well with the political institution as with the individual man there is a state of infancy to be passed through surrounded by special dangers both to life and ultimate usefulness. In such a stage of its existence are we at present living, under Responsible G-overnment in this province. We have no right to expect that it will act as effectually and as beneficially for ourselves, as it will for future generations. But this surely should be the worst possible reason for giving it up altogether. In return for the many social and national advantages we enjoy as citizens in a young and wealthy province, the least we can do is to cherish in their infancy those institutions by which such advantages will be most safely transmitted to our successors. Doubtless we may have some trouble for years to come, in keeping up the forms and preserving the spirit of Responsible Government. "What then ? We must take the trouble, with the certainty that the more trouble we take at first the less we shall have to bear in the long run.

It appears to us that for some Sessions past the Provincial Council has been losing sight of the principles of Responsible Government. With little confidence in Mr. Maude as a minister, they have nevertheless kept him in office, from the fear that if he resigned it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find another Provincial Secretary. The Council, under this apprehension, have tried to do the work of Government themselves, and have treated the Provincial Secretary as a good head clerk of a department, caring little for his views as a political officer, it being perhaps not always very easy to discern what those views really were. Things apparently have been going from bad to worse. Not only has there been practically no responsible ministry in whom the Superintendent and the Council could alike place confidence, but, the principle of Responsible Government having been to a certain extent lost sight of, the management of public affairs has been quietly passing into the hands of an irresponsible oligarchy. The state of public business in the last session of the Provincial Council is sufficient illustration of our meaning. There was no inconsiderable amount of work done, the credit or discredit of which it would be difficult to fix on any individual or any section of the Council. The Government had prac-

fcically abdicated. Mr. Ollivier and his friends were bustling and active enough. But if anything went wrong in the matters with which they busied themselves, they were sheltered by their position as private and irresponsible members of Council. The Council had no right to complain of such irresponsible intermeddling with public affairs. It declined to turn out Mr. Maude, who did not possess its confidence, and, being only tolerated as a good head clerk,could exercise 110 wholesome controlling directing power on the course of public business. Prom want of a real government, what was nobody's business became everybody's business. Responsibility evaporated, A few persons who could never be brought to account for their proceedings, managed to push things on and bring the session to a close. The manifest tendency of things wa 8 this, that public business was ceasing to be conducted on public principles, and was becoming matter of private arrangement. Our position receives a further illustration in the feud now existing between the late and the present Superintendent. "We have openly stated our satisfaction that Mr. Moorhouse was able to avail himself of the opportunity offered by the late Heathcote election to make a plain statement of the facts connected with Mr. Bealey's proposed resignation. So far as it went the statement was straightforward and satisfactory. But we agree with our correspondent " Elector that it hardly went far enough. The facts disclosed by Mr. Moorhouse are not sufficient to account for his opinion of Mr. Bealey. Without doubt they are the truth. But are they the whole truth ? "We think the public will be inclined to judge with et Elector" that something is kept back, and that that something consists of certain private arrangements between Mr. Moorhouse and Mr. Bealey, by which the latter gentleman was to be relieved of an office of which he had become tired, and the former was to be restored to the same office which he had not very long ago resigned. Now we do for an instant, intend to say that such private arrangements, if they ever existed, involved anything derogatory to the character of either of the gentlemen concerned in them. This is a separate consideration altogether, with which we have at present nothing whatever to do. Our argument is aimed at quite a different point. "We object to the arrangements alluded to, not because they are bad. Of their moral quality we are not at present in a position to judge. "We object to them, therefore, not because they are bad, per se, but because they are private. "We have often heard it asserted, we have never yet heard it denied, that some private arrangements of some kind were in contemplation. This is just the same evil that shewed itself in the Provincial Council — public business becoming matter of private arrangement. In other words, Eesponsible Government, now in its infancy among us, with the duties it imposes on Ministers and the rights with which it invests the people, has been quietly shoved aside by a few persons who, being or considering themselves good men of business and clever speculators, consider that they can manage public affairs with much less trouble by a comfortable private arrangement among themselves.

We say again, that however delicate and troublesome the task may he, for years to come, with our comparatively small population, of maintaining the forms and preserving the principles of Eesponsible Government, the substitute offered by those who would abandon it is that of an irresponsible oligarchy. Should we ever have to encounter severe reverses of our Provincial prosperity we may be very sure the good men of business and the clever speculators will rapidly evanish into private life, leaving those to whom they were never bound by any tie of bond fide responsibility to struggle through their troubles as they may, and having had the satisfaction, without risk to themselves, of trying some nice empirical experiments in the art of Government at the expense of their neighbours.

We hope in a future article to offer some suggestions by which such dangerous quackery may be baulked.