The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCOPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1887.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 233, 4 October 1887, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCOPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1887.

Tot tics cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The sole question under debate in connection with the business of Cabinetmaking at the headquarters of that industry appears to be the feasibility of an Atkinson-Vogel alliance. Now ? notwithstanding tho protestations of Major Atkinson that on no consiuera, tion could such a proposal be enter, tamed, we do not believe that the difficulty arises from personal objections to the union or political scruples on the part of either the one or the other. It is an " open secret" that dining the early part of the last Parliament negotiations for coalition reached a point bordering upon completion, and Major Atkinson lost a good deal of his prestige among the members of his party, who are irreconcilably opposed to Sir Julius Vogel, by entertaining overtures which they considered inconsistent with tho policy of the party. The Wellington "Post," in discussing the question as a champion of coalition, overlooks the fact that Major Atkinson is almost without personal following in the new Parliament. The members of the Opposition wero elected to oppose the Government, but few of them gave any promise to support Major Atkinson or any other specified leader. For the member for Egmont therefore' to attempt by his single motion to reverse the verdict of the country would simply be to commit political suicide. Members elected upon a distinct pledge to oust tho Ministry would justly resent an act which treated them as so many dummies to be moved about at the pleasure of a leader whom they had never acknowledged. The House would soon show the coalition that there is as good material out of office as ever sat on the Ministerial Benches.

Major Atkinson is too old a Parliamentary tactician to suppose that the mere conjunction of himself and Sir Julius Vogel would effect a coalition of' parties. The course he has adopted in treating the result of the Mictions as an absolute bar to .•tny immediate restoration of "the

old dynasty in any shape, unless it is brought up by the gradual consolidation" of parties in the House, is the only decision he could have come to. Coalition is not at present a matter of choice at all:' it is prohibited until a trial has proved beyond donbt that no Ministry formed out of the legitimate Opposition can command a majority. The course of events may prove that this is so; certainly there is a singular lack of cohesion in the Opposition ranks—Free Traders, Protectionists, Liberals, and. Conservatives jumbled up together in rare confusion; but the Ministerial ranks are not much better. As we said the day after the elections, the only clearly-defined issue upon which two powerful parties can be built up in the House at present seems to be that of tariff assistance to local industry, aud if that is forced to the front in the new House, there will be a shaking up of parties that may bring about combinations which no man can at this moment foresee.