The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. THURSDAY, JULY 1899. THE WANT OF CONFIDENCE MOTION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 158, 6 July 1899, Page 4

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

THURSDAY, JULY 1899. THE WANT OF CONFIDENCE MOTION.

For the-cause that lacks assistance-, For tho -wrong that needs resistance. For the future in the distanco, And tho Good that we can do.

The members of the Opposition cannot but feel chagrined at the result of the division on Captain Russell's amendment to the Address-in-Reply. It must now be quite plain'to them that the step their Leader took was a grave blunder. Intending to demonstrate to the country the waning power of the present Administration it has revealed more clearly than ever the weakness of the other side. There is not the least doubt that in seizing- the first opportunity that presented itself to move a vote of want of confidence in the Government, Captain Eussell was very sanguine of success; if not to the extent of carrying his amendment, at least to the extent of showing that since last session the Opposition had gained and the . Government lost ground. Prior to the opening of this session Captain Russell and his friends had apparently persuaded themselves that this was the ease. They proclaimed it from the housetops, and the amendment to ' the Address-in-Reply was intended to show by its result that that confidence was not unwarranted. The ide 7a that the amendment was immediately and. only prompted by a desire on the part of

Captain Russell to get fuller inquiry into the marine certificate case than he believed a Eoyal Commission would afford may be dismissed at once. The fact is simply this—that the Leader of the Opposition'had made up his mind to get a vote of want of confidence in somehow, and this case presented the best chance of doing so. In some respects the circumstances connected with the issue of a master's certificate to Captain Jones promised a favourable pretext for an attack on the Administration of the kind that was made. The" case has been brought very prominently before the public. The Opposition press has laboured' to put the most damning1 construction on the small part Ministers had in the matter, and pending the entire elucidation of the facts it has been possible, fortunately for the enemies of the Government, to give a very one-sided and misleading' version of the whole affair. The promptitude with which the Premier arranged for* the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate, the matter rather took the | wind out of his opponent's sails, and it was this action that. drove Captain Russell to take the curious course he did, and to move for a Parliamentary inquiry independently of a Royal Commission. Doubtless the move seemed a tactical triumph to its author and his friends. ; They felt they had outwitted Mr Seddon. But the weakness of their plan was speedily made self-evident, and I the real object that had prompted the i amendment revealed in all its naked- [ ness. I Captain Russell had cast doubts on the impartiality of a Eoyal Commisl ;;ion, but comparing the constitution ! of such a body with that of the ordinj ary Parliamentary Committee the danger of partiality was inunitesimally less in the case of the former. On the .showing of the Opposition time and again, it is impossible to get a Paiiia- : mentary " Committee that would be so I absolutely unbiassed as a Eoyal Com- • mission; and it was not long after I Captain Eussell had moved his amend- [ roent that the expressions of regret in ■ the Opposition ranks showed that the ! members still held that opinion. ! Everything therefore goes to prove

moat urmmtakeably that, whatever Captain Russell may say to the contrary, his amendment was an invitation to the House to express its want of confidence in the present Administration, and that regard for the purify of the conduct of the Marine Department, which he affected to believe had been defiled, was not the motive that really led the Loader of the Opposition to take the extreme step ho did.

Captain Russell intended that his notion would reveal the exact strength of the two parties in Parliament and be in a way a forecast of the rominfr election. The result has been very different from what he expected, but he cannot blame Ministers if they persist in giving to that result all the significance he meant . that it should bear. The Government have. emerged from the trial with a majority that proves by the cold logic of figures that the talk about imminent defection and weakness in their ranks was but an Invention of. the enemy. We must/regard it as an evidence of the confidence placed in the Administration that on this occasion the attempt to shake the reliance of- the House in their uprightness has been so signally defeated. The prompt and drastic action taken in the Supreme Court by the Government during1 the recess to secure the cancellation of the certificate which was wrong-fully issued and to punish the offenders, and the manner in which they have courted the fullest inquiry into the whole of the chxmmjstances connected with this matter shows that they had no reason to apprehend inquiry either by Parliament or a Eoyal Commission. If they had desired to stifle investigation the employment of their Parliamentary majority to set up a whitewashing committee would manifestly have been the safest course for them to pursue, but they elected to place the case for adjudication before one of the most able and experienced judges on the Bench and a magistrate who has been publicly identified with the Opposition's accredited organisation, the National Association. Any unbiassed person who has followed closely the : proceedings in connection with this affair from first to last will, we believe, have come to the conclusion that the Opposition case against the Government rests upon gross exaggerations of trivial incidents and that there is not the least ground for supposing that Ministers were interested in Captain Jones getting his master's certificate, not to speak of their being privy to any effort to secure one to a man they knew to be unqualified. Even our morning contemporary acquits them of that. However, the case has now passed for a while from the heated arena of politics to the calm atmosphere of the judicial court presided over by Judge Ward and Dr. Giles, and it may well be left there until the report of the Commission is made known.

' Meanwhile, Mr Hiitcheson, who was the chief accuser of the Government he was elected to support, has .very honourably resigned his seat with a view to giving his constituents a chance of pronouncing' judgment on his action in the case. The Conservative party is strong in Wellington, as the elections of Mr Duthie and Sir Robert Stout have demonstrated, and as Mr Hutcheson will command the solid Conservative support, and will probably take a portion of the Labour and Liberal voters, his chance of re-

election is very good. Possibly as there is no reason to doubt his honesty in the matter no attempt will be made to oppose him on the eve of a general election/in December next.