Ministerial Legislation.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVI, Issue 1323, 28 August 1894, Page 7

Ministerial Legislation.

North Otago Daily Time s,

So far as can he seen Ministers will carry everything before them. The phalanx is still staunch enough to vote down all opposition. I here is consequently nothing for their opponents but to submit with what patient resignation they can. The Land for Settlements Bill is sure to pass. The scheme tor repurchasing land was never intended to be used as a means of breaking up large estates. The purpose was only to acquire small areas near centres, to be parcelled out in ten or twenty acre allotments, where such settlement was urgently required. The low price of grain and other kinds of farm produce will break up the large estates as fast as they are needed. It is, therefore, to be feared that the Government are pressing on this Bill for the sake of dealing a blow at the large land owners, and we need not say that there is nothing more objectionable and nothing more certain to entail evil consequences than vindictive legislation ; but Ministers, we say, are all powerful, and the best thing would be to offer no opposition to their measures. They would come all the sooner to the end of their career, for it need not be doubted that a silent change is going on in the public mind, and that when it is matured the Government will suddenly collapse. They have completely falsified their liberal professions. Some parts of their policy, as originally propounded, were not only unobjec tionable, but desirable ; but they have vitiated everything by their corrupt and autocratic administration ; and now their very policy is in some respects more retrograde than the most hide-bound Tories in any colony would dare to propose. This is specially the case with their land legislation. The Laud for Settlement Bill, in fact, violates every principle of advanced liberalism. But let it pass. Our laws, happily, are not like those of the Medes and Persians, and the Government will not be in power for ever. If they could only manage to pass their Libel Bill their fate would be sealed, but we fear this measure is too utterly preposterous even to be read a second time. In any other community the meie introduction of a measure so absolutely opposed to the tradition of public sentiment and political doctrine of the British people would have sounded the death knell of its authors, but we are a peculiar people in New Zealand ; indeed, no people on the face of the earth were ever more patient of political charlatans.