Mr. Fisher's Retirement.

Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 84, 9 April 1889, Page 3

Mr. Fisher's Retirement.

OPINIONS OF THE PEESS, We may bo wrong, hut we are strongly inclined to think that Mr. Fisher's resignation will greatly weaken tho Government. Ho and tho Premier have all along boon tho two strong mon of tho Ministry, and now that one of tho twain withdraws, a Government that has vory littlo loyal support to reakon upon will be in danger of tottering to its fall. To onr mind the probabilities aro becoming every day stronger that before another six months are over the Government will have suffered defeat, and tho country ho in the throws of a general oleotion. — Wangapni Chronicle. We ventnre to predipt that when a full exposure of thq oiroumstancea which have led to the disrupture is given in the House, Mr. Fisher will come out triumphant. Mr. Fisher's great fault is his independence of character. He was not prepared to give his hobnail-hooted chief that servile adherence which tho member for Egmont exacts from bis followers— he has " libbod "—and, like most " jibbing " horses, he has been turned out of the toam. When, however, he gives his reasons for having so jibbed, they will, we think, be found to reflect littlo credit upon his would-be driver. Mr. Fisher has boon the main stay of the Government from a debating and fighting point of view ; he will, we prophesy, prove to bo a bitter and powerful enemy.— Napier News. The question of why Ministers should choose to piok Mr. Fisher's comparatively harmless peccadillo for severe treatment, out of tho large mass of contrarieties of which the Ministerial history is composed, is not of such importance as the fact that thoy havo chosen it. The Ministry having determined that Mr. Fisher's connection with itself should oeaso, there was nothing for Mr. Fisher but retirement. That course he has followed with a promptitude ready enough to save his credit as a solf-roapeoting man. Mr. Fishor has preferred retirement with dignity to retirement by compulsion under the bad process of Ministerial resignation and reconstruction. The Cabinet oould not very well have altered the attitude which led to this result. For, although there are on tho Treasury Benches many causes of irreoonoilable differenop, none of them ever led to a aaso of disobedience by a Minister of a Cabinet resolution. Until Mr. Fisher performed, the line of the pardonablo had nevor been ovorstepped Mr. Fisher, as far as we can understand the story, after tho Cabinot has dacidod to proseouto all brewers in certain coses, lot some Wellington brewers off with tho back duty and perhaps a friendly caution. The Premier and the others who woro porforce tolerant of the difference of opinion,' could not tolerate the disloyalty of action. They' havo declined to establish the precodont {hat a Minister may refuse to obey (nanIfete of the whple Cafcjnet on a matter of Mineral polioy, even in tho management of his own department. To everything short pf that the public has by this time got accustomed. But to such conduct as that, the publio never will be, and never ought to be, reconciled.— Lyttelton Times. That the Cabinet have not for a long time past bean a happy family is well known. Mr. Fisher is notoriously at variance with the Premier on the subjeot of the property tax j he is understood to bo dissatisfied with the extont to which retrenchment has been caaried, and to have strongly dissented from the opinion of the majority on the treatment of Judge Ward, as well as upon other important questions. Tho present difference is said to have arisen over the enforcement of the excise laws in the case of oertain evasions of the beer duty Wo do not, however, fora moment imagine that the beer prosecutions are the real cause of the friotion. But we do believe that the Hon. Mr. Fisher has been ohaflng for a long time at the adoption of measures whioh he cannot approve, and that his oolleagues are willing to endeavour to allay tho doep-seated discontent, which rendors their prospects in the approaching session of Parliament anything but brilliant, by offering Mr. Fisher's seat to some other member of their party whose support cannot now be relied upon . . The Premier's mandatory noto, intended to secure Mr. Fisher's eviction from tho Cabinet, may have the effect of deterring the Minister Of Education from taking a step whioh he was very likely to have

taken of his own volition at any time during tho last few months. And if Mr. Fishor should refuse to rehign or accept tho alternative of Bubmitting _ meekly to an offensive enub from his colleagues, somo very nice constitutional questions will arise. It is by no means clear that a Premier can dismiss one of his colleagues. In New South Wales on ono occasion when a Premier desired to obtain a reconstruction, and an obnoxious Minister refused to aid him in his purpose he was compelled to tender his own resignation which, of course, involved that of the Cabinet It comes, then, to be a question whether Ministers can accomplish the design which has beenled up to by alongcourso of irritation, and oust Mr. Fisher, or whether Mr. Fisher will oust them. Of oonrse we havo no duo to Mr. Fisher's own sentiments on the subject, and tbo Premior's noto may have como to him as a wolcomo release from a senses of obligation to stick loyally to them notwithstanding his own disapproval of tho devious paths which thoy havo pursued in the plcntitudo of their power. In that caao, his resignation will follow aB a matter of couruo, tho Boat will either bo filled by some dissatisfied supporter or kept dangling as a bait for offico - hunters, and tho Ministry will be left to their own devices. As to the fato of the Minister of Education, if ho should be able to leavo the present Cabinet on some broad question ot public policy and free from the accusation of diuloyalty, we aro pretty confident that, at no distant dato, wo shall sco him coming to tho front as a member of Bomo new combination formed under distinct pledges to end a system that bas corrupted the colony from end to end, and sworn to initiato a policy that will allow the country to rise in itH strength and free itself from tho demoralising influences of tho past 18 years which Lave made New Zealand and its Government tho creatures of English monoy-lendora. — Auckland Star.