Evening Post. TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1912. THE COMING PARLIAMENT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 7, 9 January 1912, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1912.

THE COMING PARLIAMENT.

Mr. Maseey expresses himself pleased -that "Parliament is at last to meet," but considers that it should have been summoned for an earlier date than the 15th February. It would in our opinion have been better if the Premier had faced the inevitable with less hesitation and arranged for Parliament to meet before the end of the present month. But th«re really i» not much to complain of. No serious harm has been done by the delay, and it may be assumed that there is none in contemplation. The rumours of a reconstructed Cabinet are definitely knocked on the head. Sir Joseph Ward will meet Parliament with the old team. He wisely declines the experiment of swapping horses while he is in the middle of a deeper and more rapid stream than has crossed his party's path for more than twenty years. But the rumours of reconstruction were of little importance except in so far as they were supposed to indicate a desire on the part of the Premier to seize every opportunity for prolonging his precarious tenure of office. The idea was supposed to be that radical changes in the Cabinet would justify him in holding on until Parliament met, according custom, in June. The Premier has been wise to disregard this dangerous counsel of injudicious friends, and in so doing may also b» taken to have committed the Government to a decision of greater moment. A Government which is merely holding on in an incomplete condition until Parliament decides whether or ndt it must resign is clearly not qualified to discharge in the interval anything but the ordinary routine work ¦of administration. Tne normal business functions of Government must be discharged in the usual way, but all' critical matters which can be deferred should be deferred, andj above. all, no important appointments should.-be made -by a Government which iacjeooceded to-

be- but a stop-gap Government and may have its slender thread of life severed by the Parliamentary shears next month. We had assumed from the first that Sir Josepn Ward would be careful to avoid the procedure for which his own party- so severely attacked theAtkinson Government.' Even had he decided to hold on till June he could hardly have violated tho rule for which he and his friends energetically contended at tho opening of their long reign. But the admission implied in the summoning of , Parliament for next month puts such a violation out of the question. Although, as we pointed out yesterday, some of the statements in the Premier's announcement of the Government's intentions are ambiguous, and there seems no sufficient reason why it should hot have been made earlier, to take effect before the 15th prox., the feeling that he has at last done the right thing is practically unanimous. The contention of some indiscreet advocates of the Government that there was no question of constitutional propriety involved is disposed of by Sir Joseph Ward in a manner that squares with public sentiment when he urges that the course he is taking "is not only the constitutional one, but in the best interests of tho people as a whole." In such a case as the present there is really no conflict between these two points of view. The fundamental axiom /of our Constitution ia that government shall be by consent of the governed, and this constitutional axiom is based not upon any abstract theory, but upon a reasoned experience of what is "in the best interests of the people as a whole." That the further government of this country by the Ward Ministry will be without the consent of tho governed is, to say the very least, an arguable proposition. Where a serious doubt exists as to the meaning of the popular verdict constitutionally rendered at the polls, the proper tribunal to resolve the doubt is the Assembly which was then elected to represent the people. Sir Joseph Ward has therefore taken the only proper course, and he would doubtless be glad if everything else pertaining to his official duty were equally plain.