Untitled

Globe, Volume III, Issue 225, 27 February 1875, Page 4

The Sydney Herald, writing on the downfall of the Parkes Ministry, says:—“Just as Mr Parkes was the centre and soul of the Ministry, just as he was the Atlas on whose broad shoulders the whole weight of its position rested, so, too, he was the cause of its disasters and its falls. The whole Gardiner business, so far as we yet know the history, originated with himself. It was he that set the sheriff to work; it was he that in a long conversation with the Governor appears first to have biased his Excellency’s views on the matter. According to Mr Butler’s statement even the Attorney-General knew nothing of what was going on. Each Minister, no doubt, has to attend to the affairs of his own department, and no exact line has been drawn to determine where departmental questions end and Cabinet questions begin, but a matter so important as the alleviation of the sentences of a large number of bushrangers might well have been made the subject of a conference with the Attorney - General, if not with the whole Cabinet. Events have shown that if this course had been adopted the subsequent difficulty would, in all probability, have been avoided. We have no means of knowing whether the production of the Governor’s minute was approved of by the whole Cabinet. It probably was ; but when, on Mr Combe’s motion, the House began to discuss the propriety of the action of the Government in that matter, Mr Parkes, without any apparent consultation with his colleagues, jumped up to stamp the whole discussion at once as equivalent to a want of confidence debate.” The conclusion our contemporary draws is that a Premier who has to deal with the difficulty of colleagues aggravates his dangers and diminishes his safety if he does not draw from consultation the benefit it is capable of yielding.