The No-Confidence Motion

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 179, 7 August 1888, Page 3

The No-Confidence Motion

Wellington, Saturday. The Post of last night refers to Mr Walker’s no-eonfidenee motion as follows :—

Mr Walker made a desperate, but perhaps not very well-considered attempt, on Thursday night to wrest from the Premier’s hands the whip which was so unwisely put into them last session to enable him to lash the House during the duration of the present Parliament. The only result of the attempt was to afford the Premier an opportunity of cracking the whip pretty significantly over the heads of any members who might otherwise have been disposed to jib. We pointed out, when the reduction nf the number of members after the expiration of the present Parliament was agreed to, that it virtually ensured Sir Harry Atkinson’s occupancy of office for three years. He has but to crack the whip and members must do as he tells them. The utterance of the word “dissolution ’ reduces the majority to the most abject obedience, for if a dissolution were to take place there would be 22 less members in the new House, and who could tell whether he might not be one of those doomed tc political extinction ? There is very little the House would not do to avoid premature dissolution. It is in no humour to perform the happy despatch, and consequently as soon as ever the Premier hinted at a dissolution, the House was reduced to submission. On its merits Mr Walker’s motion was a perfectly fair and reasonable proposal, and we are convinced the majority wonld have been largely in its favour had members felt at liberty to vote as they wished. That they did not feel so was too painfully evident. The Premier has a firm grasp of the heavy whip, and he knows well how to flourish it over the heads of the Parliamentary team They will probably yet hear it cracked loudly in respect to much more important motions than Mr Walker’s amendment.