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Lyttelton Times, Volume XX, Issue 1165, 3 December 1863, Page 4

A new Provincial Executive has been formed; but we are yet in the dark—so far as any official information goes—as to the reasons for the late crisis. It must be assumed that the gentlemen now taking office are satisfied as to the substantial merits of the case. We confess that we are not, and that quite enough has become public on sufficiently good authority to justify our demand for publicity and an appeal to the public in the shape of a dissolution. But the new Executive is on the whole worthy of confidence, and we have a right to assume that their motives in taking office are good and honorable. The just as well as the wisest course is to give them a fair trial. Indeed in provincial affairs we have always advocated an avoidance of " party " politics ; and have therefore rather given what support we could to a new Government, than " a fair trial" in the party sense of the expression. But though we hope for the future, it is impossible without official explanations to banish the past from memory. Too much has passed uncontradicted from mouth to mouth in quasi-explanation of the late inexplicable crisis to leave a very easy feeling in the public mind. It surely cannot be intended that the formation of a new Government is to burke enquiry, or that all concerned inthe late political transactions should drop the subject for ever. "We should have felt more confidence in the future, if the new Executive had come into office on a clear understanding that the past was to be disposed of in the only satisfactory manner —by a dissolution.