The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY, FEB. 7, 1882.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVII, Issue 6536, 7 February 1882, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY, FEB. 7, 1882.

Thebe are plenty of reasons for the early summoning of Parliament, bnt the -Question of the Otago, rnna furnishes none of them. Sir G. Grey appears to think that, on the contrary, this Question supplies the main reasons. It is certain that he headed a deputation, which waited on the Premier, to make a representation upon the xnn question, and to urge the immediate calling together of Parliament. Bnt it appears, from the full report of the proceedings which we re-publieh from the Otago Daily Times this morning, that the two questions were -intimately connected by the deputation .and its chief. By connecting them so-intimately, the deputation has made a mistake. It forms the third of the three waves of Opposition members which have dashed themselves uselessly upon the subject of the Otago runs. The first was composed of Otago representatives, and formed quite a Provincial Council. But it succeeded in showing nothing so much as the needlessness of its assembling. The Minister for Lands trumped its best card, and the Waste Lands Board of Otago trumped the Minister’s tricks. The result was that the Otago newspapers arrived at a unanimous verdict favourable to the action of the Land Board, and the run question disappeared from view as a mover of Otago politicians. The second wave was supplied by South Canterbury, Mr Turnbull, in a moment of strange forgetfulness joined some of the South Canterbury members in appealing to the Waste Lands Board. But beyond showing that members of Parliament are occasionally capable of falling into the important error of attempting to dictate to local administrative bodies over whom even Parliament collectively has no control whatever, Mr Turnbull and his friends achieved nothing. Sir G. Grey has not fared better than his predecessors in this agitation. He is reported to have urged on the Ministry “ the desirability of deferring the re-leasing of the Otago runs till after the meeting of Parliament.” In reply, the Premier went very exhaustively into the whole legal question of these runs. He might have made more of the business and political aspects, but he did not seem to care to rise to the occasion. He might have

told Sir George Grey that if those who are best qualified to understand the run question are satisfied with what has been done, the far North ought to bo satisfied likewise. But the Premier’s anxiety to draw a red-herring was Buffioient to prevent him from sticking to his subject with brief logic. By judiciously taunting the chiefs of the deputation with their responsibility for the law, to the provisions of which they were objecting, he managed to make a diversion which consumed time. He likes this kind of thing, and he wanted to get the Parliamentary question over without the inconvenience of a long and close argument. The merits of a case never have as much attraction for the Premier as the bad handling of that case by his opponents. The whole history of his last tenure of office shows that he always thinks it more important to put his opponents in the wrong before the world, than to put himself in the right. He could not be expected to refrain from his usual practice when it was calculated to draw attention from an inconvenient subject. The result was that a discussion on the responsibility of Sir G. Grey and Mr Sheehan dwarfed the constitutional question of an early meeting of Parliament. The Premier had a fine opportunity of enlightening the country on a grave constitutional question. As he utterly failed to do anything of the kind, we cannot believe that he has any case at all. When the petition of Sir G. Grey is presented to the Governor, it will be interesting to hear the Premier’s reasons against it. But if the Premier was both unequal to the occasion and worthy of himself, he was not alone. In both respects the success of Sir George Grey was equally striking. That the Ex-Premier was unequal to the occasion is nothing new. For the two years during which he held power he did nothing else but throw away occasions. The mere fact that after two years his enemies passed his Bills is eloquent of opportunities lost by Sir G. Grey. It is not surprising therefore that he should have confined himself almost wholly to the run question as a reason for calling Parliament together. But though throwing away occasions. Sir George always had a great facility of keeping himself ever the leading figure, even after formal deposition by his friends. One thing, therefore, is surprising. It is, that so astute a politician should have taken up, as a rallying cry, the programme tom up and thrown away, by a large section of those pledged to opposition in the new Parliament. It would have been for better for him to have treated the runs as the Government is fond of boasting that it has always treated the representative of independent Maoridom. He ought to have left them severely alone. He had two good cards to play, the altered political conditions under which the new Parliament was elected, and the unseemly conduct of the Government in retaining office in the face of admitted doubts of their possession of the confidence of the House of Representatives. -Sir Erskine May’s authority has been invoked to prove that Government are'not bound to call together the new Parliament before the time originally appointed. But Sir Erskine May, great as he is, is no authority upon one point. Reference to the pages of his work cannot tell us whether the political conditions have been changed since the last Parliament expired by .fluxion of time. That is a question we, in New Zealand, can decide for ourselves. We know that the new Parliament represents voters who have before been represented in our history, and that it contains a balance of power very different from the vicious divisions in the days of its many predecessors. These are altered political conditions, and May has been invoked to show what they require. Moreover, we know, everybody knows, that Minis*, ters and their supporters doubt whether’ this Parliament, so radically different to other Parliaments, is going to support them. A stringent castigation of the extreme unseemliness of prolonging office without solving such a grave doubt in such grave circumstances would have met with a popular response, and might have procured eclat for Sir George Grey. As it is his last move leaves him exactly where he was. He has presented a petition to the Premier for transmission to the Governor for the immediate calling together of Parliament. But he has neglected to get for that petition the signatures of a majority of the new House; and he has confused the issue by taking up a subject which those most qualified to understand it have dropped. Whether he has stepped aside designedly or merely by mistake, it is hard at present to say. Certain it is that the way is now open to others to strike for the lead of the Opposition.