Lake Wakatip Mail. QUEENSTOWN, FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1901 BUSINESS IN PARLIAMENT.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2370, 19 July 1901, Page 4

Lake Wakatip Mail. QUEENSTOWN, FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1901 BUSINESS IN PARLIAMENT.

Although Parliament was opened with one of the longest, dreariest, and most barren addresses on record the session promises to be equally as barren, dreary and long. There is absolutely nothing like unto Mr Seddon's longwinded utterances either in the heavens above ; the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. Experience has taught him nothing in this respect. He proses at interminable length at every possible opportunity. From the hour when he drove the guests away, at his first public dinner during the Jubilee celebrations in London, till now the disease has continued to grow until its virulence has become a positive menace to the minds and tempers of the King's loyal subjects in this portion of the Empire. This sort of business may suit the West Coast, where travelling showmen are scarce and the towns somewhat out ©f the beaten line of travel. They may see glories and pleasures in four hours of Mr Seddon that the rest of us cannot, and we are content that they should receive all the merit that pertains to such fine samples of manly patience. But the rest of the colony has long since tired of it and we protest against the colony being made a, laughing stock, in the eyes of all intelligent men and women, through the medium of such tasteless, tactless, windy verboseness. The Imperial Parliament can be and is opened with less than one column of matter. Mr Seddon, forsooth, requires three in which to say what he will and what he will not do. Speech is silver, silence is golden. Politically, Mr Seddon believes in free silver. He has no conception of the wisdom of silence, of the power that can conceal itself and yet be felt more surely than through whole pages of tittle-tattle. There is, of course, a time for all men to speak—even Cabinet Ministers—but that time is not nearly so often as Mr Seddon appears to think nor certainly not in the way he has made us familiar with. Governors' opening addresses are, largely, formal and indicative, mere outlines, epitomes, or summaries, so to speak, of what may be done. They were never intended to be converted into a fatuous rigmarole which, when analysed, resolves itself into idle words and the vain repetition of things that have been said fifty times before. However, we anticipate no advantage either from our own protest or that of scores of others; Mr Seddon is Mr Seddon,and he is so thoroughly satisfied with his own manners and methods that not all the King's horses and all the King's men could convert him from his political views. We simply lodge our objection and pass on. Not that we have much to pass on to. The politicians will be hard put to it this session to justify their existence, and the Ministry will, we are afraid, have to reengage our recent Royal Commissioners to devise pleasure parties and picnics for the members' delectation until it pleases Mr Seddon to do something.

Unfortunately Mr Seddon is not bound to do anything. He has nothing to fear save from the ambitions members of his party. The Opposition as a strong, active, alert wellled body is dead. There is no'organised, thoroughly equipped, ceaselessly vigilant combination to watch and criticise every movement, measure and proposal. Her Majesty's Opposition in the New Zealand Parliament has ceased to exist. A.ll we have is a small collection of free lances who may, or may not, be agreed upon any one question, and to be confronted by such a guerilla army as this places Mr Seddon, with his unwieldy majority, in a position that no one Minister or Ministry ought to be in. We cannot blame Captain Russell. He is, clearly, not in touch with present needs and we were not much surprised to learn that he had quitted his nominal leadership in disgust. But the country will certainly suffer through the absence of a duly constituted, harmonious, well-defined Opposition and not the least among the evils following upon the enormous majority given to Mr Seddon in 1899 is this very annihilation of an experienced, patriotic body of antagonistic opinion. We affirm that in a democracy no one man should have such autocratic power placed in his hands and the country will yet come round to this position. The only gleam of hope in the sorry business is the probability of mutiny within the Premier's own party. This we deem neither improbable nor unlikely. Certainly quite a number of his followers resent many of his acts, his speeches and his promises. Especially the last. The labor members are annoyed that more socialistic legislation is not definitely promised. We are not, but this cuts no figure in our present contention. The fact remains that there is a murmuring and muttering among those representatives who have yet to win their spurs with their masters the labour unions. True there is the State Fire Insurance Bill, but was ever a more absurb piece of legislation proposed 1 Apart from the un-British feature of compelling citizens to insure with the Government whether they will or no, apart from its unwarranted and impertinent interference with the freedom of trade and individual preference, the proposal, looked at from a business standpoint, is farcical. In truth we could almost wish that the foolish people in New Zealand might have a few years' trial of it to see how it would pay. Have our readers studied the Insurance returns, either in New Zealand or in Australia, or Great Britain, or the United States? Are they aware that in New Zealand in some years every cent of the premium income has been swallowed up in losses 1 There is 110 assurance in the Fire Insurance business that your whole capital and reserve may not be swept out of existence to-morrow morning. And is the country going to establish offices, and to engage a large and expensive stalF, in order to take up risks at less than long-established offices find it profitable to do ! For unless the Government do cut rates, the very persons who are, in their ignorance, clamoring for State Fire Insurance will turn and rend them. There is absolutely nothing but folly in such a bill. It is born of a desire to meet the demands of a thoughtless few and would, if pushed to completion, certainly end in disaster. No great home or foreign company will cut their rates in order to oblige Mr Seddon, and if the latter wants the business at low rates he can get it without much competition. The Colony will have to foot the bill, which, perhaps, is why some want it. Another proposed bill that has already caused irritation and objections is the Shops and Offices BiH. This is a crude, ill-advised attempt on the part of the Ministry to legislate for those unfortunate clerks who, so we are told, work morning, noon, and night all the year round for a bare piitance. Up to the present, protests from Auckland to the BlulF have rolled in against it whilst experts have not the least difficulty in showing that the employees would be infinitely worse off under the contemplated measure than they are now. In brief, the record of the session so far is one of emptiness and unnecessary interference with the legislative functions of business and the rights of the citizens. We anticipate much more of a similar kind before the session is through.