THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1889.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9323, 28 March 1889, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1889.

Happy the country that has no history, but happier still must be the country that can run along with only half a Governor and less than half a Ministry. Sir William Jervois leaves and Chief Justice Prendergast drops into his seat at Government House, leads society for the time being in Wellington, and quietly waits to know, in things political, what his Ministry would like him to do. As to Ministers themselves they are scattered to the four quarters of the colony, pabinet meetings are so rare that Wellington is all in a twitter when one takes place, and the wildest rumours gain credence there. We don't for a moment begrudge Ministers their little trips for relaxation, and if they have to invent public business for the occasion it is perhaps no more than their predecessors have done before them. Only, it is well they should know that, considering the great noise they have themselves made about retrenchment, and considering the severity with which they cut down in so many directions, many believe that Ministerial travelling expenses should share the reduction. If, too, Ministers with their Under-Secretaries and their Private Secretaries can be so often and so long spared from Wellington, is it not reasonable to conclude that there are too many of them— conclusion we believe to be perfectly well founded.

At the present moment Ministers are gadding about in every direction. We have Commissioners now to visit the railways, but it does not prevent the Minister for Public Works having apparently as much on his hands as ever. The Native Department was supposed to be abolished, and the abolition was made a great card during last session. But the Native Minister and the Native Under - Secre-tary-—in a travelling sensestill go on for ever. The Minister for Customs and Education runs up to Auckland to consult the Attorney-General over a terrible row in one of the rare Cabinet meetings. The trouble seems to have been whether some rich merchants and brewers who have been trying to cheat the Custom House shall be prosecuted, or in consideration of their riches and respectability be let down more easily than common folk daring to smuggle a few pounds of tobacco or cheat the Custom House only in some small despicable way. Scarcely has Mr. Fisher finished consulting the Attor-ney-General and disappeared, when the Telegraph tells us that Mr. Fergus, the War Minister, and Mr. Stevens (without portfolio) are on the way also to consult Sir Frederick Whitaker on the same troublesome Custom House questions. The thing is thinly covered by a reference to the great cost the public would incur in these prosecutions against wealthy firms who would unite to make it unpleasant for the Government. Fiddlesticksand worse. If Government is to come to this the sooner it is abolished the better. A poor man is

to be prosecuted with the utmost rigour i for daring to defraud H. M. Customs of a few shillings. A combination of rich men is to fleece the same Customs and to defy the Government with impunity ! The thing will not bear argu- j ment and will we hope and trust be tho- i roughly probed when the House meets. The telegraph was careful to tell us that Mr. Stevens, who comes all the way from his home in Christchurch to see Sir Frederick Whitaker in Auckland, only did so because the Colonial Secretary was prevented "by pressure of departmental business" from leaving Wellington. The very next telegrams tell us that the same Mr. Hislop, the Colonial Secretary, has gone to his home at Oamaru. They dance in and out of Wellington, do these Ministers, in a most bewildering way, and the question naturally arises, if they can be so well spared, might we not permanently dispense with half of them at least to the benefit of an overburdened country 1 There are political as well as legal fictions. _ The Legislature is supposed to consist of grave and reverend signiors, who make politics their study and spend their time in discussing systems of government, exchanging ideas, and profiting by each other's reading and experience in these matters. That is the fiction. The fact is that perhaps in no part of New Zealand are politics, in the proper sense of the term, less discussed than in Wellington during a Session. There is plenty of interesting work in trying to keep a Government in or put one out. Anything in this direction is practical business, but to " talk shop" would be bad form and an offence of which no one worth attention ought to be guilty. As to the Government, the fiction is that it consists of men sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, statesmen ever considering and ever discussing how to perform the noblest of all works, the building up of a happy, free and strong country. That is the fiction. The fact is what we see, a peripatetic Ministry ever on the move, seldom or never meeting for deliberation, but ever ready to inspect a rabbit fence, or a railway line, gauge the cannon in a battery, dive into the foundations of a ricketty Lunatic Asylum, or do any of the work which heads of departments and experts are at the same time paid heavily to do for them. Or, when there is nothing of that kind to be used as an excuse, they will as readily travel round, and give free lectures on national insurance, or personal thrift, or the beauties of the property tax, or anything else that can soothe their consciences by making them believe they earn the money so hardly drained from a hard-pressed people. Is not all tlii-s merely Government gone mad, and how long will a patient people suffer it to last 1 The condition to which New Zealand was brought by j years of such management, and from I which she is only now emerging by the energy and industry of her people, was the natural result of so bizarre a condition of things. If responsible government be impossible without such co3tly and wretched humbug, cannot some substitute for responsible government be found 1 A committee of thoughtful men,_ armed with full power and appointed to look into the affairs and the Government of the colony, would no doubt give a prompt and satisfactory reply. But to appoint such a committee is simply impossible, because responsible Government says it would be a mark of want of confidence in the Ministry. It would be displacing them and appointing others to do the work which they are specially to perform. Quite true, but how are they to do this work if scattered over the colony and distracted by potty internal squabbles? The logic of events will settle the matter if Ministers do not. The people of the colony, tired of shams and empty forms, will rise up against a system which the vagaries of Ministers and its own proved insufficiency are rapidly bringing to contempt. A simpler, more effective and more managable system will then be put in its place. That there are such systems everyone knows. Other people have their time as a rule too much occupied in earning their daily bread to look deeply into these things. But that is exactly what Ministers are paid to do, and what they must do if they are to be regarded as leaders. Neglect it, and they are but so many additional and useless upper under-secretaries, if we may coin a term that expresses exactly the mere departmental position which Ministers seem to think that they are appointed to hold.