SPIRIT PRESS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 674, 30 January 1885, Page 18

SPIRIT PRESS.

Almost at the commencement of his Dunedin speech Mr Stout launched out into censure of the Press. He referred particularly to the Dunedin Press, but a few of his remarks seemed to be intended to have a more general application. There is no denying the fact that, though some of the newspapers of the Colony have, by fits and starts, exhibited a strange subserviency to the Ministry, the tone of the Press altogether has been far too independent to be agreeable to the Stout-Yogel combination. It has sometimes been difficult to distinguish friend from foe, and Mr Stout evidently does not like such a state of affairs. He says : —“ In England and in most of the Australian Colonies there were in the large centres generally newspapers taking two welldefined sides, but in Dunedin the Government bad been without any organ which could be termed a Government organ, which could give an explanation of the Government’s action.” But Mr Stout forgets the political character, or want of character, of the Government of which he is the nominal head. It is neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It has a strangely mixed-up sort of policy, a great part of which Mr Stout would have bitterly opposed if he had not been in Parliament, and would have bitterly opposed if, being in Parliament, he had not been a Minister. He thoroughly enjoys being the possessor of the title of Premier, though, to enable him to hold it for more than a day, he was compelled to connect himself with a gentleman whose political opinions are for the most part diametrically opposed to his own. Other members of the Ministry had to be equally accommodating. The public is not blind, and the Press,whether of Dunedin or elsewhere, can see as well as the public. Adverse criticism may be very galling to Mr Stout, but it is part of the price h 6 has to pay for his greatness such as it is. N o doubt there are some newspapers which would oppose him under any circumstances, and there are few indeed which would back him up in an endeavour to give effect to every article of the political creed he had been preaching for some years before he went into a kind of sleeping partnership with Sir Julius Yogel. But which “ side ” is it whose want of a constant champion in the Dunedin Press Mr Stout regrets ? Would the champion have to fight for Liberalism or Conservatism—for Mr Stout or Sir Julius Yogel? The Premier cannot fairly complain if writers who have political opinions look with distrust on a Government composed of men, each of whom, whilst professing to belong to a party, calmly ignores principles, and plays fast and loose with the public. In the course of his remarks Mr Stout admitted that the Liberals in Parliament bad acted towards him in the most generous spirit. That may or may not have been the case, but the result of last session’s political intrigues (a word Mr Stout does not like) was the formation of a Ministry which neither Liberals nor Conservatives could heartily approve of, and which, on the assumption that the Press of the Colony is fairly honest, was certain to meet with a large share of hostile criticism from all sides. That the Government cannot And a thorough-going supporter in any leading newspaper in the Colony (we need not confine the remark to Dunedin) may be uncomfortable for Ministers, and especially for Mr Stout, but is at the same time a hopeful and a healthy sign. We are sadly afraid that the kind and extent of newspaper support which would please Mr Stout could be supplied only by an organ owned and edited by himself, and it would probably contain in its first half-dozen issues sufficient to destroy the Ministry. Nothing could have been more thoroughly injudicious, as coming from the nominal head of the Government, than Mr Stout’s attack on the newspapers. It contained, moreover, an element of untruth, for, say what the Premier may to the contrary, it is a fact that no Ministry which has ever held office in New Zealand has been more favourably criticised, in proportion to its deserts, than has the Stout-Yogel combination. The arrangement—the papable result of political intrigue— . was in itself thoroughly distasteful to the country, but was tolerated as a means of giving Sir Junius Yogel his opportunity. There appeared no chance of doing so unless by the present compromise, and so newspaper criticism, inclined in many quarters to be adverse, was often withheld, toned

down, or confined to such Ministerial action as could be honestly, or by a moderate stretch of editorial conscience, commended. Yet instead of returning thanks for such exceptional treatment, of which he shared the benefit though the complaisance was not specially intended for him, the Premier devoted some minutes to traducing the Press, and endeavouring to make out that it, but particularly the Dunedin newspapers, had misrepresented the Government.