ROUND THE CORNERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 859, 17 August 1888, Page 17

ROUND THE CORNERS.

The country is being cursed through its politics, and during the current session has been a spectacle for gods and men. Vacillation all around, cross purposes everywhere, but no good cross-country riding or else stone walla would be of no avail. Waste of time ; abandonment of useful and urgent measure*; barefaced truckling to expediency—including truckling to localism—are the leading features of sotermed constitutionalism in this section of the planet. People who are not politicians look ort. with amazement and distrust, and wonder how much deeper we shall sink in the democratic bog of many centres. Well, they can conaola themselves with the reflection that the bottom, has not been found yet. There are profound depths to. be sounded and painful experiences to be gained before solid ground, on which t® rear a substantial State edifice, is reached. There’s a deal of adjustment to be accomplished, and heaps of antagonistic interests to be reconciled. That is to say, if adjustment and reconcilement are over to be attained, which on© may be pardoned for having doubts about. If the politicians of the day would only see themselves as others see them, could be made tounderstand how much outside distrust is beingengendered by the wretchedly halting legislation by which we are governed, they might, perhaps be induced to bury two or three of the many hatchets of local contention that arewhirling about, and try to legislate for theColony as a whole, and not for districts only. There is not much inducement for men of means, to settle down among us. The burden of the debt of course is made to bear the odium of that re» pulsion that keeps people of the rightsoitaway from this fairest of colonies. But the reproach is not all deserved by those millions. They would be regarded lightly if the Colony was onlyunited instead of being torn by faction ; if legislation flowed a steady broad stream, fertilising as it went.

And it is becoming apparent that we ar© trusting too much to chapters ot accidents. Still is legislation far from accomplishing what