THE NEXT MINISTERIAL CONSTITUTION.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 781, 26 January 1853, Page 3

THE NEXT MINISTERIAL CONSTITUTION.

[From the Spectator, September 11.] The art of sinking is illustrated very ably in high quarters. Her Majesty's Ministeis for the time being have been emulous of their predecessors in that art ; and the " lower deep," like the squaring of the circle, or the nature of free-will, or of " the coffee of the shops," or any elu3ive mystery, has been cultivated with an alternation of success rendered piquant by surprise at the attainment of each newest impossibility in that direction. The last Ministry seemed to have attained a position which would render them utterly impregnable against any process of undermining ; but the present Ministry have succeeded in capping that verse, and the question now is, who shall excel them. It was a great political discovery by a Liberal Government to estop a measure by adopting it ; and thus they seem to have attained the acme of official wisdom. But they have been beaten ; and the Times describes the newest invention. The leading policy of the present Government is "to carry out every principle which tkey have denounced and decried for so many years, provided only the task be reposed in the hands of men always most hostile to its accomplishment." Thus they adopt Free- trade — to be carried out by the Protectionist Premier in person ; they adopt Chancery Reform — and appoint Mr. John Stuart Vice-Chancellor. This is the newest official idea — to be the Ministry for not doing the thing professed. The invention's not so reactionary as it looks, since it is found that there is a convenience in thus concentrating the obstruction to a mea- > sure, especially when the process is accompanied by a concentration of incompetency ; so that you have at one blow the embodied resistance composed of the weakest elements of resistance. This newest official invention suggests a corresponding popular art. The adopting Liberals devised the " pressure from without," which had the advantage of transferring official action and responsibility to those organised mobs called " leagues " ; but the new plan requires stronger treatment. It is evident that the ministry not to do a given thing is an institution to be bullied and beaten by all that wish the thing done ; the first step in any public action, therefore, will be to take up the cudgels for the coercion of her Majesty's Ministers. Progress moves in cycles. We in England, with our boasted civilization, are but appioaching the point attained some time since by the statesmen of Bornou or Japan. In both these distinguished states there is an arbitrary Sovereign, so exalted that he is actually removed from intervention with mundane affairs. In Japan the Micado is divine to that degree that it is impossible for him to do anything of his own accord. He is too sacred to receive embassies, still more presents, from foreign potentates, or even " to be thought of" by aliens to his consecrated presence ; the gifts and homage, therefore, go to his less sublime Vicegerent, the Ziogoon. The Micado cannot perform any public action, but can only shed his spirit over the scene from his sacred retreat. Thus he sits for many hours a day looking in a particular direction lest it rain ; exactly as Lord Derby sits in office lest the ngriculturists suffer, but precluded by his peculiarly sacred character as a Protectionist from hazarding any Protectionist measure, such as might have been expected from a profane Free-trade Ministry. Lord | Derby cannot act, he can only be.

This arrival at the perfection of official science will suggest a new necessity to the public. The completion of the Ministerial Micado requires the appointment of the popular Ziogoon ; as the Cabinet has become a body of non-government, it will be necessary to appoint a corporate viceroy over it ; imitated, with improvements, from the Anti- Corn-law League — a sort of public committee of administration to perform the work which the other body is too exalted to perform. Lord Derby can then sit.and look at Hampshire and Dorsetshire for the benefit of the agriculturists, while the authorised public committee of administration car. carry on the mere temporal affairs of her Majesty's subjects. Thus, with the excess of Conservatism we shall combine the advantages of Revolution. Some such machinery, for example might enable us to combine with a sacred Ministry looking at Chancery Reform, an authorised Law Reform Association for carrying it out. To that pass we seem approaching with hopeful strides.