THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 1921, 11 December 1890, Page 22

THE WEEK.

" Nunqaam aUul natoia, allnd Mplentla <Uxit."— Jotihal. " Good natur* and good muss mait ever lotn.";~Popi.

The country districts have, on the whole, done as well as could be expected at the elections ; the towns, about as badly, from a country point of view at any rate, as possible. The country districts have shown a fair amount of discrimination, and their members, if they alone constituted the new House, would form a satisfactory Parliamentary body by themselves. The rejection of Mr Bruce for Mr Hutchison at Waitotara is the worst piece of work done by any country district ; while the retention of Mr Scobie Mackenzie and Mr Richardson, and the restoration of Mr Eolleston to politics, may be cited as examples of the best. Most people will be sorry for Mr Vincent Pyke and some for Mr J. 0. Brown, but from a national point of view their exclusion is only important from the fact of their long service "in politics, now so suddenly terminated. The most noticeable piece of work in any mixed constituency (town and country together) is the rejection of Mr J. A. Millar's candidature by Port Chalmers. Thiß must give unmixed satisfaction. As for the members for Dunedin and its suburbs, we must hope that they will endeavour to acquire a sense of the I responsibilities which have been placed in their hands, and to realise that the good government of the country includes other matters besides the regulation of wharves and workshops. The country electorates having, as usual, returned a fair number of candidates on each side of politics, while the towns give almost a block vote against the Ministry and in favour of the claims of labour, whatever those may be, there is nothing for the settlers and miners of the interior to dc but to hope for the best from the gradual political education of the new recruits. It is true that small encouragement is to be got from scanning the names of the Opposition members. Hardly are two to be found in whom the country could contentedly repose its confidence if raised to the Treasury benches. But the constitution must be maintained, and if the Opposition is in a working majority it must accept its respcnsibilities and undertake the government. The outlook is very dubious, and there must be many whose votes have produced the present complicated situation who would willingly, if called upon again, vote to produce a better and steadier Govertment than there seems any prospect of at present.

The Elections.

Unquestionably the two principal features of the elections are the success of the Labour party in getting its men in and the immense preponderance of experience, education, and debating power that is ranged on the Ministerial side. Taken together with the closeness of the numbers returned for each party —classing the Labour party and the Opposition as one— this creates a political position of almost unique difficulty and perplexity. It is very fortunate that for the moment, even though it may not be for long, the e::pcri' enced hand of Sir Harry Atkinson is at the helm. There must be many of the new

What Next 1

menarjers, returned to opyofce the Premier, who ate sufficiently familiar with the troubles that beset every turn of public affairs to fully agree with this opinion. Until the Minister meet in Cabinet to discuss the situation the country can only wait? but the aspirations of expectant Ministers may at any time fnake themselves evident through determined for the immediate assembling of Parliament, and those at present in office must not hope that they will be permitted to come to a, decision- without very considerable assistance, perhaps of an unwelcome kind, from outside. It would be extremely in- ■ convenient to summon Parliament during the wool-shearing and harvesting season, it being well known that as those times approach during ordinary sessions ib beoomes very difficult to keep the House together even when already assembled. We hope this point will not be lost sight of, and that all sides will combine to postpone, If possible, the meeting of Parliament until the termination of harvest. If, however, it be found Impossible to do so with due regard to the rights of the newly elected members to decide upon the future Government, this consideration must, of course, give way. In the meantime there is nothing to be done but to await the assembling of Ministers, who might, perhaps, do a worse thing than consult Mr Ballance, as unquestionably the leader of the opposing party, upon his views as to the requirements of the situation from an Opposition point of view. Mr Ballance is not new to responsibility, and might very possibly rise to the occasion if so called into council in the interests of a puzzled Government and a dubious country.

Ifho Opposition, Old and Now.

Nothing: is to be gained by postponing the necessity of looking fully and squarely in the face the victory of the Labour party. It is one thing for labour to have its special representatives in the House ; it is quite another for it to possess an actual superiority of power. For some reason which might not be immediately apparent, but which is accepted as a matter of course with extraordinary unanimity, every labour representative, without exception, is "agin the Government." Why? We believe that the reason is to be found simply in the looser utterances permissible to candidates whose shoulders are free from the onerous responsibilities which weigh upon those who are answerable for the government of the country. It cannot possibly be the case that the members of the Opposition as a body are prepared, or at any rate that they are desirous, to go the lengths threatened by the Maritime Council and attempted by the labour leaders during the late strike, and to shield acts which are at present lawless by reckless changes in the law, while members of the Ministerial party are as a body determined to ignore the interests of labour. The curious assumption that this is the case can only have arisen, as we have above suggested, from the fact that Opposition candidates have felt themselves safe in promising all sorts of impossible things simply because they neither possessed at the time any direct governmental responsibility, nor hoped that the elections would confer it upon them. Now that the unexpected success of the labour ticket has placed the Opposition and the labour candidates together in a possible majority, many of the more responsible members of the Opposition must feel themselves called upon to most gravely consider the consequences of a deliberate alliance in permanency with the nominees of the Maritime Council, who include, it is true, both men who are promising and men who are not, but who for the most part are utterly new to political responsibility of any kind, and have been elected avowedly to lay the country helplessly under the rule of the men to whom the boycott is the highest law, and the increase of wages the one crying necessity of the country. We are afraid* the patriotism even of the best of the Opposition will fail just here. We look in vain through their lists for men who would place the gratification of their lust of power second in place in their deliberations on public affairs. All recent experience of the actions of Messrs Ballance, Fish, Seddon, and other Opposition leaders is unfortunately the other way ; their election speeches are the other way. Their characters are the other way. The temptation to ally themselves beyond recall with the labour novices, instead o£ beginning with a reasonable reservation of freedom of action in their negotiations with the latter will, we fear, receive but a slight and formal resistance. If this is so, the elections of 1890 will be a national disaster. But if the Opposition leaders can rise to the occasion, and remember their responsibilities first and the exigencies of future electioneering afterwards, there need be no real reason to relate together as direct cause and effect the accession to Parliamentary rank of a large number of the labouring class, and the downfall of New Zealand credit and New Zealand security, respectability, and repute.

The "Master of Ireland."

Mr Gladstone's exclamation when the decision of the majority of the Irish party to depose Mr Parnell was communicated to him was "Thank God, Home Rule is saved I " Nothing, after all, is so unstable as politics. Who could ever have made so wild a prediction this time last year as that the great Liberal leader would have occasion to fervently return thanks to Heaven in the interests of Home Rule for the disgrace and banishment of the " uncrowned King of Ireland " ? It would be a curious and interesting thing to cut out from the newspapers of the last 12 months the speeches that Mr Parnell has in that time made about Mr Gladstone, and that Mr Gladstone has made about Mr Parnell, and reprint them in parallel columns with the speeches the two leaders are making about each other now. For Mr Parnell now declares that the English statesman who raised Home Rule from a dream to a living crusade has all thetime been using the question merely as a political tocl for his separate purposes; that he " stands unrivalled as a sophist " (a remark, which, by the way, is not original with Mr Parnell as applied to Mr Gladstone); and that during the last 10 years it has been impossible to get a straight answer from him about his real views iv reference to Home Rule. In other words.Mr Parnell is now boldly saying before his own party exactly what the Conservative and Liberal-Unionist papers

have been saying for year's, and have for years been denounced for saying by Mr Parnell himself. The meeting of the 6th of December was Irish all over, and for the firei time on reoordj in order to do . the scene justice, the cable has been used to report the ipsissima verba of the contestants, inverted commas and all. "Who is master of Ireland 7" fiercely demanded the Irish leader, as he snatched and tore in pieces the written resolution which had been prepared to depose him from his office. "Gladstone 1 " was the equally fierce and crushing rejoinder from Mr Healy, followed up by a savage sneer at the tottering leader's recent troubles, and drawing from the latter, as he stood desperately at bay before his erstwhile friends-, the furious retort, "You cowardly scoundrel ) " Then they, left him, and went off by themselves, and chose their own leader, and humbly submitted his name to Mr Gladstone; and Mr Gladstone piously exclaimed, "Thank God, Home Rule is saved 1 " But he has not done with Parnell yet, and his exclamation may yet prove to have been a little premature. Ireland everywhere declares for Parnell ; and Ireland may reject a Glads tonian Home Rule scheme rather than at Gladstone's bidding reject Parnell himself.

tonntry Telephones.

A proposal has been brought forward in the Lake County Council which is deserving of consideration, but rather from what it suggests than from its intrinsic features. According to the Lake correspondent of the Witness, Mr M'Dougall has submitted a proposition to the effect that the telegraphs and telephones of the colony should be available in cases of urgent need of medical or surgical aid at a cheap rate. The necessity for something of the kind is one which is likely to become apparent in such, places as those where it has been mentioned, and where the occupations pursued are naturally productive of frequent accidents. There are few places, however, so remote or so secluded that they are not within more or less easy reach of a telegraph or telephone office connecting with some centre where a medical man resides ; and no doctor^ be it said to the credit of the profession, hesitates a moment to consider the probability of payment before obeying an urgent summons We do not think the mere cost of a message has hitherto stood in anybody's way. Such messages are usuallyshort — generally too short to enable the doctor to learn what is really the matter — and where they are used the press of business is not so great but that an ordinary message will go as quickly as an urgent one. A matter of far more importance is the impossibility of sending such messages at any hour. A Eimple illustration will show this. A miner, say, near a small tov.nship where there is a telephone, gets injured late in the afternoon. His mates hasten to the telephone office, where there is always someone present, and the agent willingly rings up the office at the town where a doctor lives. He gets no response, because it is after 5 o'clock, and it may be so far distant that it is impossible to bring aid more quickly than by waiting for the reopening of the office in the morning. The injured man is thus without professional attendance for some hours longer than he might have been, to the possible risk of his life and to the great anxiety of his friends. It could easily be arranged, we think, in offices which are the centre of a number of lines radiating into smaller outlying districts, that some kind of "tell-tale" system should be brought into operation whereby the person in charge might be made aware that he was required. It is a little incongruous that the country should be covered with a network of electric wires, and that for 16 hours out of the 2i the offices giving access to them should be closed to the public.