ELECTORAL NOTES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5735, 1 December 1896, Page 4

ELECTORAL NOTES.

— « A gentleman well known in Christchurch commercial circles sends the following : — Very comprehensive lists of the delinquencies of our Liberal Government have from time to time been publipb. ed by the Conservative Press, including diminution of the values of our exports, "spoliation," giving large landowners too much (for the " spoiled " estates), letting the _ resumed lands below their value, extracting too much revenue from the State tenants, and other enormities. If you find the foregoing charges contradictory, that is not my ■ fault, they have all been made. But there is a serious falling off in the returns in one department that may, with equal justice, be laid at the door of this well-abused Government, but which seems to have escaped the eagle (or should we say vulture?) eyes of editors representing 1 "men with a stake." Having obtained access to several years' volumes of records on the subject, I find that while the number of bankruptcies during the last three years of the Conservative Administration, 1888, 1889 and 1890, was 2253, during the first three years of the Liberal Administration, 1891, 1892 and 1893, the number was only 1605. This is really very significant, and to show that I have not selected a period that is particularly favourable to the Liberals, I may state that the last three years of the Liberal Administration give practically the same result as the first three — 1648 bankruptcies—and that the current year promises to be by far the best of the lot. The loudest cry from the Maoriland Tory party is (says the Bulletin) against the Seddon Government's "experimental legislation." Yet every good thing that was ever done was experimental at first j also every bad thing. If anything is to be done somebody must experiment with it; we can't all be slavish copyists, for then there would be no one to copy. The party which speaks as if experimental legislation is necessarily a curse merely because it is experimental, is a dreary, wooden-headed thing. The same journal offers some very characteristic observations about colonial Parliaments and colonial public, men. "Maoriland Tory papers," it says, "remark, with painful unanimity, that the Parliament just deceased is the very worst the province ever had. Looking back on the past fifteen or twenty years, the present writer can't remember any Parliament in any Australian province which wasn't the very worst Parliament on record, so the above statement was only to be expected. Also he doesn't expect that there ever will be a Parliament which isn't the worst which Australia has seen up to date. Likewise there isn't a live statesman who can compare with the statesmen who are dead, and there isn't likely to be. Yet, despite the familiar wail of the local pessimist, the Bulletin reckons that Kingston, Turner and Seddon can compare without any disadvantage to the old politicians that Australia weeps ahout so much now that they are dead, and who were no great shakes .when they were alive; and that Parliaments to-day are about as good as they were fifty years a*o ; and that the giants of bygone times were about the usual size. Looking back into the haze of our cheap antiquity, it doesn't seem as if these alleged giants ever did anything so very enormous after all." The idea of a Government elected by Parliament is (says the Bulletin) distinctly gaining ground in Maoriland. The success of the Seddon Ministry is to a great extent the cause. With the ordinary kind of Parliament, where the ordinary Parkes and the commonplace Eobertson, or the average Duncan Gillies and the plain, dull Jimmy Munro, scramble for office, the party system is not so utterly bad as it might appear. The only way in which Parliament can exercise any real influence over the Ministry is by throwing it out, but Parkes and Eobertson and Gillies and Munro were all so much alike that the Legislature could swap Premiers once a month and not notice the difference. Therefore, if the sole means of keeping Gillies or Munro in order was to throw him out he could be thrown out without anybody being noticeably the worse. A system where the only real influence Parliament can exercise over the Government is by casting it downstairs is stupid enough, but if the Government .'. is so ordinary that half-a-dozen equally good ones o-vn be found at any time, and fo commonplace that no one misses it when it is <vone, then the obvious policy is to cast it down the stair and say no move about it. M.ioriland, however, is in a different situation. The Seddon C.ibinet ia growing somewhat bounceable and autocratic ns the result of much success. The country can't afford to throw it out when the dreadful Eussell clan is the alternative. Therefore, the Legislature has less control over Eichard of Kumara than over any previous Premier, and the need for an arrangement which will enable it to have some influence over Seddon grows more and more obvious The only influence provided under the pre ent (system is to warn St'dd- n that, if ne grows overbearing, Ru- se'l will be put in his place. But Kussell is such a ghastly impossibility that the warning ia obvi msly. lof no account. As long as Russell is the ' alternative there is hardly any bad or corrupt or stupid thing that the present Cabinet couldn't do if it wanted to.