The Wanganui Chronicle. AND PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1889.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXII, Issue 11485, 14 September 1889, Page 2

The Wanganui Chronicle. AND PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1889 .

' ' — i : — Sir Harry Atkinson is a political wonder. Loved ; by,, a f^wi .but feared by a greater number, he is, recognised by all as by far the greatest power in Parliament. His .personal position is impregnable, unassailable— a fact which the Opposition have, been .forced to, admit, and which has inclined them of late to leave him 'alone, and to attack his colleagues separately and singly. It is a question, indeed,, whether, if all h;s colleagues w^re forced to resign, Sir Harry could 'not carry on the government of the country and the business of Parliament nearly as well, without, them as with them. • • The. Opposition know this just as well as we do — but they know also that if he is obliged to dispense ,w ( ith one set of. colleagues, he, must ,choose;- another set, arid .it is his colleagues; who g?t him into trouble The Napier Telegraph, wfe , .observe, attributes all the Opposition to the Premier— direct and inclined— to his retrenchment policy, and to tlie bitterness i .-of present and , ex-civil servants,. and of the people, of, Wellington generally thereat. In noticing the fact that the Evening Post has now taken its old enemy, Mr Fisher, under its r >yin», our Napier contemporary says : — " This maybo' accounted for by the fact that Mr Fisher has gone clean over to the Oppo? sition— the 'advocates of extravagance— f and -that Wellington owes a great deal to the scatter^cash policy of the pasti Prompted by the alternate howls and threats of those who once lived by Goi vernment extravagance, tho Opposition have been pushed to the utmost extremity. Three times have they endeavoured to oust the Ministry by motions of direct want-of-confidence, and three times have they been signally defeated, and defeated, too, with the knowledge that, if successful, they could never hold possession of office. A different system of tactics had to be adopted, and a more cowardly one, or a more unworthy one, could hardly be imagined. These taotigs have for thoir end the destruction of public confidence in individual Ministers, ' by attacking them, as it were, in sections. We have seen the success of this system in the case of Mr Hislop, and the same thing is now being dono with regard to Mr Fergus. To a minor extent it was tried on the Premier, in 1 connection with his' treatment of the Te Kooti affair, but his position was too strong. It served, however, one of its objects, which was to delay public business and to make it nh~ pear that only by the forbearance of the Opposition the Ministry held office, but that none of their Bills were allowed to pass.' These are- some, and soine ; only, of the results of- sowing theseeds of retrenchment. Sir Harry Atkinsonknew what' lie had to expect from the obstructionist tools who are in the hands of a disappointed lot of office seekers and discharged public servants. But, in spite of every difficulty, the Premier has gone steadily- forward, and what renders his action the more praiseworthy, is that he Las largely, , put it out of jthe powor of his , successors to re-establish a course of Apolitical corruption, of - Ministerial paWi nage and extravagance. ■ , The office' of a . Minister has no longer, its attractiveness 'it, once possessed, and even Sir Kob'ert Stout declires to re-enter public life. Like dogs baying at the moon, so are the prosessional politicians howling for what, let us hope, they will never get again/ Tms is how a Wellington gentleman, a correspondent of the Napier Telegraph, expresses himsolf in regard to the preIsont session of Parliament:— "Well, .of all the sessions of Parliament for waste of time aud public uxoney I give the session just passed tho palm. I say just passed, for it has virtually ended. I believe I am correct when I statics that there have been six want-of-eonfldence juofcions [tabled; tho last fizzle was of suck ft Mdiculous nature that tho Opposition flared not vote on it. The other evening the House spent tho whole afternoon and night with endless talk over the railway estimates ; , although now they are administered by Commissioners the vote j had to be passed. But when that time j had boon wasted, the Public Works Es.tii mates wore passed in about half-an-hour, 1 and almost without question ; that is the ' way this precious machine does its wort. j Tho sooner affairs are administered locally I the better for all iia'ids ; thousands and I thousands a year will be saved. This j belief ia gaining ground moro and more, j particularly by the country members, i who are in a position to see the working lof both establishments — localism and ! centralism. Nearly all the Government I measures have disappeared or are being j slaughtered. The Nativo Bill will pass, ■ and a few unimportant bills to rectify i blunders, but several useful Bills, such t as the Registrar of Electors Bill, Ac., i will be, I am pretty certain, confined to I the wasto paper basket until next session. I Your members have beon very silent this year — and wisely ; the whole time of tho House has been taken up by about sh- or seven members, who speak upon all posI sible and impossiblo subjects. The tone '! of the House is larrikin to an intensity. | A few respectable members endeavoured at tho [commencement of the session to restrain ils propensity, but gave it up in I despair. If next eliwtion does not improve the tone of our Parliament gooil-by to I the high position Now Zealand has , hitherto held in regard to tho orderly onasner she has conducted her affairs/

Mb Op iiond, the member for Napier, in referring the other night to the transference of the education building vote from the Educafon Department to the Department of the Minister for Defence; expressed himself as follows : — " He did not suppose • there was any intention to make any differences in the mode of its application; but the Committee would like to know, before going into the details of the education vote, that there, was no intention to interfere in any way witf- the mode of distribution of the b::i. ling vote. He would ask the Gove; iment, m the distribution of that, vote, to think seriously of not applying it entirely on the population basis, which he did not think was altogether "a sound" principle. The Government must have seen that the population basis was not the soundest, and that districts should be dealt with according to their necessities. That was one duty which appertained to the head office. The Hoitse would never delegate that duty elsewhere. Who are going to apportion tne money if the Minister did not do it? He hoped the G>vernment would giye the House 1 some statement on this point. And, while dealing with that part of the question, he regretted very much that money allotted to school buildings this year was less than in former years, because the requirements had become much greater, and the cause of Education would suffer unless these Boards were put in. a position to carry out their duties properly." The holding back of the wheat crops by our Southern farmers at the time of the Australiandrought last summer, is thus referred to by the San Francisco correspondent of the New York Times: — Latest reports from Sydney show the recent attempts of New Zealand farmers to control the wheat markets of New South . Wales and Queensland to have resulted in a disastrous failure. It caused the market to be glutted with California .wheat and a general decline in prices.' : American shippers will be seriously affected, but only for a time. New South .Wales |and Queensland will' average a •general' consumption of about 700,000 jbushels. This amount is supplied from <the crop's' of the neighbouring colonies oc ,California, South Australia, Victoria,- arid New Zealand. They have hitherto supplied the United Kingdom, the .Cape of ..Gy.Qd Hope, and Mauritius. This year's crops,,,however, proved insufficient when the foreign markets' had been supplied. Three colonies found that they had not enough of their own products to answer the demands of the home consumption. New Zealand farmers failed, to figure on California being a heavy producer. The farmers held their crops' back for a higher market until advices froni' here , showed California's crop to be. unusually '. large., Brokers of New South Wales an,d i, Queensland showed a preference for Calj- ', fornia wheat. Owing to lowei' prices arid L to save themselves, New Zealand farmers were compelled to unload rapidly and at ' low prices, until the New Zealand crop ' was consumed.