DISAPPOINTED.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 49, 11 September 1891, Page 17

DISAPPOINTED.

fE think that we do not exaggerate when we say the country is disappointed with the result of the piesent session of Parliament. People are now in a position to estimate the result, as the end of the session is near at hand, and every one can see what is the amount of wise legislature, which may be expected. Great hopes, in some quarters at least, were entertained as to the ability and desires of the present Parliament to redress grievances, to retrench, and inaugurate an era of employment and progress. But these hopes have, unhappily, come to nothing. Grievances have not been redrtssed. Retrenchment has gone out into the desert, and salaries, reduced last year by the party now in power, have been restored to the old figure, and in some instances increased ; and as to employment and progress, the chief industry of the present year and the principal progress are to be found in the employment given to steamers to carry thousands of the bone and sinew of this country to other lands, to seek for the living which meddle and muddle have denied them here, whilst the progress has consisted in the gradual depletion of the population of the country, and the procession of multitudes of our people to Sydney and Melbourne. Tho situation may be summed up in a few words : the generous and disinterested people of New Zealand have spent millions of money in educating, and raising up in many other useful ways, thousands of young men to enable them to add to the population and prosperity of the neighbouring colonies. Meantime their own country is really going to the dogs for want of an intelligent and sufficiently numerous population. Jt was thought at the time of the last general election that the new Parliament would provide a remedy for these evils, but now that the country has had trial of its wisdom and patriotism, the general conclusion, as far as we can make out, is that the present is the silliest and worst Parliament that has ever sat in New Zealand. The time of members, instead of being devoted to practical legislation, has been frittered away in efforts to put fads and theories, that no nation has ever embodied in laws, on the Statute Book. Practical legislation is evidently not in the line of the present Parliament ; its time has been almost exclusively taken up with the fads and absurdities of certain writers whose works are rather academic exercises for the exhibition of ingenuity and imagination than serious contributions to the literature of politics. People of common sense stand aghast at the sight of our little and obscure Parliament seriously endeavouring to enact as laws theories which the old and great nations of the world abstain from even seriously

discussing. Bat, unhappily, certain New Zealand politicians are bitten with the ambition to lead the nations of the world in what they comically call the road of progress and liberality. It would be more rational, and in every sense more becoming, if they would wait and see the result of their theories in the practice of great nations, and, meantime, devote themselves to the development of the resources of the country and fostering an increase of the population. We may be told that this will be effected by the new land Bill. But this has been the cry for the last twenty years, during which time there have been as many land acts as there have been Parliaments, and yet no appreciable result has been the consequence. In our poor opinion the fault has not been so much in the law as in the administration ot the law. Had there been an honest and intelligent effort to administer the law in the interests of the people throughout these years, the country would have been settled long ago. In common with the vast majority of the people of this country we are ourselves grievously disappointed, and share in the present feeling of despondency induced by the shabby results of a session of Parliament which began with a great flourish of trumpets. The House of Representatives will, no doubt, endeavour to throw the blame on the Legislative Council. But we fancy that the public will do the very opposite, and declare that it is to the Council it is indebted for its escape from the outrageous absurdities of the Bills passed by the House of Representatives. Any wisdom and common sense to which Parliament may be able to lay claim are to be found in the Council, and the existence of the Council has been the source of gieat blessings to the country. No ; it is not to the Legislative Council the failure of legislation is to be attributed, but to the incapacity of the House of Representatives, which has wasted its time and energies in pursuing undeveloped tnd untried theories, instead of endeavouring to create industries providing adequate and suitable employment for the people and devoting its energies to mete out even-handed justice to all classes and sections of the community. So far from doing this the effort appears to us to put class against class, to take vengeance on the most intelligent, prudent, and successful amongst us, and to trample on the rights of minorities and plunder them. There is wide-spread disappointment and dismay, and not without very grave reasons.