Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78

In the Legislature

In the Legislature.

In 1854 the first Parliament of New Zealand met. It was opened on the 24th of May—the Queen's birthday—1854. The Chief Justice, William Martin, administered the oaths to the members. Fitzgerald bad been elected member for Lyttelton, and it is apparent from the record of the proceedings of the first Parliament that the members looked to him as their loader. Here I may state that the first division in the New Zealand Parliament which took place was on the question whether the proceedings were to be opened with prayer. Mr Macandrew moved that before the House proceeded with any further business a prayer should be made for a blessing on their labours. This was opposed by many, because they were afraid that it would lead to the recognition of one church above another, and they desired equality. In the Legislative Council the same question was proposed by Colonel Kenny, and there was a difference of opinion there also as to the use of prayers in Parliament. The matter was arranged by the suggestion of Mr Bell, after-wards Sir Dillon Bell, that the Speaker himself should say the prayers, and this was carried, in the House of Representatives the motion was carried, but Fitzgerald voted with the minority.

Fitzgerald was chosen to propose a reply to the Governor's Speech. The address was short, and couched in beautiful language. In his speech in proposing the address, after pointing out the need of being careful in the expressions used in addressing the Governor, so that their time might not be wasted in recriminations with the chief executive officer., he said:—

"It is not, I hope, presumptuous in me to remind the House that there never was an assembly whose proceedings were watched with more anxious attention or more ardent hope than those in which we are about to engage. You well know for how long a period this colony has been suffering under the effects of a struggle between political parties, or rather, I might almost say, between the people and the Government. You well know how disappointed hope has vented itself in indignant complaints, remonstrancee, petitions, and addresses; you know, too, how all have tended to one end, all have looked to one remedy—the establishment of the political institutions of England. Sir, the wishes and hopes of ten long and anxious years in the history of New Zealand are consummated in the scene which I see around me. . . .

Sir, I have endeavoured to express the feelings by which. I conceive, the framers of this address have been actuated. In calling attention to its language I would first ask the House whether it would not be wise that, sup. pressing for the time all differences of opinion, even in the most important matters, our first set should be one of unanimity and congratulation; that, however we may differ in future times—as differ we shall—however hereafter this House may be divided by the struggles of party and the animosity of faction—as divided it certainly will be; for as it has been justly remarked party is the price we pay for freedom—our first act should be one expressive of our common loyalty to the country of our birth and to the Crown of Her Majesty, and of an earnest and patriotic desire to support Her Majesty's representative in all his efforts for the good government of the country, so far as we shall believe them to be calculated to that end. . . .

There is one other omission in the speech to which I cannot but allude; I mean all allusion to the question of responsible government. I will not precipitate a discussion which is about so soon to be raised on this question. I have only mentioned it for the purpose of remarking that His Excellency appears to me to have exercised a very wise discretion in omitting to mention that subject in the speech. The introduction of the principle of ministerial responsibility is an act which does not, as I conceive it, require the sanction of any new law; it requires a simple act on the part of the supreme executive power, but that act is not to be hurriedly and arbitrarily performed, it should be a spontaneous development of representative institutions. Had His Excellency originated such an act, and had the Chambers not been ripe for its completion, or not been thoroughly satisfied not only of its abstract propriety, but that the time had arrived when it was necessary that the principle should be fully recognised, it is obvious that the Governor would have been placed in a posi- page 7 tion of great embarrassment. I cannot, therefore, for a moment gather from the silence of the speech on this head that any objection to the principle is indicated by the Government, or any desire to shrink from the responsibility, should the necessity of the step become apparent, of carrying it into immediate operation."

His speech is able, statesmanlike, and cloquent, as, indeed, all his speeches were. In fact, reading some of the old "Hansards," and comparing them with the new, I do not think the student of New Zealand history will come to any other conclusion than that in our first Parliament we had men of wisdom, culture. and oratory with which it is doubtful if our recent Parliaments can at all compare.

On June 14th, 1854, Fitzgerald was asked to form a Ministry. He had some correspondence with Dr Monro, towards Sir David Monro, about his joining, but they did not agree as to the attitude the General Government should take up towards the provinces. Dr Monro was an out-and-out Centralist, and Fitzgerald desired that the provinciial institutions should be utilised though not to the extent of some of the extreme Provincialists. The new Cabinet was composed of Fitzgerald (Premier), Sewell, and Weld, and Hartley afterwards joined the Ministry. Mr Dillon Bell was also prom in as a Minister on June 30th, but there was some disagreement on a question of policy, and he resigned some days afterwards. The Ministry only remained in office until August 2nd, when it resigned. The cause of its resignation was that the Governor desired to retain in office Messrs Sinclair, Shepherd, and Swainson, who had been members of the Executive Council before the Constitution Act had been passed, and also because the Governor would not grant full representative government to the colony. On this, Fitzgerald and his colleagues resigned. The next Government was not appointed until the end of the month—August 31st, when Forsaith, Macandrew, Travers, and Edward Jermingham Wakefield formed a Ministry. This Ministry only lasted two days, then the feeling of the House was so strong against it that it resigned. The fight during the first session was mainly on the question of the relationship that should exist between the Executive and the House. On August 17th the Governor prorogued the House. The House then had some backbone, of which this illustration can be given:—On August 17th the Governor sent two or three messages to the House. The first was a message enclosing returns of electoral rolls, and the second was a vindication of the position he had taken up in reference to the Executive Council. Immediately after the second message a third message was announced, and the members knew that it was a message proroguing the House. Before the third message could be read Mr Sewell rose to speak, and he moved that his Excellency's Message No. 32 (the message of vindication) be at once taken into consideration. This would have deferred the prorogation until the House had had time to protest. Mr Travers and Mr Wakefield, however, pointed out that by the standing orders, whenever a message was received from the Governor it must be at once read. To meet this Mr Fitzgerald moved that the standing orders be suspended, and a division was taken on his motion, but as twenty-four member—that is, two-thirds of the members—were not in the House when the division was taken, the standing orders could not be suspended. Shortly afterwards, Dr Featherston and Mr Moorhouse and another came in, and, with the Speaker, made up the quorum of twenty-four. There were twenty-five present. Another motion to suspend the standing orders was then moved and carried, and the House went into committee, considered the Governor's message, and passed ten very strong resolutions against the Governor's conduct in failing to establish proper Ministerial responsibility. It was only after these resolutions had been carried that the message proroguing Parliament was read.

The Assembly was called together on August 31st, and a long speech was delivered by the Governor, the second Ministry, as I have before stated, being then in power. After the resignation of this Ministry, Parliament was carried on without any Government being appointed from the House of Representatives until 1856. when the BellSewell Ministry was formed.

In 1857 Fitzgerald was stricken with illness which forced his retirement from politics. He resigned the Super-intendency, and Mr Moorhouse was appointed in his stead. In 1858 he left for England, via Australia, in a small page 8 schooner called the Speedy, which took six weeks to reach Australia. He took his wife and his four children with him. From 1858 to 1800 ho remained in London, holding the office of Emigration Agent for the province of Canterbury, and during that time he was not idle. He was on all favourable occasions bringing the Canterbury settlement under the notice of the British people. In 1859 he was informally offered the governorship of the new colony of Queensland, and at another time he was offered the governorship of British Columbia, but on account of his health he had to decline both otters. In 1800 he returned to New Zealand, and for a time devoted his attention to the pastoral industry, having a run in partnership with the late Mr Hunter Brown, Mr Percy Cox, and Mr Drapor, his brother-in-law. In 1863 he became proprietor of the Christchurch "Press" newspaper, which he owned until he left Canterbury in 1867. He had entered politics again in 1862, being elected member for Ellesmere in that year, succeeding Mr Rowley who had resigned. He was again recognised in Parliament as one of the ablest men in the House of Representatives, and hi that year, 1862, he delivered perhaps the ablest and most eloquent speech that was ever delivered in the New Zealand Parliament, or perhaps in any Parliament. I was told by a member who was present that no speech ever moved the House as this speech did. He said :—

"The present state of things cannot last. The condition of the colony is not one of peace; it is a state of armed and suspicious neutrality. If you do not quickly absorb this king movement into your own Government, you will come into collision with it. and, once light up again the torch of war in these islands, and these feeble and artificial institutions you are now building up will be swept away like houses of paper in the flames. Tribe after tribe will be drawn into the struggle, and you will make it a war of races. Of course, you will conquer, but it will be the conquest of the tomb. Two or three years of war will eradicate every particle of civilisation from the native mind, and will elicit all the fiercest instincts of his old savage nature. The tribes, broken up, without social or military organisation, will be scattered through the country in bands of merciless banditti. The conflagration of Taranaki will be lighted up again in every border of the colony : and in self-preservation you will be compelled—as other nations have been compelled be fore—to hunt the miserable native from haunt to haunt till he is destroyed like the beasts of the forest. I am here to-night to appeal against so miserable, so inhuman, a consummation. We are here this evening standing on the threshold of the future holding the issues of peace and war, of life and death, in our hands. I see some honourable friend around me whose counsels I must ever respect, and whose tried courage we all admire who will toll me that you cannot govern this race until you have conquered them. I reply, in the words which the poet has placed in the mouth of the great Cardinal. 'In the hands of men-entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. Take away the sword States may be saved without it. I know well that evil days may come when the sacred inheritance of light and truth, which God has given to a nation to hold and to transmit, may only be saved by an appeal to the last ordeal of nations—the trial by war; but I know too, how great the crime which rests or the souls of those who. for any less vital cause or for any less dire necessity, precipitate that fatal issue. I grudge not tho glory of those who have achieve the deliverance of a people or the triumph of a cause by any sacrifice of human life or human happiness; but claim a higher glory for those who, is reliance on a law more powerful the that of force, and wielding spells modes mighty than the sword, have led the nations by paths of peaceful prospenty to the fruition of an enduring civilisation. I claim the higher glory for those who, standing on the pinnacle of human power, have striven to imitate the gas eminent of Him who 'taketh up the simple out of the dust, and liftet the poor out of the mire.' And I claim the highest glory of all for that man who has most thoroughly penetrated the deepest and loftiest mystery in the of human government. 'the gentleness that maketh great.' I have stood be side a lonely mound in which lies buried the last remnant of a tribe which fell men. women, and children—before the tomahawks of their ancient foes: and sometimes shudder to think that son, too, may stand beside a simple monument—the work of our hands-blush with the ignominy of feeling that, after all the memorial of the Christian lawgiver is but copied find that of the cannibal and the savage appeal to the House to-night to [unclear: ina]- page 9 rate a policy of courageous and munificent justice. I have a right to appeal to you as citizens of that nation which, deaf to the predictions of the sordid and the timid, dared to give liberty to her glares. I appeal to you to-night in your sphere to perform an act of kindred greatness. I appeal to you not only on behalf of the ancient race whose destinies are hanging in the ha lance, but on behalf of your own sons and your sons' sons, for I venture to predict that, in virtue of that mysterious law of our being by which great deeds once done become incorporated into the life and soul of a people, enriching the source from whence flows through all the ages the inspiration to noble thoughts and the incitement to generous actions, I venture to predict that, among the traditions of that great nation, which will one day rule these islands, and the foundations of which we are now laving, the most cherished and the most honoured will be that wise, bold, and generous policy which gave the Magna Charta of their liberties to the Maori people."