Chapter XX

IN PARLIAMENT

  “Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small
    That stood upon the floor or by the wall,
  And some loquacious Vessels were, and some
    Listened, perhaps, but never talked at all.”

When we come to look at the men as distinct from the measures of the parliament of New Zealand between 1870 and 1890, perhaps the most interesting and curious feature was the Continuous Ministry.  With some approach to accuracy it may be said to have come into office in August, 1869, and to have finally expired in January, 1891.  Out of twenty-one years and a half it held office for between sixteen and seventeen years.  Sir Edward Stafford turned and kept it out for a month in 1872; Sir George Grey for two years, 1877-79; Sir Robert Stout for three years, 1884-7.  None of the ministries which thus for longer or shorter periods supplanted it ever commanded strong majorities, or held any thorough control over the House.  The Continuous Ministry was a name given to a shifting combination, or rather series of combinations, amongst public men, by which the cabinet was from time to time modified without being completely changed at any one moment.  It might be likened to the pearly nautilus, which passes, by gradual growth and movement, from cell to cell in slow succession; or, more prosaically, to that oft-repaired garment, which at last consisted entirely of patches.  Like the nautilus, too, it had respectable sailing and floating powers.  The continuous process was rather the outcome of rapidly changing conditions and personal exigencies than of any set plan or purpose.  With its men its opinions and actions underwent alterations.  Naturally the complete transformation which came over the Colony during the two decades between 1870 and 1890, had its effect on the point of view of colonists and their public men.  The Continuous Ministry began by borrowing, and never really ceased to borrow; but its efforts at certain periods of the second of these two decades to restrict borrowing and retrench ordinary expenditure were in striking contrast to the lavishness of the years between 1872 and 1877.  At its birth under Sir William Fox its sympathies were provincial and mildly democratic.  It quickly quarrelled with and overthrew the Provinces, and became identified with Conservatism as that term is understood in New Zealand.  From 1869 to 1872 its leaders were Fox, Vogel, and McLean.  Fox left it in 1872; Major Atkinson joined it in 1874; Vogel quitted it in 1876; McLean died in 1877.  Put out of office by Sir George Grey, it was for a short time led once more by Sir William Fox.  It came back again in 1879 as a Hall-Atkinson-Whitaker combination.  Hall retired in 1881, but Atkinson and Whitaker, helped by his advice, continued to direct it to the end.