THE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE.
ITO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:]
SIR,—Now that the great Constitutional debate is over, there will be great danger lest the admirable lessons urged with so much force and earnestness by the Liberal leaders be lost or forgotten, by the time, be it sooner or later, that a new Parliament is called together. There need be no complaint in future of the hollowness of old party cries, and of the blending and obliteration of party distinctions. There is now a clear issue raised. Besides the standing and cogent question of increased taxation, there are the various Constitutional points which have now fairly been opened out,—the effect of the measures and schemes of the new system of " Imperial " Government, and the minor consequences of the reactionary course of policy upon which the party in power is now fully bent, all which have been from time to time pertinently and pertinaciously dwelt upon in the pages of the Spectator. I cannot help thinking, however, that a great many of these lessons fail to reach the eyes of those who most require the teaching. The Premier has again been urging on his provincial followers the duty of organisation and strict party discipline. What the Liberal Associations seem to require is to be furnished with clear, concise statements of the Constitutional questions at issue, with summaries of the way in which our political liberties have been gained, trifled with, or lost. I often regret that the pith of a first- rate speech or of a first-rate article is not made more use of, to spread the influence which in the first instance it must legiti- mately carry. A succinct narrative of the retrograde action of the present Government, in which every fact and statement would be vouched, but in which the tendency and animus of every measure and step would be clearly shown, might prove as
successful a Irochure as the letters of " Verax." A blight of oblivion seems to fall on everything more than a month old, and a mere résumé of the acts of the present Ministers would prove their gravest accusation. Some such method of propagandism would, I am convinced, aid in regaining that foothold we, as Liberals, have lost, and in enlightening the mind of the electorate as to it,.s rights and wrongs.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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