they both would) the veiy undignified and ab- I surd expressions we have quoted would have 'been avoided — "a consummation" which j sooner or later both sides will agree was wor thy "devoutly to be wished." Why was such an ill-assorted union not more speedily dissolved ? The Governor evidently had clearer views of the right course than the Ministers. He says in a memorandum dated October 17, "If Ministers thought, on any of the occasions to which they allude, that the Governor in declining to fellow their advice was preventing them from carrying out the Policy which was affirmed by the Assembly, and to which they were pledged, the Gover nor submits that the constitutional course would have been upon any such occasion to have resigned," a conclusion so just that Min isters can only say in reply, " Perhaps it is to be regretted that they did not do so, {i.e. re sign), but they were from time to time led on by the hope that the differences between his Excellency and themselves would be cleared away by the concessions on their part." This unconscious admission supplies the key to the whole mystery. The fact is not that there is something so inherently wrong in the present colonial system that constitutional government is an impossibility or an absurdity, but it is that the composition of the late ministry made it essentially an Auckland government, in which Mr. Fox allowed himself to be hood winked by his astuter colleagues, who saw clearly enough that so long as they held office the iEterests of their province were secured, in comparison with which the welfare of the whole colony was a matter of mere secondary importance. How completely this was the case is shown again by Mr. 