se who
had drawn up the constitution had forgotten that Government, through
responsible Ministers forming a Cabinet and possessing the confidence
of the elective Chamber, must be a necessary part of their system. Not
only was no provision made for it in the written constitution, but the
Colonial Office had sent the Governor no instructions on the subject.
The Viceroy was surrounded by Patent Officers, some of whom had been
administering since the first days of the Colony. No place of refuge
had been prepared for them, and, naturally, they were not going to
surrender their posts without a struggle. Colonel Wynyard was wax in
the hands of the cleverest of these--Mr. Attorney-General Swainson.
When the Parliament met, he asked three members to join with his old
advisers in forming a Cabinet. They agreed to do so, and one of
them, Mr. James Edward Fitzgerald, a Canterbury settler of brilliant
abilities, figured as the Colony's first Premier. An Irish gentleman,
an orator and a wit, he was about as fitted to cope with the peculiar
and delicate imbroglio before him as Murat would have been to conceive
and direct one of Napoleon's campaigns. In a few weeks he and his
Parliamentary colleagues came to loggerheads with the old officials
in the Cabinet, and threw up the game. Then came prorogation for a
fortnight and another hybrid ministry, known to New Zealand history as
the "Clean-Shirt Ministry," because its leader ingenuously informed
Parliament that when asked by the Governor to form an administration,
he had gone upstairs to put on a clean shirt before presenting himself
at Government House. The Clean-Shirt Ministry lived for just two days.
It was born and died amid open recrimination and secret wire-pulling,
throughout which Mr. Attorney Swainson, who had got himself made
Speaker of the Upper House while retaining his post as the Governor's
legal adviser, and Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, who was ostensibly nothing
but a private member of the Lower House, pulled the strings behind
the scenes. Wakefield began by putting himself at the head of the
agitation for responsible Ministers. When later, after negotiating
with the Governor's _entourage_, he tried compromise, the majority of
the House turned angrily upon him. At last a compromise was arrived
at. Colonel Wynyard was to go on with his Patent Officers until a Bill
could be passed and assented to in England establishing responsible
government; then the old officials were to be pen