LOCAL PATRIOTISM.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 365, 20 January 1880, Page 2

LOCAL PATRIOTISM.

In a recent speech, Lord Derby insisted on the importance of the best men in every community taking an interest in local affairs. Local patriotism, he said, is a quality which we cannot too carefully encourage ; for of all kinds of patriotism it is at once the most needed and the least selfish. I hare never feared that, as regards our great national affairs, there will be among English people any want of zeal and devotion. The excitement created by the handling of vast interests, the world-wide fame which is the result of Parliamentary labor, when directed by real ability, the consciousness of acting a part on the historical stage, will always attract high intellect and save our Imperial Senate from being vulgarised and degraded. (Hear, hear.) But we have not quite the same security in municipal matters. They offer less to influence the imagination. They require in these days almost' as diligent and minute attention, and the reputation which they confer is necessarily of a very local and limited character. You cannot attach too much importance to having your local affairs in the hands of. men who wish to be really thinking of what they can do for the town, not what the town can do for them. Anybody who has read the exposure of affairs in New York at the time when a certain clique ruled there supreme may see to what depth of. corruption and jobbery it is possible for a great city to descend, when the most respectable and honest-minded men of all classes keep aloof from its affairs, and leave them in the hands of persons to; whom they are only a profitable speculation. (Hear, hear.) That, I think, is for English cities among the the possible dangers of the future—a danger increased by the inevitable severance of classes in a great town, and by the disposition of those who have made money to leave the town for the country.