The Evening Star. MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1870.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 139, 20 June 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star.

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1870.

In our last issue we published the omitted, but not the least important and interesting, portion of the Q-over-nor's speech. Taken altogether the "address from the throne" has the merits of brevity and non-commitment, two eyer-to-be-commended qualities in a ministerial programme, words break no bones, and three-fourths of the speech are commendatory and selfcongratulatory. There is the usual important information on general topics, with which the public is officially supposed to be unacquainted ; for example, we are advised regarding the New Mail Eoute, that "It a] so provides speedy communication with Great Britain." " Colonization," whatever that means, is going to be "renewed," it having been suspended, apparently, in New Zealand. It is too trite a process to criticise the Queen's English, as exemplified in the Queen's Speech ; but the present manifesto is very tempting. It must surely be from the number of tongues that are engaged in licking it into shape, that the opening speech is so invariably queer composition. The Ministerial promises are at the end. If we had not been induced, by experience, to know that these, like pie-crust, are made to be broken, we should say the programme contains the burthen of the people's political wishes; for if

we except the solitary proposition with local bearing, the union of two Southern provinces, the questions proposed for solution are those that hare been forcing themselves on the universal public mind. The re-adjustment of the representation is demanded by the changes which time has wrought, and such as time always will bring, and it is a pity that some statesman will not submit a scheme that will be selfadjusting according to the varying progress of the Colony; instead of one requiring spasmodic efforts, which produce and perpetuate degrading local antagonisms. The "un English" Ballot is forcing its way in spite of British stubborness, and we may anticipate that throughout Victoria's wide dominions the thoroughly "English" systems of bribery and corruption as revealed by recent investigations in England, and of the bludgeon and brickbat, as customary in the sister island will soon be among the quaint curiosities of the past. The laws of, Bankruptcy will require amending till; time shall be no more. We trust: however that the savage relic, imprisonment for debt will no longer defile the statute book of New Zealand; and while all needed provision will be made to discover and punish fraud, unavoidable misfortune will not be punished as a crime. It is also to be hoped that the public courts of law will not be employed in doing what is the proper business of creditors, viz.—administering in the creditors' own_ property. A simple means of levying rates from absentees while their property is being improved by the efforts of residents, is an absolute necessity of the country; the equalization of the duty of gold according to its value is simply justice, though we think the proposition in a contempory to make it retrospective would not have the intended effect unless with the impossible condition that the duty be given back to the man who originally unearthed the ounces. The cumbrous and antiquated system of New Zealand conveyancing will in all probablity be some time thrust aside, though with the amount of stolidstupidity,andvestedinterests, and unreasoning prejudice, which Torrens' simple system of making titles direct from the Crown, has had to encounter in the neighbouring colonies, it is not to be expected that old fogeyism so rampant in New Zealand will give up the old system on the first assault. The most interesting item of all in the Governor's speech is the prospect of connection by electric cable with Australia; "With the probable speedy connection of Norman town on the Grulf of Carpentaria with Batavia and Singapore, the time may be nearer than we have thought when these solitary islands in the wide Pacific may drop their isolation, and New Zealand will feel the pulsations from the events of time throbbing simultaneously round the world.