The Evening Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED. The Evening and the Morning news. FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 1875

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1712, 13 August 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED. The Evening and the Morning news.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 1875

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Sin George Grey aptly characterised the principles of the Abolition Bill as a system of bribes. In doing so he no doubt referred to the proposed payments to road boards and municipalities, by which it was hoped to raise an unthinking cry against the existing system, and a readiness to swallow the Government measures without due consideration. But the open bribery of the bills is not confined to these provisions. Take section 16 of clause 10 of the Abolition Bill, as an example : "The Governor may from time to ti me delegate all or any such powers, duties, and functions either to the person who immediately before the abolition of a province hereunder was the Superintendent of such abolished province, or to such person or persons as the Governor may think fit." Why, we ask, were the Superintendents specially introduced here in a clause giving general powers to the Government to delegate the present Superintendents' powers to anyone it may choose to appoint. Surely no more direct invitation could have been made to the Superintendents in Parliament to sell the people who had placed them in office, and ao;ept the Government certainty for their present precarious tenure of an office dependent on the popular will. Let the people beware ! Corruption which is paraded without scruple before the public gaze bodes no good to them. Again, section 3, clause 13, provides : " The Provincial Gazette, or Provincial Government Gazette, or other similar expressions shall be deemed to mean " The Neio Zealand Gazette, or such newspaper as from time to time may be appointed by the Governor for the purpose of inserting therein notifications of any kind relative to the government of the colony," etc. The public may not perceive at once the full meaning and effect of this clause, but every newspaper proprietor in the colony knows that it embodies the principle of enormous special patronage of the press—in short, the power to subsidize journals in every city of the colony to the extent of £1000 per annum. Already the fruits of Government patronage have become manifest in a wholesale corruption which, we regret to say, is a disgrace to British journalism. There are newspapers in New Zealand which, but for the direct Bubsidy of the Government;

in advertising, would have been long ago abandoned as unprofitable, and now, in the clause quoted, the Government have plainly set before the press the price of their support. Tbe more the bill is examined, the more clearly will be seen the enormity of the bribery attempted upon the representatives of the people with the view of inducing them to sell those rights a_d privileges which it should be their sacred duty to guard. The system of Government promises of reward for the purpose of securing political support has long been a public scandal in Parliament, but now we are favoured with the spectacle of an attempt to bribe a whole community, a parallel to which it would be hard to find in the history of any British colony. To appreciate the reality of this, it must be borne in mind that the proposed measures do not grant any new power of local self-government; that they do not change the existing provincial system, except for the worse ; in fact that their whole intention and scope is to procure from the people a concession of those powers of local self-government which they already possess, and the inducement offered is simply a money consideration tendered to one section of the people as represented by certain existing bodies, in return for which they are expected to sell rights of self-government now enjoyed by the whole of the population.