SIR JULIUS VOGEL'S REPLY TO MR MACANDREW.

Clutha Leader, Volume II, Issue 94, 27 April 1876, Page 3

SIR JULIUS VOGEL'S REPLY TO MR MACANDREW.

Wellington, April 20. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 6th April in reply to miuo of tho 28th March, in which I informed your Honor of Messrs Gisborne, Seed, and Knowles' projected visit, and asked your good offices on thoir behalf. Your letter opens up the whole question of tho Abolition of the Provinces. Ido not feel that it is right for me to discuss with you the general question, for to do so would involve a political controversy, into which it would be inexpedient to enter, because each of us is addressing the other in his capacity of administering, not framing, tho laws. Yet there are points in your letter to which I feel called on to reply, and I must comment upon them, although I am aware in doing so, I cannot altogether avoid the political discussion which I deprecate. The Government conceive it to be thoir duty to accept the law as it stands, aud to make the necessary preparations for giving it effect. Tho idea that the Assembly will bo willing to except Ota<*o from the operation of the Act seems to the Government altogether chimerical. Your Honor seems to base it on two grounds— one, that the the people of Otago are wholly averse to Aboli- ; tion; 'the other, that the Colony will benefit, from it at the expense of Otago. To take the latter first, it seems to me that your Honor's own conclusions answer this point. You state that " tho probable revenue of Otago may be sot down at about one-half that of tho I whole Colony." You consider also that/stripped of all extraneous matter, " the Colonial finance, and not tho good of the people of New Zealand, is at the bottom of the proposed changes." If it I be the case that Colonial finance is the cause of the change, and that Otago being in it, your Honor's argument amounts to this : The wealth, of Otago far exceeds that of the other Provinces, and therefore its interest is to evade a common surate sharo of the general responsibility*/" Clearly such a deduction, if tho premises are admitted, could not be accepted. I will not deny that Colonial finances makes Abolition necessary,., but by the expression " Colonial Finance " I do not mean, as your Honor appears to do, solely the expenditure of the Colonial Government. The Governments — Provincial and General together—are spending much more than the credit of the Colony can afford. The difficulties arising out of Provincial borrowing stopped all large Provincial works after 1867 and before 1870. At the latter poried the Colony stepped in and said that although the Provincial Governments could not be permitted to borrow, the works should be done for them, No Province has received larger consideration than Otago. The expenditure there has been, and is, absolutely gigantic considering the population, but, I am glad to feel asured, not larger than the capabilities of the Provvince justify, and I may very correctly have unlimited faith in Otago's capabilites. But we do not supply the money for developing them, and common prudence speaks that we should defer to the opinions of those who do, and who urge us to be content with a moderately rapid rate of progress. But your Honor draws no line. No amount of expenditure has contented you ; the cry is still for more. Ii - stead of Otago beins: a sufferer by Colonial finance, it is as much as any other Provinco the cause of tho Colonial finance requiring the extinction of the Provinces. Other Provincos, it is true, have had to receive moro or less exceptional assistance from the revenue, which Otago has not required ; but no Provinco has asked for largo sums more freely— no Province has shown itself less disposed to restrain expenditure.

During the last session of tho Provincial Council, appropriations were passed amounting to £909,000. Concurrently the Province has sacrificed its land by large sales to runholders ; it has endeavored to withdraw from ordinary purposes enormous blocks of country, for fear the land might be otherwise absorbed ; iv short, the Provincial Government for some time past has proceeded as fast as it possibly could in anticipation, apparently,. of some dreaded change. I wholly disagree, then, with the idea that the Colony will benefit from Abolition at the expense of Ot\go. The benefit will be on tho side of the various districts which compose the Province, the resources of which will bo placed more immediately under their own control, and dealt with less lavishly than of late has been tho case.

In thus criticising the Provincial Government, lam only acting in self-defence. Your Honor impugns the Colonial finance as vicious, and says the Province is sacrificed, My endeavor has been to Bhow that the evil is not whore you have supposed it. Instead of ©tago suffering from the Colony, the people must bo blind indeed if they are unaware that, both in respect to public works and immigration, the Colony has done for them in five years that which the Province could not have effected in more than double the period.

Now, as to the first ground on which it seems to me your Honor rests your expectations that the Assembly will except Otago from the abolition —namely that the people are opposed to it,- - I should be inclined to give much more weight to that ground did f not know that the people wholly misunderstand the meaning Jof Abolition. Your Honor's letter is a proof of this. It abounds with evidence that you altogether misunderstand what abolition will effect,- or what the people require. When your Honor complains, of a large extent of country like Taranaki having more representatives than the City of Dunedin, you ignore one of the causes of the prosperity of the Colony. Now Zealand has thriven because it is not a city-ridden country ; because the rural districts have not been sacrificed to make huge cities. The country districts are the sources from which the wealth flows to- the towns. Evil will be the day when they are given only a population representation, and a square mile in a town is allowed larger power- than 1000 square miles in the country, The expressions " political communiopism,'* " Provincial Institutions," 4 ' wantonly destroyed, " ' ' system of adm frustration of its local affairs which is to be centred at "Wellington," "depriving it (Otago) of its fo venues and bringing them under the sole appropriation of tho Parliament at Wellington," show that your Honor's dreams have not realised what Abolition means, It is fair to suppose that the people on whose behalf you speak are similarly misinformed, and in the face of this- want of acquaintance with the effects of Abolition their alleged opposition to it has little weight. No part of Provincial institutions which concerns the interests or the real local powers of the people will be destroyed. The people will possess much more local control than, hitherto, and the ahsorp' "tion of their revenue is mythical. • What will take placo is this : — The form of Provincialism will cease, and so. -will the powers of a small . egislature. Certain services, buch as

the charge of gaols and police, will be managed by the officers of the General Government, without 99 out of 100 people being aware of tho change, and Wellington will have no more to do with the matter than it has to do with your local post and telegraph offices. Por years tho management of the police at Auckland has beeu in the hands of the General Government without the peopls feeling that their local privileges are curtailed, whilst they have recognised the thoroughly efficient manner in which the duties have been performed. But in respect to real local powers, the decentralisation will bo complete. As a first evidence of decentralisation, the towns will be distinct from, and havo no powers over, the country districts ; but the towns will not be uncared for. Besides the revenue from licenses, they will have a direct subsidy. The road districts, wherever thoy exist, will not be under the control of the larger districts. They, as well as those larger districts called counties, will have independent revenues, independent duties, independent powers. The chairmen of counties will be representatives— elected men. The administration of tho land will continue io be localised ; the land revenues will be strictly devoted to local purposes ; some small contributions {may, perhaps, he given to the trunk railways, which cannot be regarded as local either iv their nature or purpose, and the management of which the Colony will undertake. There are abundant proofs that management cannot be assumed too early for the benefit of all concerned. The revenues from educational reserves; tho control of education, of charitable institutions, and of harbor improvements will likewise pass to, or remain with, local bodies, where there is at present anj T such system of local government. .

Your Honor does not disguise your wish that Otago shouldLbe to all intents and purposes a separate Oolong In other words, a comparatively smairGovernment would jealously absorb ah." the powers the Colonial Government absolutely renounces. Youjwishjto give to Otago the very form of government you mistakenly suppose we desire to bestow. When the people of Otago come to know how entirely decentralising will be the effects of Abolition, how essentially centralising are the views of the Provincial Government which oppose it, I cannot doubt that they will be warm supporters of Abolition. Por the sake of argument, I have accepted your Honor's interpretation of the feelings of the people of Ofcago, without altogether agreeing with it.

Many districts in the Provinco long for Abolition to remove evils of which they have for years complained. In laying such stress upon tho country districts it may be urged that I havo ignored Dunedin's interest in tho question. Dunedin will lose the expenditure incidental to being the scat of a small Government; and I am not unaware that the opponents of Abolition— notably a section of the Dunedin Press — havo made tho most of the diminished expenditure of this kind, whilst they have temptingly hinted at the glories of the Seat of Government of an independent Otago. But Ido not think these, opinions are generally shared. I cannot believe the acute and able men of business of Dunedin will refuse to see that the interests of the country districts aud the prospeiity of the whole Colony, which, is pervaded by their commercial activity, are of far more importance to them than the expenditure incidental to the localisation of a form of Executive Government and to the occasional meetings of the Provincial Council.

Allow mo, in conclusion, to thank your Honor for the courtesy of your letter, and to express the hope that I havo said nothing herein which may be considered unfairly to reply to your Honor's strong, though not discourteous, reflections on the Colonial Government. Julius Vogkl.