THE LATEST WONDER.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2691, 2 October 1871, Page 2

THE LATEST WONDER.

Even the Tima, the organ qf the self-styled Liberal party, is disgusted with the last Act of the Reid Government. Our contemporary now writes in stronger language than wo ever used towards Mr Reid and his tail, whom ft few weeks ago he was lauding to the skies as tha men who

were to be the saviours of the Province. We ask our readers' to remember these observations : The deed is done ! Proposed by the brovincial Executive, approved of by the Provincial Council, and agreed to by the Waste Lands Board, 45.000 acres o f the public estate have pass-d into private hands. When first the proposed sale was mooted we protested against it as loudly as we could. Several of our correspondents living in the neighborhood of the land gave timely naming of the bad effects which would result from the sa’c to the iMonut Lengei dLtiiet, but all to no effect. The Govenummt wanted money, and cared not how it was obtained so instead of acknowledging their incapacity for the position they held, they sacrificed this laud. If any act could more forcibly than another prove Provincialism to be in its dotage, so far as Otago is concerned, we think it will be agreed that this last act of the Government is proof indisputable. We most sincerely trust that this will be the last oppartunity the Reid Governuunt or any other Government will have of sacrificing the public estate. The Liberal Government that the Tuapeka peop'e feasted and who almost sent ns crazy iu onr admiration of Gum, so. soon to prove themselves poor, weak, and miserable without a single shitt in them ! What awful simpletons we must have been not to observe the hollowness of their professions. ..... The Government who made the land question its hobby, and whose note of warning was the repeal of the Hundreds Regulations Acts, before it has been more than a few months in cilice sells, in defiance of law and reason, without competition, and in one block, 43,000 of good agricultural and pastoral lan 1 at the upset price of twenty shilling’s per acre? Ob, no—not quite so much 5 - hut at the exceptionally low price of fifteen shillings and. sixpence per acre. Seventy square miles of Otago’s fair couiitiy foi thirty-five thousand pounds ! . . It is ' melancholy to think that the Government of this Province is in the hands of men so incompetent. ... It is well for the 1 roviuee that the large powers vested in the Council are about to be curtailed. Wc arc glad to see the present Colonial Government so strong on this point, and shall welcome an immediate change of some <!e;;cri; t on. \\ e may have more justice awarded ns by the General Governmmt: we _ certainly cannot have less than we arc getting from the Provincial Government.