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Evening Star, Issue 3819, 21 May 1875, Page 2

Mr Reader Wood's wet financial blanket has been more efficacious than all the eloquence of the Provincial party, Even our own buperin temlent 8 defiant note has found no echoes in the hearts of Ancfc and Provincial Councillors Yesterday a Mr BagnaLL, from the r J'hames, moved a motion affi ming it to be desirable that the whoh of the Provincial Governments at present existing should be abolished, and a mon efficient and local form of self-government established in lieu. No one in the Council rose to discuss this motion, which must have fallen like a bomb-shell in their midst. The Provincial party (staggered for a while, wished to make some attempt to ward off the division—but it was too late. On the division, the motion was and 14 against. Ihe Provincial Secretary at once notified he should call upon the House to-day to rescind the motion, but the division already taken is enough to indicate the very general local feeling. What influenced the honorable Councillors we cannot tell. Possibly ideas of Southern juicy pastures converted into freeholds, and the cash realised, or part of it, used to fill the empty Northern treasuries had weight. More probably the practicd forced recognition that finance could not be worseunder any system, and that it was ridiculous to meet, in Council with no revenue to appropriate for expenditure, were the real causes of the unexpected division! The night before it had been decided to impose a £5 tax on kind gum, the proceeds to be devoted to education. Such a resolution certainly points to a want of education, but we doubt very much the revenue to be derived. There will be no gol len eggs when the goose is killed, buch an impolitic tax would be the destruction of the gum trade.