THE PREMIER REPLIES TO THE SUPERINTENDENT.

Evening Star, Issue 4103, 21 April 1876, Page 2

THE PREMIER REPLIES TO THE SUPERINTENDENT.

The following reply has been sent by Sir Julius \ ogel to his Honor the Superintendent of Otago :

Wellington, April 13. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 6th April in reply to mine of the 28th March, in which I informed your Honor of Messrs Gisborne, Seed, and Knowles’s projected visit, and asked your good offices on their behalf. Your letter opens up the whole question of the Abolition of the Provinces. I do not think 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 the laws ; yet there are a few points in your letter to which I feel called on to reply, and I must comment upon them, though I am aware in doing so I cannot altogether avoid the political discussion which I deprecate. The Government conceive it to be their duty to accept the law as it stands, and to make the necessary preparations for giving it effect. The idea that the Assembly will be willing to except Otago from the operation of the Act seems to the Government altogether chimerical. Your Honor seems to base it on two grounds: one, that the people of Otago are wholly averse to abolition ; 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 “the probable revenue of Otago may be set down at about one-half that of the whole Colony.” You consider also that, stripped of all extraneous matter, “the Colonial finance, and not the good of the people of New Zealand, is at the bottom of the proposed changes.” If it be the case that Colonial finance is the cause of the change, and that, Otago being included 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 commensurate share of the general responsibility, Clearly such a deduction, if the premises are admitted, could not be accepted. I will not deny that Colonial finance 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 period, 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 assured, not larger than the capabilities of the Province justify. You and I may very correctly have unlimited faith in Otago’s capabilities, but we do not supply the money for developing them. Common prudence speaks that we should defer to the opinion 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. Instead of Otago being a sufferer by Colonial finance, it is, as much as any other Province, the cause of the Colonial finance requiring the extinction of the Provinces. Other Provinces, it is true, have had to receive more or less exceptional assistance from the revenue which has not required, but no Province has askeu r S e sumß moro freely—no Province "has suPtvn itself less disposed to restrain expenditure. During the last session of the Provincial Council, appropriations were passed amounting to DSwjOOO. Concurrently the Province has sacrificed its land by large sales to runbolders; it has endeavored to withdraw from ordinary purposes enormous blocks of country, for fear the land might be otherwise absorbed; in 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 ot Otago. The benefit will be on the side of the various districts which compose the Province, the resources of which will be placed more immediately under their own control, and dealt with less lavishly than of late has been the case. In thus criticising the Provincial Government I am only acting in self-defence. Your Honor impugns the Colonial finance as vicious, and says tae Province is sacrificed to it. My endeavor has been to show that the evil is not where you have supposed it. Instead of Otago suffering from the Colony, the people must be 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 moro than double the period. Now, to the first ground, on which it seems to me your Honor rests your expectation that the Assembly will except Otago from Abolition—namely, that the people are opposed to it, I should be inclined to give much more weight to that ground did I not know that the people wholly misunderstand the meaning of Abolition. Your Honor’s letter is a proof of this. It abounds with evidence that you altogether misunderstand irhat Abolition will effect, or what the people

When your Honor complains of a la rge extent of country like Taranaki having iriore representatives than the City of Duneo jn, you ignore one of the causes of the ■prosperity of the Colony. New 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 town. 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 a thousand square miles in the country. The expressions “‘political communism,” “Provincial institutions,” “wantonly destroyed,” “system of administration of its local affairs, which is to be centred at Wellington,” “Depriving it (Otago)'of its revenues and bringing them under the sole appropriation of the 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 the 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 absorption of their revenue is mythical. What will take place is this—the form of Provincialism will cease, and so will the powers of a small Legislature. Certain services, such as the charge of gaols and police, will be managed by the officers of the General Government without ninetynine out of a hundred people being aware of the change. Wellington will have no more to do with the matter than it has -with your local Post and Telegraph offices. For years the management of the police at Auckland has been in the hands of the General Government without the people feeling that their local privileges are curtailed, whilst th*y have recognised the thoroughly efficient manner in which the duties have been performed. But in respect to read local powers, the decentralisation will be complete. As a first evidence of decentralisation, the towes will be distinct from, and have 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 they 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 the land will continue to_ be localised, the land revenues will be strictly devoted to local purposes. Some small contributions may perhaps be givep to the trunk railways, which cannot be regarded as local either in their nature or purpose, and the management of which the Colony will undertake. There are abundant proofs that the management cannot be assumed too early for the benefit of all concerned. The revenues from educational reserves, the control of education, of charitable institutions, and of harbor improvements will likewise pass to or remain with local bodies. 'Where is there at present any such system of local government ? Your Honor does not disguise your wish that Otago should be, to all intents and purpose, a separate Colony—in other words, a comparatively small Government would jealously absorb all the powers the Colonial Government absolutely renounces. You wish to 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, and how essentially centralising are the views of the Prgvincial Government which oppose it, I cannot doubt that they will be warm supporters of Abolition. For the sake of argument I have accepted your Honor’s interpretation of the feelings of the people of Otago without altogether agreeing with it. Many districts in the Province long for Abolition to remove evils of which they have for years complained. In laying such stress upon the country districts it may be urged that I have ignored Dunedin interests in the question. Dunedin will lose the expenditure incidental to being the seat of a small Government, and I am not unaware that the opponents of Abolition, notably a section of the Dunedin Press, have mado the 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 I do not think these opinions are generally shared, I cannot believe the acute and able men of business of Dnnedin will refuse to see that the interests of the country districts, and the prosperity 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 Councils.

Allow me, in conclusion, to thank your Honor for the courtesy of your letter, and to express the hope that I have said nothing herein which may be considered unfairly to reply to your Honor’s strong, though not discourteous, reflection on the Colonial Government.

Julios Vogel.