The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1876.

Evening Star, Issue 4115, 5 May 1876, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1876.

It is amazing with what pertinacity our contemporaries reiterate the stale and often refuted arguments they adopt in favor of selling large blocks of land to squatters or speculators 1 Not one good reason excepting want of money has been put forward in favor of it, and that is altogether beside the question, as contracts entered into must and will be fulfilled. Were it not for the supreme importance of this matter we should have thought sufficient had been said regarding it. But, unfortunately, the class who have the money also wield weapons and •xefb influx© they u.se unsparingly to blind the people to *>iio real state of the case. His Honor the Superintendent, backed by the journals, has r*e-

sorted to a very reprehensible mode of attack upon the Waste Land Board. Neither he nor his aids deal with the right or wrong of the question—that seems to be altogether put out of sight. His Honor commences with stating that the Provincial Council, whom he designates “the representatives of the people,” “ passed appropriations for,” what he terms, “ highly necessary public works.” That the Executive were to borrow money to carry them out—if they could—but if not, they ware to be paid for by the sale of “ hill lands at 10s an acre.”

So far as this is concerned, excepting the clap-trap of the Council representing the people, the Superintendent, holding the views he professes, may be said to have justified the course he and Ilia Executive have taken. The Colonial Parliament refused the loan, and therefore the hill lands were fallen hack upon. The Executive, in that respect, may be said to have done their duty, and more than their duty, for they departed from the letter of their instructions and bargained to sell mixed hill and vale, wate ,r and pasture at 20s. an acre, with such deductions as were agreed upon. Had “ the representatives of the people ” met again, very possibly some of them might have taken exception to so glaring a departure from their injunctions. There was, however, one important element overlooked by those so - called “ representatives of the people ”; they forgot that they were passing resolutions which neither they nor the Executive had power to carry into effect. It seems to have been imagined that no change bad taken place through the constitution of a non-political Waste Land Board, and that just as under past arrangements the Executives possessed uncontrolled power to override the spirit of our land Acts, and to sacrifice the public estate at will, so the representative of the Government had nothing to do but to attend the meeting, proclaim his arrangements, and have them ratified. He has found out his mistake. The Board is no longer a tool of the Provincial Executive, and indirectly of the class whose influence controls their actions. Th y are servants of the people, bound to protact their interests, and to act independently of both Superintendent’s Executive and the Provincial Council. His Honor, therefore, very unjustifiably says:— The Board appears to have overlooked the fact that the Land Acts invest the Sui-erinten-dent and Provincial Council (who are directly responsible to the people) with important and responsible functions, and the Superintendent cannot but think that he has good reason to complain tha‘, in coming to the decision it did in this matter, the Board has not exhibited that courtesy to the Superintendent and Provincial Council which was due to their position [ as parties whom the law invests with certain i powers under the Waste ands Acts.

This most extraordinary passage in his Honor’s letter says in effect to the Waste Land Board, “ You are not to exercise any judgment of your own • 1 and the Council are the judges, and you have nothing to do but to act as you are bidden.” No one knows better than he that the Board was reconstituted for the very purpose of freeing it from political influence no one should know better than he that it is the purest nonsense to talk of responsibility to a Council that will never meet again, and the very recklessness of whose appropriations was induced partly by the consciousness that their functions were at an end. No one knows better than he that the “acceptance of tenders for various works” in the face of the restrictions of the Abolition Act, might have proved of very serious detriment to the Province. That, however, is a legal question, which we do not pretend to solve at present. And no one knows better than Mr Macandrkw that it is no part of the duty of the Waste Land Board to find money to pay for the ducks and drakes of a moribund Provincial Council. In fact the very function for which that Board was appointed—that of being a check upon reckless parting with the public estate —has been faithfully fulfilled. We trust this severe lesson will bring his Honor to a true sense of the political situation. He talks and acts as if the Provincial Council, though dead, still represents the people, whereas their true and only representatives are the members of the House of Representatives, to whom he and his Executive are now responsible. The sooner he accepts the truth the better, for it is really sad to see so much talent wasted in a struggle against what is inevitable. It is idle to kick against the pricks.