SIR DILLON BELL AT INVERCARGILL.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 262, 14 April 1875, Page 2

SIR DILLON BELL AT INVERCARGILL.

[By Electric Telegraph.] {lrom a correspondent of the Press.") Invercargill, April 13. Sir F. D. Bell, member for the district of Mataura in Assembly, addressed a wellattended meeting of his constituents at the theatre, Invercargill, last night; Mr Pratt, the Mayor of Invercargill, in the chair. Sir F. D. Bell commenced by stating that the subject he proposed to address himself to was so large in itself, and fraught with consequences either injurious or good to the colony, that he would ask to be pardoned for making it alone the object of his attention. That subject was the question of the abolition of the provinces proposed by Mr Vogel. There was a great deal of misapprehension as to the real motive for Mr Vogel's proposition, and he would ask his hearers to cast away from their minds any idea that the motive was the paltry one so often assigned, namely, the failure of the Government to pass the State Forests Bill in its first shape, and the quarrel which took place. between Mr Vogel and Mr Fitzherbert. Finance was the real cause of the former question being raised. The difficulties"©f the Colonial Treasurer, when called upon to provide for the necessities of the provinces, had been growing from one thing to another. Ten years ago, Mr Fitzherbert, who was then Colonial Treasurer, Jcomplained bitterly that, at the very time when the unauthorised expenditure reached a sum of over £200,000, he was called upon, like his predecessors, to distribute among the provinces a sum exceeding a quarter of a million. That was ten years ago, and year after year, the Colonial Treasurer had been met, not only with the difficulties of dealing with the finance of the colony, but of dealing with the finance of the provinces. After the struggles which took place before the partnership between the colony and the provinces was abolished, there arose the turning question as to the way in which provincial Treasuries might be filled, if not by cash from the colonial Treasury, then by borrowing. It was this question that practically precipitated the question of the abolition of the provinces. It was the impossibility of inducing the two branches of the Legislature to allow any further provincial borrowing side by side with the large amount of colonial borrowing, which made the conduct of finance in some provinces of the colony perfectly impossible. The proposal made by Mr Vogel for the abolition of the provinces was by no means a new one in its nature. A somewhat similar proposition had been made in former years not only by those hostile to provincial institutions, but also by those who were the foremost champions of the provincial system—for instance, by Mr Reynolds, Mr Macandrew, and Mr Curtis, as well as by Mr Stafford. It was undoubtedly true that there was a great deal of inconsistency among many of our public men on this question, but those who had been guilty of that inconsistency were neither ashamed of it nor did they for a moment pretend that it was possible to avoid it. But let him ask would any public m«n" be called upon to maintain consistency in his opinion under circumstances which were wholly different to those under which those opinions were forfried; for himself, and he might say the same for many other members, he did not hesitate to say that if the circumstances were the same now as they were in 1867 and 1868, when the struggle was taking place as to whether or not provincial institutions should be maintained, he would act exactly in the same way now as he did then. The resolutions which Mr Vogel submitted were a surprise at the time to the House and to the country generally; but notwithstanding the surprise that existed as to the time and the manner of the proposal, it Was impossible to deny that the question had already been sufficiently before the public mind. When Mr Fitzherbert moved a resolution embodying Mr Vogel's,

and calling upon the Government and the House to agree to the opinion of the country being taken upon the proposal, before anything final was done, the answer was that the opinion of the country was being expressed in a practical shape, and that it was unnecessary to have a dissolution, as during the recess ample means would be given to learn the opinion of the country. Now that really had been done, although they had no dissolution of Parliament. Everyone knew that this question had been the subject of universal discussion, and what was the result? Could it be sincerely said that anyone cared a single farthing about it, that was to say, in a sentimental point of view hardly anypae cared whether the provincial system was or was not kept up. The only thing one heard of was that public opinion was in an apathetic state, simply because everybody is doing well. But meetings had been held in all parts of the country, and there could be no doubt that the great majority of the colonists were in favor of the change proposed by Mr Vogel. The question had been very much discussed by the press of the colony, but he must express an opinion that that discussion had been of a very unsatisfactory character indeed. Considering the immense importance of the question itself, he must say that he had not seen in any one of the public journals anything like an attempt to deal with the subject philosophically, or to contribute anything like substantial material, outside the Canterbury Press. The Canterbury Peess was the only newspaper he knew of that had taken the subject in hand and dealt with it from a colonial point of view, or put together the various points so as to deserve mention at the hands of public men. At any rate whether that was the case or not, he proposed to show why he had arrived at the conclusion that the time had come when this plan Mr Vogel had brought forward, should be carried out in some shape or another. He would claim their attention while he read some figures in connection with the finance of the colony for the year 1874, which was a completeperiod apart from the financial years of the colony and the provinces. The whole consolidated revenue amounted to a a million and a half in round numbers, and out of that Otago contributed close upon half a million—close upon one-third. Out of that Otago received in cash from the General Government the merest trifle, and as Mr Macandrewonce said, the whole of the consolidated revenue which went up from Otago, was received and disappeared into the Colonial Treasury. He would now go a little further, and make a comparison between the contribution Otago gave to the whole revenue, and the contribution which the North Island gave. The whole of the Customs revenue from the North Island provinces was £444,829, and Otago contributed £407,222, or within £30,000 of all the North Island. When oomparing all the items of revenue, it would be found that Otago alone contributed only one-sixth less to the Treasury than the whole of the North Island put together had given. Could it be wondered at that bitter opposition should be manifested towards the proposal made by the Government to interfere with a system which produced such results as that? He then went on to make a comparison between the revenue contributed by Otago and Canterbury as against that contributed by the whole of the North Island. Taking all the sources of consolidated revenue, Otago and Canterbury contributed upwards of £200,000 more than the whole of the North Island put together. After quoting other figures to show the vast disproportion between the amounts contributed by Canterbury and Otago as compared with the amount contributed by the rest of the colony to revenue, he asked what did that fact mean ? It meant that if the North Island provinces, or rather the provinces of the rest of the colony could not do what Canterbury and Otago were doing ; that is, if they cannot find any means of living they must come to the colony for it. In the figures he had given he referred only to the consolidated revenue, for after all that was what they had to deal with in the General Assembly, since the land fund was entirely the property of the provinces. But he must speak of the land fund because it was part of Mr Vogel's proposal that the land fund should be secured to the provinces. The whole of the land fund of the colony for 1874 was £1,059,000 ; of that Otago contributed £298,000, and Canterbury £593,000, and the rest of thecolony contributed barely £168.000. The reason why he drew attention to the magnitude of these figures was because it was from their very magnitude that a danger thereatened to the land revenue in the future. They could not disguise from themselves what was going on around them. They could not help seeing that a very strong and determined effort was going to be made by some members representing the North Island constituencies to abolish the distinctions of the land fund, and put it all into the Colonial Treasury. Of course the Otago and Canterbury members would fight hard against such an attempt, and he believed himself that if they made a fair fight of it there would be no fear but they would gain the battle. After reading some extracts from the speeches of Messrs Swanson and Dargaville, he went on td refer to the utterances of Sir George Grey. He said that Sir George had come forward in a spirit that every one who had watched his long illustrious career must honor and respect—in a spirit of self-denial and self sacrifice in behalf of what he considered to be right. Although he did not distinctly say he meant to join in the attempt to wrest from Otago and Canterbury their land revenue, there was eveiy reason to suppose that he would really be one of the leaders of the movement that would be made in that direction. Thi§ attempt would not by any means be the first of the kind, and there was no reason to suppose that the result of the ensuing contest would be different from that of previous ones. They had Mr Vogel's distinct assurance that the land fund would be left untouched. Indeed, if the Bill the Premier had outlined were introduced, it would bring about a state of parties that would virtually secure the land fund to the provinces. Unless he (Mr Vogel) took an entirely different line, foreign to that he presumedly held, the land fund must be safe. At the same time, there could be no doubt the colony must make provision for carrying on the public services in those provinces that unaided were unable to do so. But they would have the satisfaction of doing it under their own control. Hence there was an inconsistency on the part of those who complained of the. large amount of money at present handed over by the South to the North for what were perhaps necessary purposes, but which were altogether beyond the control of the Parliament. All would concede that it was a primary duty to provide for the preservation of publio

order, education, &c. With respect to the public debt he adopted, as substantially correct, the figures recently quoted by Sii D. McLean during a recent speech at Napier. Those figures showed that after expending about £6,000,000, including the loan recently raised by Mr Vogel, the colony would be indebted to the extent of nineteen and a half millions sterling. He thought this liability as large as the colony would be justified in assuming, and deprecated undue haste in the construction of the public works now in hand, as tending to derange the labor market, and leaving too little time for the settlement of the country, which would provide employment for the labor set free on the completion of the public works. He then cited the experience of Victoria in proof that railways of far more expensive construction than those of New Zealand were reproductive. Assuming that the provinces were abolished, and he were asked what he would substitute in the place, his answer would be " nothing." If he thought the change involved the establishment of another constitution, he would have nothing to do with it. He endorsed Mr Vogel's programme, by which a simple transfer of Departments would take place from the Provincial to the General Government. The functions of Provincial Governments had latterly become of a purely municipal character, in fact, he considered that they had not themselves perceived this, and performed what the Japanese call, " the happy despatch." He illustrated this position by reference to Otago, the revenue of which was £113,000. He asked, "What would become of this if the provincial system were abolished?" Simply that instead of being spent by the Provincial Government it would be spent by the Road Boards without its intervention. The same would happen with the goldfields. The Timaru and Gladstone Board of Works was an example of the working of this system. What the public were really interested in was the proper administration, and not by whom it was done. He referred at length to the working of local Government in Victoria, Canada, and England, and sketched what he considered should be the first steps towards assimilating to home practice. Boad Boards should be the common denominator. These should be grouped together, and these groups again centred as counties. After discussing this, he went on to say he would avoidiyiolent change, but eventually he would have a local budget brought down for consideration by the Colonial Parliament. He believed the present head of the public works department was perfectly competent to exercise the supervision such central control involved. To make the application of this system equitable, to save the appropriations from being the battle ground of party, it would be necessary to make them under a uniform law before these changes could take place. However, the Assembly representation would have to be readjusted, and to ensure the best results the reform would have to be entered upon in a spirit of mutual concession. He concluded by stating that he should be a candidate at the next general election. In reply to questions, he said he preferred a system of free selection over defined agricultural areas to the deferred payment plan. Mr Cuthbertson proposed a vote of thanks and confidence, which was carried unanimously. The delivery of the speech occupied three hours and a half.