HON. E.W. STAFFORD ON ABOLITION.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 376, 26 August 1875, Page 3

HON. E.W. STAFFORD ON ABOLITION.

The following is the Hansard report of the Hon E. W. Stafford’s speech on the abolition question ; Mr Stafford —Sir, many hon members who have addressed the House upon this question have called this a great occasion, and if that is true, and it is a great occasion, the House has risen to it. If we may believe the mythical fable of the dying swan, I may be allowed to apply it to this expiring Parliament. We have had utterances which show that earnest and thoughtful men have been able to give intelligent reasons for the action they have taken, and the faith that is in them; and we have never had an expiring Parliament which has sung so sweetly. From the first speech to the last, the debate has been most creditable to this Assembly, and its members have given evidence of great ability and intelligence in considering the bearing and the probable operation of the measure now submitted to us. It will not, I trust, be considered presumptuous in me to offer my congratulations to the House on the accession to its ranks of those gentlemen recently elected, some of whom have already taken part in the debate. Many of us, old well-trained members of this House, can call to our minds how we regretted to sec the seat bo long held by the late member for Rangitikei no longer occupied by a gentleman so well known and admired by us; but we have already seen that the mantle of Elijah has fallen on a worthy successor ; and there could not have been any speech more openly and conscientiously spoken, or one which has been better received, than that which has just been addressed to the House, Before I address myself to the main question, I think it is only due to myself, and to the hon gentlemen who occupy the Treasury Benches, that I should explain the relations which exist between us, although, perhaps, I may be deemed impertinent in doing so. I should not have thought it necessary to do so had it not been for the continuous manner in which I have been referred to, and my relations to the Government commented on, by both sides of the House. It has been sought to put me in the position of the proud Protector Somerset. I have been called the guide, protector, but not the friend, of the Ministry, I deny that there is any but the most ordinary relations between us. I claim merely to be one of the rank and file of their supporters, who, admiring and believing in the courage and sagacity, and the wisdom which they have shown in presenting this question for our consideration, have determined, by all means in our power, to give effect to that wisdom and that sagacity. This Bill is not my Bill. It is not the Bill of any private person ; it is a Bill for which those gentlemen are properly and constitutionally responsible. They proposed it to the House, and it is they who will be responsible for the operation it may have in the country. I trust, after this explanation, that there will be an end to these constant allusions and references which have been made to myself in connection with those gentlemen, although I can very well understand them. There are some remarkable words used by a very sagacious observer, whose journals most of us have lately been reading, which may perhaps explain these allusions. He says that when an Opposition cannot drive a Ministry from the Treasury benches by attacking their policy, by attacking their administration, or by attacking their sincerity, then they attempt to displace them by attacking their*,'sensitiveness. But my hon friends on those benches and myself are much too old warriors and far too conversant with party tactics to allow any such attack* upon our sensitiveness to turn us from the course which we believe to be right. I have listened with very great attention to the arguments which have been adduced in opposition to this measure. They have been many, and some of them of considerable importance, while some have been irrelevant and trivial, I propose to advert to four, which I may summarise thus: First, the financial condition of the question, as regards the proposed distribution of the revenues ; second, the revolutionary character of these measures, which is cited as a reason for their being referred to the people ; third, the legal power of this Legislature to -effect the proposed change ; and fourth, the destruction of the the people which it is asserted this change will produce. I have named these points in an ascending -scale of importance, believing that the last is infinitely the most important of the whole There are other points of considerable consequence which have been imported into this debate, but they have been so successfully taken up and grappled with by successive speakers on this side of the House, and they will yet, no doubt, be so successfully encountered, that I shall not detain the House by making reference to them; Indeed, I might almost have omitted the first of these four heads, had it not been that I have noticed that an ingenious attempt has been made to circulate amongst the people of the country the idea that»this is only a promised bribe for a few months —a year at the outside — and that afterwards the promise will not be permanently fulfilled. There are peoplemany of them, I would fain believe, writing and speaking in ignorance, but many writing and speaking disingenuously—who have endeavored to affirm the truth of that assertion by reference to the change which took place between the years 1872 and 1874 with reference to the capitation grant. Those persons to whom I have alluded as speaking and writing disingenuously, well know that when that change was effected it was an acknowledged boon, and not a withdrawal of moneys promised to the provinces. If that grant of 30s were changed

I nto 15s, there was taken over at the same time an enormous mass of departments which hitherto had been provincial charges. The Customs, the courts of justice, and all the different departments were taken over in one year, with the exception of the inland mail service, which in the next year was also taken over, and the result was that the provinces as a whole, instead of losing, gained to the amount of £7OOO. That is a small sum, I grant you, but it is sufficient, conclusively, to prove that the provinces gained instead of losing by the change. The hon member for Auckland City West did not think it unworthy of his position in this House ; did not think it unworthy of an old veteran used to public affairs, tried in these public affairs under different aspects, to discourage and seek to trample upon newer men, and who, sir, were those men he sought to discourage ? Having generally alluded to the constitution of the Ministry, he specially singled out for disparagement the Colonial Treasurer and the Minister of Justice. The hon gentleman told us at the same time that it had been his privilege from the commencement of life to associate in the mother country with all those who were greatest in law, greatest in literature, greatest in politics, greatest in philosophy. Pity ’tis, that all that association with greatness had not taught him so much magnanimity as to lead him to hold out the right hand to newer and younger men, instead of trying to stamp them out. And who and what are those men whom he has sought to disparage 1 The Colonial Treasurer, it is true—and it was the only objection he urged against him—was not elected at the commencement of the Parliament, but he has held a seat during the four last sessions, and he was previously a member of|preceding Parliaments. He was a Minister at a time when the country was in great danger and distress; he is a man whose personal intrepidity in the field has been repeatedly shown; a man whose organisation of his department at a critical period was of especial service, and, as the honorable gentleman ’well knows, tended much to the salvation of the country —and that is the man who he says is not entitled to share in the Councils of the State or to influence the public affairs of this country. Then there is the Minister of Justice. It is perfectly true that that gentleman has made his maiden speech to this Legislature from the Treasury benches, but even for that I think there is a precedent, and a very recent one. I believe that the present Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr Cross, made his first or very nearly his first speech from the Treasury benches of the House of Commons. [An honorable Member: " No.”] The honorable gentleman may be better informed than I am upon that point. I can only say that until Mr Cross was gazetted as Secretary of State for the Home Department his voice was unknown, or, at all events, his utterances had never been referred to. Sir, what has been the career of the hon member for Kaiapoi, this new-born, this new-fledged Minister ? He has been an elected member of the Provincial Council in his province ; he was a member of the Executive of his province when Provincial Government was upon its trial, immediately succeeding its early birth ; he subsequently for many years presided over a Court of justice in the capital town of his province ; he has lately retired from that office, having earned by his integrity, assiduity, and ability, the highest encomia , alike from his humblest fellowcitizen to the highest Judge in the land. Sir, I was for the moment pained and ashamed that he who had himself, by a late Prime Minister of England, been styled “ the Great Pro consul,” should have so far forgotten the essential element of greatness, as, instead of holding out the right hand of encouragement, to try to stamp out newer men, because, forsooth, he might conceive they were smallermen, men not so experienced in public affairs as himself. I have already adverted to the first of the four heads to which I propose to refer ; and I will now proceed to the consideration of the second. I used the word revolution incidentally in an early, period of the session in connection with this question. The hon member for Auckland City West immediately fastened upon it, and other members of his party have repeated it. Sir, I have nothing to retract or withdraw from the expression as I then used it, but I refuse to have an interpretation put upon that expression by the hon member. When I used it I had no visions of the colonists of this country imbruing their hands in each others’ blood. I had no such visions as those which appear to have crossed the mind of a journal which supports the hon gentleman, if indeed it is not inspired by him. I had no idea of “ an armed cordon surrounding the customhouses, through which the law could not pass;” I had no visions of “ brands and cutlasses waved,” or “ of powder kept dry for special occasions,” when I used the word “ revolution.” Sir G. Grey—Will the hon member name the journal? Mr Stafford— The Auckland Star. The meaning I attached' to the word revolution when I uttered it was such a revolution as led to the Petition of Right; to the Bill of Rights ; which were the true foundation of the liberties of the people of England, as Magna Charta was the foundation of the liberties of the great barons and feudatory nobles. I had in my mind such a revolution as was compassed by Catholic emancipation, which gave to nine millions subjects of the Crown those rights and privileges of their fellow-subjects of which they had for generations been deprived. 1 had in my mind such a revolution as was effected by the Reform Act of 1832. I had in my mind such a revolution as was effected by the passing of the Corn Laws, which opened the food supplies of the world to the people of England. These are analogous questions, some of them greater, infinitely greater, than that which it is now proposed for us to solve on the present occasion. We have had professions of faith on this subject, last session and this session. We had last session a memorable profession of faith from a wellknown provincialist; if the honorable gentleman had not read that speech, I commend it to his notice. I refer to the speech of the late member for Rangitikei. He was a gentleman who fought for the provincial system ; fought bitterly as an ultraprovincialist; who would not, who could not, endure the existence upon those benches of any Ministry who would not uphold it ; and yet he gave it over last year, for reasons which, to my mind, were most conclusive, feeling that neither it nor he had any longer a leg to stand upon. I shall now humbly present to this House the profession of faith of one who has never been a provincialist, and I shall tell the House why it is so. If hon members [will pardon me for detaining them, I will try to tell them what induced me first to doubt and feel misgivings as to

the workings of the provincial system; doubts which became more than fully confirmed by an inspection of its operation. Sir, in my early life, I had I lie pleasure, common to all of us, of perusing the history of the early States of Greece, and I arose from the perusal of that history with an intense feeling of admiration for that great race ; for their genius, their heroism, for the extent to which they had cultivated the higher arts, and for the general super-excellence of that people. I venture to say that no reader, at least no reflective reader, in mature years, could lay down that history without feeling unmitigated regret that such a people, so gifted, of such a genius, capable of such individual heroism, should have been overrun, and conquered, their liberties stamped out—and deservedly stamped out—because by their petty jealousies, their internecine wars, their treachery to each other, even in the face of a common enemy, they had so degraded what might have been a grand patriotism into a narrow and isolated selfishness, a question of petty self-interest, coterminous with narrow fringes of territory, until at last their condition became little better than that of Ishmael, whose hand was against every man, and every man’s hand against him. Going on to a more modern country, I observed in a great empire—one which has hitherto made, and will, we all trust,* eontinue to make, its presence felt among the civiKsed nations of the world—the great empire of France —I saw there, sir, to my reading of that history, a small section of nobles, a great nation of serfs. Although they had, for a very considerable period, Provincial Parliaments, they were utterly unable to secure the liberties of the people, until the StatesGencral of the Empire were convened, and threw off their bonds from the oppressed and downtrodden. The sentiments I then conceived have been confirmed by the recent action of that nation to which it is the modern fashion to point as the great light of freedom—the United States of America. Have we seen those States standing narrowly within the four corners of their constitution when a great crisis arrived ? Have we not seen the majority of those States refusing to allow that independent autonomy, which was the inherent right of each, to be maintained, because they would not have their national greatness destroyed and frittered away by separation ? It may be said, notwithstanding those sentiments, admitting the force which they should or should not have had, yet an inspection of the working of the provincial system might have shown that, at least in New Zealand, there was a country where the system which in every other country had failed to produce national greatness, had failed to conserve the liberties of the subject, might yet have such a development. Sir, I was not one of those to whom allusion has been made—the rejected Superintendents, who, owing to their rejection, had sought to pull down and overturn the coach they could not drive or direct. I had the honor of being elected the first Superintendent of Nelson when the Constitution was established, after a contest, prolonged for weeks, almost for months, against, two men who were much and deservedly esteemed and respected—l am sorry that I can only now refer to them in the past tense, for they are dead—the late Francis Jollie, and the late John Waring Saxton. Again, on a second occasion, I was elected without opposition to that office, and I had the pleasure on that occasion of being proposed by a gentleman who had proposed one of my opponents at the previous election, and of being seconded by another who had seconded the other candidate on the same occasion. Well, sir, what was my experience of the working of provincialism ? I felt the high honor—l felt, I trust fully, the great responsibility—which devolved upon me at that time. We had to develop the whole form of our administration, because the then Governor of the country had departed without calling this Legislature together, to whom we might resort for counsel. We hsd to consider with caution, with care, with doubt and hesitation, as to whether we might not make grave mistakes, in what way the provincial system was to be initiated. In the first session the Council passed a few empowering Acts and a few declaratory Acts, one half of which, I have since had reason to believe, were not worth the paper they were written on. I then proceeded to an important outdistrict of the province, which had never, I believe, up to that time, with one solitary exception, seen the presence of an officer of Government of any kind. I found in that district, which is now a large and important part of the province from which has come the gentleman who has lately so eloquently addressed this House, scarcely any road laid out that could be used with safety. I found that these roads had been ruled in parallel lines by the surveyors of the New Zealand Company—avoiding any trouble, without any local knowledge, without any |geographical knowledge, in short without any more knowledge of the real character of the country than the hon member for Auckland City West possessed when he ruled out the boundaries of the provinces. I asked a resident surveyor to make a rough sketch of some main lines of road for me, with a view of having them formally surveyed and formed. I paid him, what appears in these days a paltry sum, £SO; I had no vote for it, but advanced the money. Well, sir, at its next session the Provincial Council of Nelson would not pass that vote of £SO for opening up a large portion of the country. Recognising that the strength of a country depended upon the numbers and prosperity of the people, and not upon a mere wide area of millions of waste lands, I sent home a gentleman to London with a view of getting immigrants to Nelson. The Provincial Council recalled him the very next session. I then proposed to the Provincial Council to give small grants of land to those who would pay their passages to the country, on some such plan as that which was subsequently introduced into Auckland at the instance of the then Superintendent, Mr Whitaker. The answer of the Provincial Council to a long and carefully written message which I sent them to that effect was, that there was not any land to which they could properly invite immigrants to come. There were eight or nine millions of waste lands of the Crown, and only from 200,000 to 300,000 acres had been alienated at that time, and that was the action the Provincial Council took. I have no great reason to admire the working of the provincial system for colonising and peopling New Zealand. Shortly after that I attended a session of this Assembly in 1856. I had been elected in the previous year. I was asked, before the Parliament was opened by thethen Governor, toforma Ministry. I refused to do so, because I had neither the inclina-

tion nor the confidence in myself to under take such a grave responsibility. A Ministry was formed by Mr Sewell. It was after some time replaced by one formed by Mr Fox. That Ministry was displaced by the carrying of a resolution moved by myself, that the House had no confidence whatever in the proposals of the Government. I. then, having been asked a second time, with great hesitancy and reluctance accepted the offer, and did form a Ministry. That Ministry, sir, remained in office for five and a half years. From that moment I determined to be a New Zealander. I determined neither to know Auckland nor Nelson, nor Wellington nor Otago; and it has been to this day a matter of reproach to me that I have no local sympathy. I have a great deal higher sympathy than that of mere locality. I can claim to have done something towards effecting the prosperity, the unity, and the future greatness of a country which has a natural geographical boundary, which is inhabited by a homogeneous race; and which I say it is a miserable spectacle to see torn by petty local dissensions. Having accepted that responsibility, one of my first acts was to improve the constitution. I would specially call the attention of the hon member for Parnell to this, because he gave utterance, when he spoke on this subject, to an opinion as to which I am in direct opposition to him. He told us that if wo had sought to travel beyond the four corners of the Constitution we had no more power than a parcel of people sitting in the back parlour of a public-house. I would refer the hon gentleman—a man conversant with authorities—to some consideration of how the Constitutions that we now reverence and admire have grown into existence. I would ask him to say whether, in obtaining that power for good or for evil which they now possess, they did not find it necessary to travel largely beyond the four corners of the constitution which first gave them the power of meeting and deliberating on public affairs at all. I would ask him to say who gave the present powers which are possessed by the British House of Commons. Was there any written Constitution which gave them those powers when, for the first time, the rudiments of the House of Commons were assembled by the direction of Simon de Montfort, in the reign of Henry 111. ? That was the first origin of the House of Commons, because it was the first time that writs were issued, generally for the shires and specially for boroughs, to elect good men and true to consider the weal of the realm. Previously to that, the King had issued summonses direct to individual Barons ; but for the first time when the King was a prisoner—although it was done in the King’s name—Simon deMontfort laid the foundation of what has become the greatest, most respected, and most authoritative institution which the world has ever yet seen. When Louis XYI convoked the States-General of France, did they confine themselves to the four corners of the Constitution ? Why, Sir, they were bound by that Constitution to deliberate in three separate Chambers, and to give their votes by Oiders and not by heads. But the Third Estate, analogous to the House of Commons of Great Britain, determined that that position should no longer be maintained, and they obstinately refused to consult, or to act in any way, until they overcame the opposition of the other Estates; and they then all met in one Chamber. I say that there is in this Legislature that inherent authority and right to act for the Jgood of the country which is inherent to and belongs to the Supreme Legislature of every country. There is no higher authority that ctn make laws for us than this Assembly in which we now stand. And the laws made by this Assembly aye, even within those four corners of the Constitution referred to by the honorable member for Parnell —override, alter, repeal, or suspend any laws on the same subject repugnant to them, made by Provincial Councils. And, Sir, here I admire the audacity of the honorable member for Auckland City west, who told us that the Constitution Act forbids this legislature to interfere with the legislation of Provincial Councils. Sir G. Gkby : “No.”] I certainly understood the hon gentleman to say so ; and I am almost certain that I have read a sentence capable of such a signification in the authorized report of his speech. The hon gentleman himself ignored the most fundamental part of that constitution. He altogether destroyed the power of acting upon that clause of the constitution which provides for the creation of new provinces ; and he put this Legislature and the Imperial Parliament to the troublesome necessity of asking for ami passing various laws which finally sanctioned the establishment of new provinces, in addition to those which he had previously constituted. Sir, having accepted the responsibility of administering with my colleagues the Government of New Zealand, 1 searched the Constitution Act, and I very soon convinced myself that many of its provisions were much too stringent, and not consistent with free legislation. I proposed a resolution to the House, which was unanimously assented to, asking the Imperial Parliament to give this Legislature the power to suspend or repeal all the provisions of the Constitution Act, except twenty-one. There were eighty-two clauses in the Constitution Act as originally passed. The Imperial Parliament, the next session, acceded to that request, and passed an Act which gave this Legislature the power of altering or repealing sixty-one out of these eighty-two provisions. In subsequent years, when we found it necessary to go further, again was the demand made to the Imperial Parliament to give the same powers with regard to some of the previously excepted sections, and again the Imperial Parliament acceded to our request, and sections 3 and 73 were altered. Then came these doubts with regard to the constitution of new provinces, doubts which need never have been created if the hon gentleman had provided for the liberties of the people—to which he so constantly refers—baing recognised on the East Coast, at Hawke’s Bay, in Marlborough, in Southland, and in Westland, which have been constituted separate provinces, without any diminution of the liberties of the people. We had again to appeal to the Imperial Parliament, in consequence of doubts arising entirely through the action of the hon gentleman ; and the Imperial Parliament relieved us of these doubts. The New Provinces Act, passed by this Legislature, and any action taken under it, was_ to be considered as valid as the original constitution. I have shown, Sir, how much of the Constitution Act, in a very few years, had either been directly altered, or with respect to it this House had been given authority to alter, I come now to the Act of 1808. We have been told by the bon gentleman, the member for Auckland City

West, that Parliament was deceived when it was passing that Act, and my hon friend the member for the Hutt said that he \v.,s as sured that it only referred to the Coun'y of Westland. Sir, it may perhaps surprise some hon gentlemen to bo informed that the County of Westland is not named from the beginning to the end of that Act, but it distinctly declares — “ Whereas doubts are entertained whether the said General Assembly has power under the above recited enactments, or otherwise, to abolish any such prbvince now or hereinafter to be established, or.” I ask the hon gentleman to mark the words which follow, as he endeavoured to induce the House to believe that the word “abolish” merely meant to alter the boundaries of a province : “ —or to withdraw from such province any part of the territory comprised therein, except for the purpose of including the same within the limits of some other such province; and it is expedient that such doubts should be removed.” And then it goes on to enact that any province may be abolished, or any portion of it withdrawn, by an Act of this House, and that this House may then determine what shall be the form of government in that part of the country. Sir G. Grey—Will the hon member be good enough to read the enacting clause? I think he will find that it is contrary to what he is now stating. Mr Stafford—” Be it therefore enacted by the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty [et cetera'], that the General Assembly of New Zealand shall be deemed to have, and since the passing of the aforementioned Act to have had, the power of abolishing any province at any time heretofore or hereafter to be established in New Zealand, or of withdrawing therefrom the whole or any part of the territory comprised therein, and of passing laws for the peace, order, and good government of the territory so withdrawn from or ceasing to form part of the territory of any such province.” There is not, I believe, one single section of the original Constitution Act that this House has not got the legal power, the direct legal power, to alter, suspend, or repeal. If there is such a section I conscientiously say that I do not know which it is, and I doubt if any one other member of this House can point lo it. Sir, I shall now refer to the legal aspect of the question, my views upon which I think have already been sufficiently indicated ; but as it has been sought to disparage the legal opinions given in connection with this question, I shall proceed now to consider what these opinions are. We have had on the one side the positive opinion of the late Attorney-General, and we have had the positive opinion of the Solicitor-General—-opinions elicited by a Ministerial minute. We have had these opinions given with the knowledge that they would be open to the most hostile criticism, and that they would be preserved amongst the State records of the country. We have had on the other hand the opinion, or the purported opinion, of Mr—now Mr Justice—Gillies—a gentleman for whose critical and analytical mind I have the most sincere respect, and who, I believe, will make a most excellent Judge ; but that opinion was not drawn from him or given by him in his capacity as a lawyer. It was not an opinion that would be placed on record amongst the records of the State as the direct, careful, and well-thought-out opinion given to a direct minute requesting it; but it was an assertion made at the time by one who was then speaking as a political partisan. These are the circumstances under which that opinion was put forth, and the opinion itself was a hesitating one. I approach now, sir, what is to me, and what certainly will be to this country, by far the most important aspect of this question—the allegation that this measure is aimed at the destruction of the liberties of the people of this country. We are told that by the Government proposals we are asked to take away the liberties of the people of New Zealand. Now, sir, let us consider what are those liberties which the Provincial Councils and the elected Superintendents are supposed to conserve—the liberty of determining what shall be the character of Impounding Ordinances, of Trespassing Ordinances, of Scab Ordinances, of dog taxes. There is, certainly, one question of very great importance at present relegated, but not necessarily so, and not relegated by any law, to the Provincial Councils—the question of affording elementary instruction to the people of this colony. But with regard to these other questions, where is the great invasion of the liberties of the people in declaring that, instead of a mass of confused and conflicting laws, which change wnen you approach the different boundary lines drawn between the provinces—where is the great destruction of the liberties of the people in asking that instead of a mass of conflicting laws upon subjects of little importance, there should be substituted some general and well-considered laws, based, it may be, upon them, but which do not recognise those provisions in local Ordinances which impose a tax upon the owner of a poodle dog when it jumps across the boundary line into another province ? Sir, there are powers and privileges intimately connected with the liberties of the people. The power of determining how the burdens of the State should be distributed between the different classes of the community. The power of determining what proportion of the earning of the sweat of the brow, or of mental labor shall be taken to provide for public necessities. The power of constituting courts of justice, of determining their machinery, and how they are to be presided over. These are the powers which are the guardian and the natural defence of the liberties of the people. These powers were carefully withheld by the Constitution Act from the Provincial Councils, and those who withheld them are now foremost in declaring that the liberties of the people are about to be destroyed. The mostimportantfunctionswhich the Provincial Councils can exercise, they exercise under powers delegated to them by laws specially passed by the Legislature of New Zealand, They cannot even impose a fine upon the owner of a scabby sheep without coming to this House for power to enable them to do so. Are then, the elective Superintendents to be held up to us as being the safeguards of the rights and liberties of the people—that salt without which the body would become putrid and corrupt? We have had these elective Superintendents contrasted by the hon member for Parnell. The hon gentleman, by the way, has taken up a very curious position during the present session. I have heard people express their astonishment at it; but I do not share in that feeling of astonishment. The hon gentleman is represented as being first on one side of the House, then on the other side of the House, and then in the middle of the

FToiisr*. The hen gontlernnn told ns that mv Ministry—the short-lived Ministry which T formed in 1872—lost the confidence of this House in a very few days, because I did not quickly overturn the contracts entered into and the great works that had been commenced. The hon gentleman knows that it was a very different reason which led lo the overthrow of the Ministry in 1872. The honorable gentleman has sought to place before our eyes the picture— instead of those glorified elected Superintendents, or elected Governors, as the honorable member for Auckland City West prefers to call them—of what he is pleased to term satraps. Ido not know why the honorable gentleman selected that word, except perhaps to swell out a flowing period, The word itself is an innocent one, except it may be that it is not of English origin. The word, I believe, simply means a ruler. He may be an elected ruler, he may be an hereditary ruler—as many of them are—or he may be an appomted ruler. With some qualification as to the manner of his appointment, “ satrap ” may be as acceptable a term—and it is certainly shorter—as that of Superintendent. But that is no essential or permanent part of the scheme at all. The Government do not ask that they should be maintained any longer than next session of the Assembly; and surely, when it is remembered that a large amount of supervision will be necessitated by the mere fact of taking over such a large number of provincial departments, it was not too much for the Government to indicate that they would employ some agents in that act of supervision. For my part I can tell my honorable friends that I think they have made a mistake in inserting this clause in the Bill. I think they would have the power to give effect to what that clause is intended to do if they erased it from the Bill. Now let us consider the position of these elected Superintendents. We are surrounded by them here. We can pick them from the right or the left. Like the Light Brigade at Balaklava, we have them “to right of us, have them to left of us, have them in fron of us.” Here is my honorable friend the member for Avon. He is elected Superintendent, and what is his position ? How can he conserve the liberties? how can he give expression to the wishes of the people ? Why, he cannot even make an appointment or cancel one without the consent and authority of his Executive, and he cannot dismiss his Executive, but a majority of the Provincial Council can alone do so. On a recent occasion, when he was in direct conflict with his Executive, he sent down a very able and well-thought-out message on a most important subject—that of education—when a public meeting was called, and unanimously requested him to exercise his constitutional veto on that measure; but the hon gentleman was so trammelled, so fairly obstructed and emasculated by his position, that he dared not exercise his veto. We have another Superintendent now sitting before me who confessed, in his place in this House last session, that he had put’his name to papers and had committed acts that he thoroughly disapproved of, because he was compelled to do so by the so-called responsible advisers whom the Provincial Council thrust upon him. There is one of those great guardians of the liberties of the people, so much superior to those satraps referred to by the hon member for Parnell. Then, again, we have the Superintendent of the Province of Otago. He equally cannot do anything without the consent of those whom the majority of the Provincial Council for the time being may have imposed on him as his advisers. I think I have shown this: that where the elected Superintendent is not in direct conflict—as in some provinces, where the responsible system does not exist, he almost perpetually is—with the Provincial Council, he is then the abject slave of it. Yet we are told that an English-speaking race, inheriting the aspirations, the memories, the knowledge, and the experience of the people of the great free country from which they have sprung, could not defend their liberties if the provincial system were taken away ; that they would become down-trodden slaves, and, as the hon gentleman who last spoke said, the mere prey of politicaljadventurers, I think better of my fellow-colonists, I think there is more manliness, more capacity, more courage, more single-mindedness amongst the people of New Zealand than to allow themselves, if every institution they now possess were swept away, to drift into the position of down-trodden slaves. And I say this to the people of New Zealand—after an experience of twenty years and upwards of the working of the constitution, and after having seen that generation grow up which the hon member for Auckland City West referred to—that, if they hereafter wish to be a great, prosperous, and free people, they will not consent any longer to be misled by specious tales with respect to sham Parliments and sham Governments; but that they will concentrate their energies and attention upon this the Supreme Legislature —that they will carefully consider whom they send to it, and carefully criticise their actions when sent ; and that thus only will they build up for themselves and for their children a sure and certain palladium of their liberties, instead of having their attention and their energies frittered away by the mockery of Councils who pass dog taxes and Scab Ordinances. Now, Sir, I have made my profession of faith, and I have not made it lightly. It is not the result of a few hours’ consideration. It is the result—it may be a mistaken one—of long reflection and experience as to the action of representative institutions in other countries, more especially amongst those who speak our language; and I say honestly and fearlessly that if a people would be great, if a people would be prosperous, and, above all, if they would be free, they must concentrate their powers and their energies upon that Legislature which alone can deal with their Courts of justice, and can determine under what conditions the people are to bear the burdens of the State. Believing that this Legislature has undoubted legal power to effect this change. Believing that, even if it had not that legal power, it still has a constitutional power inherent in it as the supreme Legislature to make such laws as the time and occasion may require, for the peace, order, and good government of the ceuntry. Believing, also, that a large majority of the people of New Zealand desire this change. Believing, above all, that it is for their happiness and prosperity that the change should be effected, and that it is the bounden duty of a representative to perform those functions for which he was properly elected, and not to cast responsibility on to the shoulders of others, I can, with a clear conscience, vote for the passing of this Bill, and can confidently invite others to do likewise.