The Globe. MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1875.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 426, 25 October 1875, Page 2

The Globe. MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1875.

Aleeadt there are indications of awakened interest in public affairs. No sooner is the Assembly prorogued than one candidate after another is announcing his entrance into the field. Of course, at this early period it is impossible to form any estimate of the nature of the issues which will be placed before the electors; but no doubt the legislation of last session will be keenly canvassed. We have already expressed our regret at the course Government took with regard to Abolition. With the powerful majority at their back, they should have insisted on the Act coming into force immediately. They would thus have saved the country the trouble of discussing the question over again at the coming elections, and have given the electors an opportunity of returning a Parliament selected on an altogether different cry. The Parliament which has just expired was elected to initiate

and carry out the great scheme of borrowing, and the result has proved how successfully that has been done. We can now boast of a debt of twenty millions sterling, the annual charge upon which is about one million. The question which the colony has now to face is, how this enormous annual payment is to be met. We had hoped that the financial position of the colony would have been the question at the coming elections, and that we would have had the satisfaction of seeing men returned prepared to grapple with this great subject. But owing to the culpable mismanagement of Ministers, we have no such hope now. The Superintendents, we hear, are preparing a plan for stumping the country in favour of their dearly-loved provinces. We shall hear any amount of high-flown nonsense about the rights and liberties of the people being trampled upon by a despotic central Government. Sir George Grey and Mr Fitzherbert will make a few more treasonable speeches, and Mr Eolleston will give us a few more philosophical essays to prove, by the teaching of history, that the provincial form of Government is the necessary result of true progress. We do not suppose for a moment that those appeals will have any real weight upon the elections. The majority of the people of the colony, have long ago made up their minds, that one Government is sufficient to manage the affairs of a colony with |a population of three hundred and fifty thousand people. They will be able to take all their true value the appeals of Superintendents and Provincial Secretaries in favour of institutions in which they are personally so largely interested. But although we have no doubt of the result, we cannot help expressing our regret that the coming Parliament will have to be elected on a false issue, and that men will be returned, not because they are particularly fitted to guide the destinies of the colony in times of financial danger, but because they promise to support abolition.