The Globe. SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 1876.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 676, 19 August 1876, Page 2

The Globe. SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 1876.

Our contemporary the Lyttelton Times has returned again this morning to the subject of the localisation of the laud fund, and makes certain resolutions passed at Ashburton last month, the text from which to preach another dreary sermon on the sad effects of abolition on the province of Canterbury. He begins his argument, as is his custom, by taking for granted the very thing he wishes to prove. Throughout the article it is assumed that abolition means the destruction of tbo land fund of Canterbury, and that had the provinces remained intact, it would have been perfectly safe. On the other hand “ the proposals of tbo “ Government for the localisation of “ the land revenue are a mockery, a “ delusion and a snare.” These assertions are reiterated again and again throughout the article in varied phrases, but no attempt whatever has been made to prove their truth. The land fund of Canterbury may be in danger, and before long it may become colonial revenue, but abolition has had nothing to do with this. The cause must be sought elsewhere. Both abolition and the delocalisation of the land fund of the province are the result of the Immigration and Public Works policy. When it was adopted, the death warrant of the provinces and of the localisation of the land fund was signed. Besides, as has been frequently pointed out, had the provinces continued to exist as before, they could not have preserved their land fund had the necessities of the colony required that it should be seized. It is safe only as long as there are a majority in the House of Representatives in its favor, and no longer. There is a growing conviction that the compact of 1856 was a most unfair one, and has been disastrous in its consequences to some parts of the colony. That feeling has been yearly increasing, and had abolition never been brought forward, the question would have been,discussed year after year in the Assembly till its re- consideration was secured.

We admit that the financial proposals of the Government are in some respects objectionable. Ihe plan of making advances to those provincial; districts whose land revenue is short- 1 coming, and the issuing of Treasury bills for the amount, are unsound, and we hope will not be sanctioned by Parliament. But at any rate it is not worse than the state of things which obtained under the provincial system. We would like to ask our contemporary how much has been added to the public debt of the colony by the waste-

ful extravagance of some of the provinces. The history of our finance has been one of constant struggle between the Colonial Treasurer and the greedy provinces. Our contemporary maintains that the consolidated revenue and the land fund are overweighted by the charges heaped upon them, and that therefore the land fund must be trenched upon ; but does it not strike our contemporary that the real solution of the difficulty which surrounds the finances of the colony is retrenchment. The provinces were destroyed because they had become useless and expensive, and the colony could not longer afford to maintain nine separate G-overnments in addition to the central legislature. Our contemporary would do better service to the community were he to give his assistance in placing the finances of the colony on a sound footing, instead of wasting time in unavailing regrets over the death of provincialism.