The Globe. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1876.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 746, 9 November 1876, Page 2

The Globe. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1876.

It is difficult to believe that Mr. Macandrew is in earnest in making the proposals he has, in the address delivered by him at the convention yesterday afternoon. It is evidently constructed to catch the unthinking mob, who blindly follow the ex-Superinten-dent of Otago. No attempt is made to calmly reason out his position, and give an outline of how it is proposed to work out the scheme. There is plenty of empty declamation and unsubstantiated assertion, but a total absence of facts and figures. We are told again and again that Otago is being robbed by the Colonial Government, but how this robbery is effected, we are not informed. It is true that Otago's revenue is even more localised under the Abolition Act, than it was in the days of provincialism, but Mr. Macandrew chooses to deny that fact, and his admirers in Dunedin are no doubt prepared to take his word for it. Nothing less, therefore, will satisfy Mr. Macandrew than the separation of Otago from the rest of the colony. A brilliant future is predicted for the emancipated colony should such a result be arrived at. The Queen is to be petitioned, and it is even proposed to send home Sir Gk Grey and Mr. Macandrew to urge the claims of the people of Auckland and Otago to have this separation granted. We fancy, [however, that more moderate counsels will prevail. Mr Macandrew is shrewd enough to know that such a claim would have to be supported by something more than mere assertion and declamation; and that is all that the convention is treated to. For example, his remarks as to the cost of provincialism and the county system are utterly contradictory. In one breath we have him contending that there will be little or no saving by Abolition, admitting of course that it is an open question, and then almost immediately afterwards he implies that a certain mysterious £129,000 annually is abstracted from Otago. And he would have us to believe that Abolition is to blame for this. But then this apparently has been going on for some time, as he wants to know how it is to be stopped. Clearly the County system is not to blame for it, as the few days it has been in operation is insufficient to test its effects. Then he wants to know how Otago is going to carry on under the new order of things. How bridges, &c, are to be repaired, and those public works carried on which were wont to be executed out of the revenue of the province. There are none so blind as those who will not see, and this is emphatically the case with Mr Macandrew. He knows perfectly well that the revenue, formerly provincial, will now be administered by the Counties, and that they will be just equally as able as the defunct province would have been to carry out those works. Then, again, in drawing a picture of the proposed colony of Otago, we are told of the enormous revenue she will possess, and of the great things she will be able to do in the form of public works. Surely it must have struck the most ignorant of Mr. Macandrew's hearers, that he was talking unmitigated bunkum. Why, as a province, Otago of late years has frequently been on the verge of bankruptcy. How, therefore, as a separate colony, with a fair share of the colonial burdens, could she afford, not only to I spend such enormous sums on public works, but also to abandon her Customs duties and make her ports (a bid for J)unedin support) free. It is perhaps as well that Mr. Macandrew has given the deliberations of the i Convention this direction. It will amuse the members and have no prac- ! tical effect whatever.