The Globe. FRIDAY, JULY 20, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 958, 20 July 1877, Page 2

The Globe. FRIDAY, JULY 20, 1877.

The Dimedin papers publish a report of a lecture on Separation, delivered in that city by Mr. C. "W. Purnell. The arguments used, may be taken as a fair sample of those we may expect to hear from some of the Otago representatives in the Assembly, when the question comes up this session. In recounting the effects of Abolition the lecturer begins with a good round misstatement of facts. He says:—-" By the operation of the Abolition of Provinces Act, and its cognate Acts, the General Assembly had been constituted the sole legislative body of the colony, the effect of which was to deprive the people of each province of the right of deciding upon the nature of their own land laws, which they virtually possessed under the Provincial system." Now the fact is, the provinces never had the power of making their own land laws. The Assembly has always reserved that power to itself. AVe need only quote the preamble to one of many Acts of a similar nature which appear on the Statute-book of the colony, to prove the truth of our statement:—"Whereas it is expedient that the laws now in force for the sale, letting, occupation, and disposal of the waste lands of the Crown within the province of Otago, should be consolidated and amended, * * * be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly of New Zealand in Parliament assembled." And yet Mr Purnell has the temerity to assert that the people of each province at one time had the right of deciding upon the nature of their own land laws. He must have been strangely forgetful of the scenes which happened year after year in the House when the Otago members used to indulge in free fights on the question. On a par with the above assertion is the lecturer's statement with reference to the status of the land fund. He says: —" The essence of the Compact of 1856 was that each of the provinces should have the exclusive control of its own land fund; and when the Ministry brought down their Abolition resolutions of 1874, a distinct pledge was given that the terms of the Compact of 1856 should be embodied in a special Act of the Assembly, and the allocation of the land fund made, if possible, more secure than it had been before. No such Act, however, had been passed, and the apportionment of the land fund was now regulated by the Financial Arrangements Act, which dealt with other revenue matters, and from its very nature would require amendment next session, The Assembly, instead of the provinces, now apportioned the laud fund as it pleased." The above language is certainly misleading. When the provinces ceased to exist, it was of course necessary that the distribution of the •land fund should be placed in other hands. J. £ the Assembly had so chosen, 1 it might have Retained it in its own. " ' 't did aoib, By statute, the disBut i; c the land funi!" is p&eed in tnbutionoi han( J s Mr _ perfectly indepen.. ■ , believes, Purnell may say, probably .. u ;™> that it is m greater danger uiu..' Abolition than it would have been had the provinces continued to exist, But it has been shown again and again. that the existence of the provinces and the safety of the land fund had no necessary connection. Had Superintendents and Provincial Councils continued to exist in undiminished splendour, they would have no power to prevent the landf und from becomingcolonial should the Assembly, during the present session, so will it. Its only safety since 1856 has been that

there has always been a_ majority in the House in favor of maintaining the Compact intact. The next assertion of the lecturer to which we wish to refer is the following . —« The land fund of Otago had now been virtually extinguished by the heavy charges heaped upon it, and in point of fact it had actually become necessary to issue Treasury bills this year to supplement the artificial deficiency thus created in the land fund of Otago. All the permanent charges, such as those for interest, <fec., had been put upon the land fund, while the Government had ingeniously laid charges like those for a portion of the subsidies which could be withdrawn at any time upon the Consolidated Fund." As the lecturer is dealing with the effects of Abolition, his obvious intention, in the above paragraph, is to convey the impression that the land fund of Otago has been " extinguished" by the Abolition Act. This has been a favourite assertion with the Proviucialists of that province, but they wisely confined themselves to assertion only. Mr. Macandrew and others were never tired of repeating them. But, when called on to produce proof, Mr. Macandrew and his friends wisely abstained from doing so. On the other hand, the Hon. (x. McLean, on behalf of the Government, produced figures to prove the groundlessness of the assertion. He took the estimates of the Provincial Grovernment as a guide, and set down the loss or gain to Otago in respect to each item. The result he arrived at was, a balance in favour of Abolition of over £4OOO. As far as we have seen these figures were never answered, because, we suppose, it was impossible to do so. If the land fund of Otago has been virtually " extinguished," the blame cannot be laid at the door of Abolition.