The Globe. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1067, 28 November 1877, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1877.

The announcement that the hon. member for Akaroa may join the Ministry, as Colonial Treasurer, should Mr. Laruach’s health necessitate his retirement, is proof that all danger to the Grey Cabinet, during the present session at any rate, is at an end. Mr. Montgomery's caution is so proverbial that we may take it for granted that if there is any truth in the report, he is satisfied that ho may trust his reputation ip their hands. Wo may conclude, also that he has been persuaded that the proposals of the Government, with reference to the land fund, could be modified to suit the circumstances of the .country. A few days age he was not able to make up his mine regarding the policy of the Government and said he must wait till he saw thi Bills which embodied it. If the repori is true that ho is likely to join the Grey Ministry as Colonial Treasurer, ho musi of course have seen these Bills, and hew satisfied. This will he cheering news to

Canterbury, as it is a proof that the Ministerial proposals do not mean after all the “ Confiscation of the land fund of Canterbury.” On this point Mr. Montgomery has always been most emphatic. Last year Mr. Whitaker proposed, as a means of getting out of the financial difficulties ahead, that the land fund should bo made common property. It was urged then that the necessities of the colony required such a course. This session the Grey Cabinet, among other reasons, advance the same argument for their proposal. The necessities of the colony, they maintain, demand that the laud fund should be placed in the Consolidated Fund. This was a "monstrous proposition” in 1876, in Mr. Montgomery's eyes; if he joins the Grey Cabinet in 1877 ho must have seen reason to entirely alter his opinion, or he must have succeeded to getting those proposal modified to suit the circumstances of the colony. When Mr. Montgomery addressed his constituents at Akaroa on December 12th, he spoke as follows on the question:— Then Mr Whitaker proposed as a means of getting out of the financial difficulty appearing that the land fund should be made common property. Now I need hardly tell you that the land fund to be made common property, means that the land fund of Canterbury would be confiscated. In the North Island land had been given away at five, ten, fifteen, and twenty shillings an acre, and in Canterbury it was sold at £2 an acre ; therefore it seemed to me, and I think it will always seem to me, ridiculous that persons here should pay £2 an acre, and pay into a common fund, that money which is actually contributed by the people to make roads and bridges to the land which they have purchased. It would seem a monstrous proposition to put that money into the consolidated revenue to assist in making roads to land which has been given away for ten and fifteen shillings an acre. Well, gentlemen, the leader of the Opposition, and nearly all the Auckland men, seventeen of them together, voted for that act of spoliation.

The Committee of the Indian Famine Fund, appointed to collect subscriptions, announce that they have received the handsome sum of £5194 Is lid from this provincial district, and that they have remitted the sum of £SOOO to the Oriental Bank at Madras. The anouncemeut is one which will be read with some little pride by the friends of this provincial district. It is a proof that, in the midst of the cares and worry of business, we do not forget that wo belong to the British empire, and that her interests arc ours. Now that the lists are closed —looked at from a purely selfish point of view, it is a splendid advertisement for New Zealand, and especially for this portion of it. When the contributions from the whole of the colony are put together they will, as far as wo can make out, reach the respectable sum of about £14,000. Compared with the splendid sum subscribed at the Mansion House, of course the above is not a very large contribution. But relatively to the population, it is highly satisfactory; and as far as Canterbury is concerned she has no reason to be ashamed of what she has done.