ELECTED SUPERINTENDENTS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 141, 25 September 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)

ELECTED SUPERINTENDENTS.

(I'rom the ll r . Advertiser, Aug. 8.)

The advantages which it was supposed would How from the power given to the constituencies of each province to choose their own Superintendent, have, from a combination of circumstances, not been obtained in practice ; while the election of the Superintendents by the Provincial Councils, as established under the New Provinces Act, is no improvement on the original method, but rather the reverse. The time is not distant when either the Superintendents will be nominated by the Governor on behalf of the Crown, as recommended by the Duke of New Castle, or when the provincial system of government is abolished altogether. As soon as the provinces have swallowed up their land revenues, and the General Government requires the whole of the ordinary revenue to defray its own expenses, the Provincial Governments, having then to impose direct taxes to pay for their support, must go to the wall, it is impossible for it to be otherwise. In the meantime it is probable the “ elected heads of Provinces’ - ' will gradually sink into mere agents or attorneys of the General Government, and by so doing, as the}' will have to serve two masters —the Governor, and their constituents—they will be like a house divided against itself, and must suffer the fate thereof. The tendency of recent legislation points to this result. The Superintendents of Provinces are fast becoming mere deputy-governors, receiving powers from, and being bound to carry out the instructions of, the Governor in Council. This makes them, under the elective system, responsible for their conduct to two separate, distinct, and, it may be, conflicting authorities. What the Governor requires them to do, and what their constituents, may be of a totally opposite character. Which are they to obey.—the superior or the inferior power ? If the former, the public derive no advantages from the bare privilege of electing their own Superintendents ; while the Superintendents, by consenting to become the delegates of the Governor, are placed in so anomaious a position as may render them often unable or indisposed to exercise those functions with which the Constitution Act

has clothed them on the one hand, or which the Governor in Council may have delegated to them on the other. Either the General Government should station a representative of theirs in each Province, other than the Superintendent, or the Superintendent, being but their representative, should not pretend to be, nor be expected to be, the representative alsQ of the constituency by whom he was elected.

NVe at one time thought that the Superintendent, being elected by the constituency of the whole Province, would properly representl the general interest, while the Provincial Council would represent the interests of each of the localities of which it was comprised ; and while the former would represent and support the particular interests of each district, the other would be able to prevent such a junction of particular local interests as would be likely to operate to the injury of the general interests of the Province. Such a system, however feasible it may sound in theory, cannot, it would seem, be reduced to practice. All the practical advantages to be derived from the election of the Superintendent by the Province can be obtained by preventing him acting in all matters of local concern, without the advice and consent either of the Provincial Council or of an Executive Council which has the confidence of the Provincial Legislature, and in all matters of which the latter cannot take cognizance without the advice and consent of the Colonial Ministry, for whose acts they must be held responsible, and he to them. We think it is very likely that, in the next session of the General Assembly, the oliice of elected Superintendents will be abolished, if it should be decided, as it probably will, that the Proirincial Governments should for some time longer continue.