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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 166, 18 March 1864, Page 2

As members of the Provincial Council go, perhaps the member for Clive may be considered a tolerably intelligent man, and one who, but for a defective education, might possibly make, with practice, a passable speaker. That he has latent powers of speaking of a very superior order there can be very little doubt, for upon the last occasion when his voice was beard, viz., in the late meeting of the Provincial Council, he took great pains, in an elaborate oration, firstly to denounce Mr. Colenso as a selfseeker and time-server, and sundry other elegancies too num'erous to mention, and

then, as a striking contrast to that gentleman’s shortcomings, suggested that no better use could by any possibility be made of the money raised by loan than unbuilding a bridge over the Tukituki for his (the eloquent speaker’s) own especial use. Quite unintentionally, we make no doubt,, the member for Clive, on the occasion and in the speech to which we refer, let out the secret meanings and intentions of almost every member of that Council who voted for the loan of ,£60,000.

When Fitzgerald was Superintendent of this Province, we had plenty of land; the land was sold, and the money spent. How ? In exactly the manner in which the intelligent member for Clive suggested that the forthcoming loan should be spent;—in building bridges and making roads at immense cost, where those works were least required, and for the particular advantage of some one or other member who had more influence than his neighbors. Take, as an example in point, the small settlement of Petane. Nearly £6OOO were spent between the Spit and the upper part of that settlement—a distance of about fifteen miles. It may fairly be gathered from this instance the folly of trusting a Government composed of men with strong local and party prejudices with

large sums of money. What is .£60,000 ! A mere mite—a mere drop in the insatiable maw of party influence. Yet, while the spending of this sum of money is very easy, the paying back the principal, or even the interest, is a matter with which the present Provincial Government have never allowed themselves to be troubled. “ Sufiicient for the day is the evil thereof.” “ Only let me get hold of the money,” saith His Honor ; “ a»d only let us help you to spend it,” saith the Provincial Council “ and we will trust in Providence for the result.”

Composed as the Provincial Council now is—of men who are all large property-hold-ers or office-seekers—they naturally look upon their poorer brethren as so many beasts of burden to bear the consequences of their rulers’ folly, and to pay the taxes and other little bills run up. If this view be correct, and we see no reason at present why it should not, it is not likely, then, that these gentlemen will do other than bear as little of the liabilities of their own creation as possible, and consequently Tom, Dick, and Harry, with their smallallotments, will have to pay, in the shape of taxes, an enormous per centage above their actual share, direct or indirect, in the money spent, and in fact the less property a man has the more he will have to pay. This is what we may fairly consider to be the upshot of the doings of the present Provincial Council, and the time is not far distant when the most bitter reproaches and the most severe stigma will rest upon the memory of those men who have, for their own private purposes and for their own private ends, bound this Province hand and foot in the meshes of an unpayable debt.