Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, JULY 8, 1864.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 182, 8 July 1864, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, JULY 8, 1864.

It is very singular that a man of Mr. M’Lean’s experience cannot give a better and more truthful explanation of his policy, and of the state of the country afflicted by that policy, than was given by him the other day in his opening speech to the Provincial Council. That speech is about the most wishy-washy stuff that ever issued from the mouth of man. - It is positively a curiosity in its way —a model specimen of what quantity of “ rot” may, under the inspiration of officialdom, be exploded by one man. What therein is not false is foolish.

The very first statement made by His Honor is untrue. “ It must be a source,” says he, “of great satisfaction to us all to know that this Province has been steadily advancing in material prosperity .” What! without a land revenue, without money in the public Treasury, without land, with every acre of available country, down even to the very borders of Napier town, occupied by the sheep of squatters, with taxation looming large on the horizon of the future ? Call that “ material prosperity” ! Why, we might as well expect to find His Honor himself advancing in “ material prosperity” when deprived of his regular returns of wool money. If, however, “ material prosperity” consists in a number of idle fellows finding some sort of “ material” prosperity at the expense of the public, and in a few storekeepers making a good thing out of the said idle fellows, if such be a sign of the material prosperity of the community, then His Honor is perfectly right, but not otherwise. We shall pass over that tweedledum and tweedledee part of the oration about the war, and the state of the natives, and all that. That is a subject pretty well worn out, and the less his Honor says about our relations with the natives in this province the better, for unless he is grossly belied, those relations would have been more satisfactory if he had had less to-do with them. We hear something about getting the administration of our share of the .£3,000,000 Loan. We have that share pretty well administered already in the shape of military settlers, Defence

Forces, Civil Commissioners and endless officialdom. In short, whenever we are so fortunate as to get a goose, we kill her to get the eggs, and presently our supply of geese will be at an end, and we shall, consequently, get no more eggs.

“ The various interests —agricultural, pastoral, and commercial—indicate a wholesome state of prosperity,” says his Honor in continuation. We are glad to hear it, hut we, unfortunately, don’t see it. As forithe agricultural state of the country, it doesn’t appear that much is done in that line, seeing that we import all descriptions of breadstuffs and grain. !ftor can we expect a very prosperous condition of things in that direction when capital is kept out of the country by a corrupt Executive, and, by consequence, wages are so dreadfully high, and labor extremely unskilled and scarce, so much so, indeed, that it is almost impossible to get men at any price.

“ The Provincial share of the Customs Revenue has nearly doubled,” his Honor goes on to say. Of course it has, under the exciting influences of the war expenditure. But that does not indicate a very prosperous condition of things, As regards the exports, they consist entirely of wool, and it matters very'little whether that kind of crop is the produce of one man’s, or oncTthousand men’s farms. Sheep are not men, and a country which can produce nothing else hut wool has little to boast of.

It must be highly gratifying to the member for Porangahau to know that the road to Eparaima is open and metalled alkthe way, but we question whether that important fact is particularly gratifying to that large section of the community at present dragging up and down in the mud in the neighbourhood of Napier. The road from the Bridge to Pekapeka is a standing disgrace to the Government. Boast and brag as much as that Government likes about the roads and what not, it is a lasting disgrace to it, that while the Country about Eparaima, where you will find about one man to 10,000 acres of land, requires an excellent road ; the hard-working people who live on the banks of the Tutaekuri are doomed to wallow in the slough of Despond for ever. There is probably more traffic on this line of road in one we.k, than on the Eparaima road in six months.

His Honor drops some vague hints about a tram-road. But it is not very clear, from his speech, where that kind of road is to go to, or to come from. His Honor seems to have forgotten that part of the business. However it is not of much consequence. By a great stretch of a powerful imagination, Mr. M’Lean gives a very lively description of the present state of the Country, and in that description he does not fail to inform us that, an addition to our population of 700 adults has taken place since he-came to office. But, unfortunately, that addition is the consequence, not of the advancing state of the peace and prosperity of this Province, but of the imminent risk and immediate prospect of disastrous and inglorious war. Those men have not,come here of their own free will, to bask in the sunshine of his Honor’s liberal and enlightened Government, and to enjoy the benign blessings of his just and honorable administration. Not a bit of it. These 700 adults are mostly brought hither under the same influence as carrion crows would come, they smell the battle from afar, and come here not as the harbingers of the piping times of peace, but as the vanguard and forerunners of war, or we should rather say that they came here as so many men to be fed, clothed, and paid for by the hard-working part of the population. To those people who live by plunder—to those drones who fatten upon the honey gathered by the industrious bee —this war business is a grand thing. If all the wars in the world were as profitable to mankind in general as this war in New Zealand is to a few people here, it is possible that, for the fitst time in the history of man, war would be found a blessing, and not a curse.

It is, however, satisfactory t(#notice amidst all this laudation of Self & Co., on the part of his Honor, that he does not forget to drop a gentle hint that things are probably not so well managed as might be. We like candor amazingly. Upon the whole, then, we commend his Honor’s speech to the world at large as a very remarkable specimen of Bosh.