New Zealand: ITS GOVERNMENT, PROVINCES CAPABILITIES, &c.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IX, Issue 486, 20 June 1867, Page 3

New Zealand: ITS GOVERNMENT, PROVINCES CAPABILITIES, &c.

[CQMiIUNIGATED TO TEE SYDXEY HERALD.] NO. I. It is a common complaint in Australia that people cannot understand and taka an mterest in New Zealand nolitics, i. lie probability *■ t- tim ca l cond fact is the result of the first leads

as far as possible, the position of New Zealand, In most people’s minds the war with the Maories has been so completely the one fact about New Zealand with which they are acquainted that they feel little interest in the matter now that the war seems at an end. A little more acquaintance with the facts of the case would probably lead to a different conclusion. New Zealand ought to prove interesting to the people of all these colonies, if it were only from the remarkable dissimilarity of her position and institutions from their own. From its first foundation the colony of New Zealand has been a grand theatre of experiments. Some of these experiments have proved thoroughly unsuccessful; some have been productive partly of good and partly of evil when brought to the test of experience, and some of the most important and interesting are still in a state of probation. The phenomena of New Zealand politics are based upon two things—the physical peculiarities of the country, and what may be termed the moral peculiarities of its native inhabitants. It may safely be said, indeed, that the character of the country, or the attitude ot the Maories, have caused all the peculiarities that render New Zealand politics hard to understand. To comprehend this it is ne cessary to bear in mind wliat tlncolony consists of. Practically there are only two islands in New Zealand, the third being wholly unimportant, and as yet unused ; but the length ot these two islands is close upon nine hundred miles. The country stretches so nearly north and south as to afford very great variations of climate, so great, indeed, as probably to exceed tne varieties to be found in tbe vast continent of Australia. The country, upon the whole, is a rugged one tnere are plains, it is true, in parts both of the Northern aud Southern Islands, but they bear no proportion to the. broken ground of hills and val leys, which serves to render the country very difficult of access. An immense extent of ragged coast, containing but few good harbours, may be regarded as the last physical peculiarity which has gone to determine the political position of New Zealand. When colonists first went to New Zealand they found they could choose a home there under any conditions they liked. They could settle in the south of the Southern Island and find there a country and a climate wonderfully like the one they had left in Britain. They could settle at the north end of the Northern Island, and a climate almost too softly temperate, and a country remarkable for a beauty which was ail its own. The consequence was that the colonists did both. Some went to the extreme south and founded the provinces of Otago and Southland, while others went to the extreme north aud founded that ol Auckland. Between the two extremes about half a dozen other provinces were founded, principally by the New Zealand Company. la this way arose the nine provinces of New Zealand. In other words, settlers had planted themselves at nine different spots on the coast of the long strip of land forming the colony; between these spots the distance was great, the country was rugged aud difficult to penetrate, aud the coast stormy and far from inviting to the coaster. The settlers were in fact isolated. Nor was this ail. Isolated by position, they were still more so by circumstances. The grassy plains and up lauds of Otago aud Canterbury made shepherds oi tne setuers in those districts at once. The deep valleys and thickly-wooded hills of the northern isiaud drove the settlers to agricultural work. There was hardly anything in their position analogous, and they were all ready to approve of any plan by which each district could manage its own affairs without any interference from the others. The system of the

New Zealand provinces was invented to meet this desire. By it the colony was recognised as divided into nine distinct parts, having a federal rather than any closer union. Each province was to manage its own local affairs in its own way, subject to little more than a nominal control from tbe central Government. In each province there is a Superintendent, who answers almost exactly to the Governor of a colony where no responsible Ministry exists. In each there is a Provincial Council which i»s everything, even in its faults, a colonial Parliament, and sometimes sits during four or five months in a year, engaged in violent party contests rather than in anything more useful. As the reason of the creation of provinces was the diversity of tbe needs of the different districts, they have power to deal with all local matters, even including immigration and the land laws of the colony. Thus in one province the land is sold at two pounds per acre, in another at one pound, and in a third at ten shillings, or even five shillings per acre. Some provinces offer land to induce immigrants to pay their own passages and come out to the colony; others send home large sums annually to pay the passages ol a labouring population. The recognised functions of the Provincial Governments embrace, indeed, what at first sight seems to be almost the whole range of duties that fall to a colonial Government. All public works, all immigration, all the administration of the lands and the land' fund, even the management and con-1 trol of police and prisons, are in the I hands of these nine independent bodies in New Zealand, and are administerd very differently by each of them. To all these peculiarities of circumstance, which could hardly fail to render the government of New Zea laud a complicated and difficult matter, must be added tbe second great peculiarity of that colony. In the Northern Island there is a large native population, owning the greater part ol the land; while in the Southern Island there are but a handful 0 i Maories, so scattered as to be per fectly harmless, possessing no lane beyond a few trilling reserves, set apart by Government for their use. It is not to be wondered at that a colony, mads up of districts so widely differing in nearly every respect, and enjoying institutions so antagonistic as the provincial and colonial Governments of New Zealand, should be a puzzling problem to observers at a distance. idle steps by which these districts are gradually becoming con salidaleJ into something like the unity of a single State; and the efforts now being made to harmonise the conflict ing schemes of government into one, are neither without interest uor importance to the neighbouring colonies, many of whose institutions are as yet m an unsettled state.