THE PROPOSED MUNICIPALITIES BILL.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 22, 17 June 1867, Page 139

THE PROPOSED MUNICIPALITIES BILL.

[Wanganui Times, June B.J

This Bill, we are told, has been drawn up

by the Attorney-General, with the cooperative counsel of Messrs Stafford, Richmond, and others. It does not appear that the Ministry intend to stake their official existence upon it. The provisions of the Bill are said to be permissive, not obliga-

tory. Any of the- smaller provinces tbad may, by petition, express a desire of a majority of the electors to abandon Provincialism and be placed under the control of General Government, will be'permitted to

do so. We think.that Bill as now completed should be printed and published in the Government Gaffette, that the country may be able to form an opinion of its provisions, in detail-and as a whole. Such publicity would be. an unusual-course in this colony, but not an unprecedented oneWhen a Bill so largely affecting, as we believe it will do, the leading provisions of the Oonstiution Act, is proposed to become iaw, the people should have some time to consider it. The propored measures, may be for the benefit of the colony at large, or they may be suoh as to concentrate in the

Central Government an irresponsible and despotic power of the moat dangerous kind. Mr Stafford’s every movement leads in that -direction, and the Bouse of Representa-

tives must narrowly watch, and carefully -analyse every sentence in the Bill having that tendency. The establishment sf Municipal Institutions with sweeping powers of local taxation, but without any fixed proportion of the public revenue secured to them under the Bill, would leave them completely at the mercy of the'Ministry of the day. Should the Bill secure to Muni-* cipalities a full equivalent from the Customs or General Revenue of the colony to 'subsidise all moniesraised by them from local taxation, they would, at least, have something permanent ,to depend upon. 4t Local self-government” is a high-sounding electioneering, phrase, but if by that we are to have no more than sweeping powers of local taxation the less of it we Lave the better. We shall anxiously await the appearance of the Bill, but meantime cannot

see how the Government can escape the re-

sponsibility of a measure by which they propose to alter the constitution of the colony.