THE KAIKOURA STAR. KAIKOURA, JULY 31, 1894.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XIV, Issue 760, 31 July 1894, Page 4

THE KAIKOURA STAR. KAIKOURA, JULY 31, 1894.

Assured finance, together with capable administration, may fairly be held to sum up the chief factor in successful Local Government. That does not obtain now, and yet it is readily attainable Local governing bodies might readily be placed in a better position were each and all given a fair sized block of even second class land as an endowment. A number of local bodies in various parts of the Colony, chiefly in Otago, are so endowed. Then whv not all ? It would save the horse-leech sort of cry each successive Government comolains of, and would be a means of remedying an evil. We hope that the conference of County Council delegates, to meet in Wellington next week, will endeavour to induce the Government to adopt this means of assisting local bodies, and to relieve such bodies of the cost of maintaining arterial lines of road when there is an absence of railway communication, in connection with their respective districts.

The discovery of combustion in a portion of the wool on board the s.s. Gothic the other day is a full and sufficient answer to a number of the contentions of last season regarding the shearing of sheep when the fleece was wet. If some Hock owners, or their managers, have so little regard for the health of shearers, and for the lives of the crew of vessels (and of those who take passage by them), it is quite time Legislative action should be taken. Interference with the liberty of the subject is not at all times commendable, but when lives and {property are endangered it is quite justifiable to invoke the power of the strong arm of the law. Indeed it is the duty of the State to do so. There is a limit to State functions, but it is not to be arrested short of protecting human life. Surely it would not be a difficult matter

to discover where the wool referred to was shorn, and who is responsible for its having been shipped tn an inflammable condition.

Assuming that the Amuri County Council, as the administering body under the Acoholic Liquor’s Sale Control Act, still objects to the items claimed for by the Ashley Returning Officer, in connection with the Licensing Election, we have no hesitation in saying that the Council is doing Mr Whatman and a number of his assistants— deputy returning officers and poll clerks-—a gross injustice. We fully admit that some of the items to which the Council took exception were rightly objected to, and that the Council exercised commendable supervision in examining the schedule of costs incurred, and taxing the account, but the Council is acting unfairly in refusing to countenance reasonable costs, such as the employment of poll clerks at polling places where a, relatively, large number of votes were expected to be lecorded, and, in fact, were cast. Had the Returning Officer not made due provision for such contingencies, which, however, he did, and had any electors been thus prevented from voting Mr Whatman would have been chargeable with incapacity and negligence, with a possibility of further expense being incurred. The Amuri County Council should now end the dispute by paying the Returning Officer the sum he claims. To delay the matter further is unseemly; the amount at issue being triHing when proportionately charged against the various local bodies in Ashley in receipt of licensing fees.