Page 4 Advertisements Column 2

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 98, 20 November 1852, Page 4

To the Electors of the Christchurch Country District. Gentlemen, HAVING been requested at a general meeting of the Christchurch Colonists' Society, which was attended by several of your number, to allow myself to be put in nomination as one of your Representatives in the General Assembly of New Zealand, I beg to inform yon that I have acceded to that request, and I therefore venture to address you as a Candidate for your suffrages at the ensuing Election. I earnestly feel that I am thus seeking to receive a very important trust, as well as a high honor, at your hands ; it is therefore necessary that I should state the principles which I desire to see introduced into the constitution and government of this country, and which I can pledge myself to support. The first and most important is the extension of larger powers to the Provinces for managing their own affairs, than they can enjoy under the Act which is about to be carried into operation. As it now stands, the laws made by the General Assembly are to "control and supersede" any laws repugnant thereto previously made by any Provincial Council; and any law made by any Provincial Council, repugnant to or inconsistent with any act of the General Assembly, is to be null and void. On Thirteen separate subjects, enumerated in the Act, the Provincial Councils are absolutely forbidden to legislate at all. As to two or three of these reserved subjects, I incline to the belief that some, if not the entire jurisdiction, might well be handed over to the Provincial Legislatures. But on one of these subjects especially, that of the management of the waste lands of the Crown, I do not hesitate to declare my opinion that each Province should have the most unfettered power to manage its own lands in its own way. This is only an extension of the argument on which has been founded the cession of this power by the Imperial to the Colonial Parliament. As the colonists of New Zealand know better than the people of Great Britain how the wastelands of the colony should be dealt with, so also the inhabitants of each particular settlement know better than those of all the others, how the waste lands of that settlement should be dealt with. The physical, as well as the economical, circumstances of the different settlements vary so widely, that there is no reason whatever why a different system for the sale and letting of land should not be established in each. In some, a constant supply of cheap labour is afforded by the neighbourhood of a large native population; so as to lessen the necessity for a high price on land, in order to furnish an immigration fund, which is felt where labour is scarce. Mines in one locality, in another vast tracts of natural pasturage, in a third extensive forests of timber, may require laws and regulations for letting, peculiar to that locality. In short, I hold that the people of Canterbury can best determine how the waste lands within the natural district of Canterbury shall be sold or let, so as most effectually to advance the settlement: and that whether they may be in favour of a high or a low price for freehold land, a long or a short tenure, a heavy or a nominal rent, for the use of natural pasturage, their opinion should become law within the Province, without hindrance from the people of Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, or any other settlement, who may hold a different opinion. I have selected the management of the waste lands as one of the most ""important subjects: but I would apply the same principle to every subject of legislation ; granting, that is, to each Province the management, as much as possible, of its own affairs in its own way ; and reserving for the exclusive jurisdiction of the General Assembly those subjects only, as to which it may appear, on the fullest inquiry, that uniformity in the laws is absolutely necessary. If the respective jurisdictions of the General, and of the Provincial, Legislatures were once clearly defined, it appears to me-that it would be still more important to make those jurisdictions distinctly and entirely independent of each other. On subjects requiring uniform laws throughout New Zealand, let the General Legislature, and that body alone, enact laws : but on all other subjects whatsoever, let the Provincial Councils legislate unfettered by any interference on the part of the Central Assembly, I thus advocate, not only the greatest possible share of local power for the Provincial Legislatures, but thorough Provincial independence of Central control as to matters ivithin