THE COUNTY OF HAVELOCK.

Marlborough Express, Volume III, Issue 126, 18 July 1868, Page 5

THE COUNTY OF HAVELOCK.

We have received a letter from Havelock, enclosing the following document, with a request that we would make some comment thereon, which we shall do elsewhere. Whether the petition is in course of signature, or whether it is intended as a jest we know not, since it is not accompanied by any particulars whatever. The copy we have received is so illegible, from being taken by a copying press, that we have had the utmost difficulty in deciphering it. However we give it the desired publicity to the best of our power: — “To the Honorable the Legislative Council, in the Colony of New Zealand, in Parliament assembled “ To the Honorable the House of Representatives, in the Colony of New Zealand, in Parliament assembled. “ The memorial of the undersigned electors of the Pelorus, sheweth, — “ That the present mode of Government of the Province of Marlborough is far more costly than is necessary or desirable. “ That the purposes of Local Government for which Provincial Governments were established can be much better, more effectually, and more economically attained by the institution of District Boards, with such powers of local control as to your honorable House may seem expedient, and it is notorious in the that Provincial Governments instituted to extend Local Government should now be the only bar to its extension. “That whatever may be the position and prospect of the Provincial Governments in New Zealand, that of the Province of Marlborough has been so circumstanced as to make it not only highly advisable, but an absolute necessity, that the General Government of the Colony should remove all the powers and duties of Government in that province. “That your memorialists desire to leave to your honorable House the settlement of the details of such measures of Local Government as may be deemed most fitting in substitution for the Provincial Government in this province, whether the province should be divided into two or three Counties, each containing • * * or whether into such districts only, and in either case what arrangement of local powers as may appear to be most simple, practical, economical, and just. “ That your memorialists would venture to request that, if this province is divided into two or three counties with municipal powers, there are certain great natural boundaries which very indicate in that case the proper divisions, and that Pelorus Sound with the country of which that Sound is the political division combined with the very marked natural indication of a boundary, there are other reasons no less forcible why the Pelorus district should be disconnected equally with Picton, as with Blenheim, in municipal arrangement. These districts have no unsold lands, and their roads are made. In the Pelorus district there is much unsold land, and the roads yet to be made. It would be a crying injustice and a reversal of the most recognised political mam'ma, if the necessary roads were not made from the proceeds of the sale of those lands. “ That the towns of Picton and of Blenheim having been alternately the seats of the Provincial Government of Marlborough... ......a heavy expenditure in both these districts, whilst the Pelorus district is left without roads, there not being a good road in the whole district; the district of the Pelorus therefore requires for itself the benefit of such land within the district as remains yet unsold, and certainly is justly entitled to have it, and it would be highly injurious

and clearly impolitic to continue under municipal institutions the connection of that district, either with Picton or Blenheim.

“ Your memorialists have every confidence in the and good faith of the General Government to make a just application of the proceeds of land sales in the Pelorus district, whether to be expended under their own management, or by subsidisng for the purpose a Municipal Council to be instituted in the district. Your memorialists therefore pray your honorable house to transfer the entire Government of the Province of Marlborough into the hands of the General Government, and in the municipal arrangements consequent on that transfer, to keep in view the great natui-al boundaries which mark out Pelorus Sound and the district of which it is the sea-port, to be a separate political division, and to provide some guarantee under Municipal Institutions that the proceeds of land sales within those bounds will be applied to render the land itself accessible. “ And your memorialists will ever pray, &c.”