PROVINCIAL ABOLITION.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 290, 19 September 1874, Page 3

PROVINCIAL ABOLITION.

Mr. Yogel in reply to Mr. Fitzherbert and others/ on. the resolution,;of the Wellington Superintendent, that the countryshould be appealed to before abolition was undertaken, said-:

I have been very much taunted about having changed my opinions. There can be no question, I think, that no one has endeavored, more anxiously than I have, to uphold the Provinces. . Thpre is no one to whom I would yield, so far as regards the desire I have had to uphold-the present institutions ,pf the, colony. But it is not fair to say that I have never given warning to the House—that I have never .indicated that in my opinion the time: would come when the difficulties arising from the system would be so great that Provincialism, especially in this island, would have to give way. I stated, in 1870, that if the maintenance of provincial institutions was proved to be . inconsistent with the giving effect to the immigration and public works policy, it would be so much the worse for provincial institutions, and they would have to yield. It cannot be said that in 1872 we did not comtemplate a contingency of the present kind, for in that session we brought down a Bill enabling the Colonial' Government to administer the affairs of effete provinces which proved to be not able to carry on their own government. Suggestions have been thrown out, that it would have been a more politic course to starve the provinces out of existence,; to bring them to their senses, by wi'thold'ihg all share of tlie colonial revenue, and so forcing them

to come to tlie Parliament and ask that the management of their affairs might be taken over. But Ido not think it wonld have been at all statesmanlike to be the means of inflicting a certain amount of wrong and misery upon the people in order to bring them to a right way of thinking politically. I believe that the proper course for men holding positions of influence in public life is to come forward boldly, and to speak plainly, when they' anticipate evils—not to wait calmly and idly until evils have come and have worked a wished-for result, and then to say, " I told you so—l saw those evils coming." It would have been very easy, four years ago, for the Government not to have invited action by the House— not to have given extraneous aid to the provinces, but to have left them to run on to such an end as we see now must come in this island. I believe that we adopted the more honest course when we endeavored to maintain provincial institutions as long as it was possible to do so; and when we saw that it was' impossible to continue those institutions to say so boldly, to come to the House with the courage of our opinions, and to test the opinion of the House upon /the point. All the statements that have been made about the determination come to by the Government on this matter—ancl: about my pvep;irin<j a recent speech during a quarter of an hour's adjournment of the House—are in' correct. I refer to them merely .0 say this: it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. What, has taken place with me has taken place with thousands of other men in the colony—the gradually accumulating force of circumstances and of arguments has compelled them reluctantly, to yield their convictions, and to come round to the opinions we are holding now. Nothing, I think, can be more I remarkable than the fact that, by the silent influence ' which thought and circumstances have upon men's ions upon; the question of provincialism have throughout the country undergone the widest possible change. All the assertions that have been made about my having come down with the because of irritation as connected with this Province of Wellington, aße-also very wide of the mark. I have, no doubfc, instanced this province as!affordiiig an example of evils that demanded a remedy. But matters connected with this province are no more than links in the great chain of evidence which has > been fastening itself upon my mind. I have not disguised, and I never shall- disguise, that the. attitude taken by the Provincialists with respect to the State Forests Bill, did open my eyes very - widely : but my eyes were opened very,widely last'year also. When I came to the House last year with that modest proposal, that, after a certain time, the great estate ef the waste lands of the Crown should render some little assistance towards carying out the main trunk railway system of the country, and was met by the assurance from the representatives of provinces in the Middle Island that no portion of those■■ lands could be parted with, but that they would prefer spending £500,000 in,the purchase of Native lands in this island ; when, this session, I asked for a fragment of the public' estate towards establishing a system of State forests, and found myself confronted by the same difficulty—when'l was told that the land sacredly belongs to the provinces—when I saw that the provinces were ready to give land for almost every conceivable object except for great colonial objects: all this did, indeed, make a most forcible impression upon my mind. And I say that the land question—not the re-opening of the cpmpact of 1856, or ita confirmation, but this question of dealing with the land itself—does and must exercise a material influence upon the question of the abolition of the provinces of the North Island.