THE Mount Ida Chronicle SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1877.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 410, 3 February 1877, Page 2

THE Mount Ida Chronicle SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1877.

The County system, in our present state of development, may well be considered as stereotyping the unsettled Interior for many years to come... The essence of local gover nmentis; that the people who own the property'in any county district or borough should have the sole regulation of taxation upon the whole of *that property, and the expenditure of the net results of the taxation, as well as of all other local revenues arising incidentally within the local boundariea. In this way the repre-

sentative bodies are interested in the i sole endeavor of increasing the wealth of the district in the most economical way If they fail in this, and blunder as they are sure to-do at times, all that can be said is, they are less likely to do so than any other governing bodies would be who. were less directly interested in the district's welfare. -?- Tte-lancLis^he^ealsource of all our--Colonial wealth.' It is increased or diminished in value by the development °f communications, and by the production 1 of gold' in pi oporfion as~it" israised' by a self-supporting population, which would not have been attracted to our shores' by the temptation offered by any other industry. The County ratepayers, who, under our new system of local government, are invested with the sole powers of government in their respective Counties, cannot affect directly the production of gold. They can, however, to the extent of their resources, affect the development of communications. This power carries with it a modified or indirect influence upon the -production of gold. The County ratepayers are, however, only interested in the lands in their County to a fraetionaLextent. The real propertyholder jn the bulk of the Counties is the Crown, as steward for the people of the Colony. Where by mutual arrangement the benefits to be derived from the lands have been more localised, as by the Compact of 1856 -the lands are held by the Government, in "trust, as it were, for the people of such modified districts. Under thenew order of things the Government relinquishes its stewardship. The people of Otago are thus deprived of any influence upon the development of our interior Crown lands, and can exercise no supervision, except through the cumbrous machinery of Parliament. It must not be supposed that any district representation in Parliament will be sufficiently strong to force through any expenditure of public money to make communications into the Interior to a greater extent .than the Counties affected can bear to be charged with. ¥e arrive, then, at this extraordinary position—The wealthier the people's estate is in any County, the less possibility there is of "utilising it for the common benefit; for obviously the more Grown lands there are-in any County by so much the more is the property available for County assessment diminished. That County therefore, other things being equal, is the poorest which contains the largest proportion of public estate over which all stewardship has been relinquished by the Government. It is true that the tenants of the i Crown are County ratepayers, and have each five votes, besides the number of illicit votes they could obtain tbrjugh their shepherds. It may be argued that they represent the Government, and, as tenants, have a motive of self-inte-rest stronger even than that which ordinarily actuates Governments. Unfortunately their tenancies depend, to a great extent, upon a thin "population. "Where settlement has pressed heavily upon them, as in portions of Canterbury, their anxiety to obtain security of tenure has driven them into the hands of the mortgagees. Their interest, in the meantime, is diametrically opposite to that of the people. It is true they cannot be isolated from the general prosperity; but, so long as they ! depend on London for their market, the less strides Colonisation makes, when once cheap mercantile communications are assured, the better is their tenure, and the more probability is there of being able to obtain an extension of lease, or, better still, a permanent freehold, tenure at a low rate. The pastoral tenants, we find, are willing to accept the County system, as fixing our present stage of settlement in the interior for-a considerable time. It then appears that, the Government having by legislation abandoned its stewardship in the matter of the development of the waste lands of the great unsettled interior districts of the Colony, the members of the General Assembly can exert no beneficial influence in increasing the productiveness of those lands. The County Councils do not represent the property, and therefore have not the means, if the inclination existed. The people's best interest is therefore being uncared for at all. How this can be reconciled with an expenditure of £1,636,000 upon immigration alone it is difficult to answer. Although this expenditure is being checked, yet even this year we find £136,266 provided for immigration. Is if to be a matter of blind chance whatr is to become of the immigrants who arrive, or the public works laborers who now are, or are about to become, out of employment ? Is it a matter of no moment to relieve the present population from a proportion of the burden that immigration has cost ? Apparently not! We had thought it was the duty of a Colonial Government, beyond every other, to economise its lands, to see that wherevei possible they were being made available for settlement, aud that the revenues' anriu-"-ally accruing, as the public estate 1 is parted with, should be "husbanded for the further development of the balance unalienated. Instead of Ihis our present position under local government is—that our communications are uncared for altogether. Our land revenue is first of all impounded for a ruin-, ous departmental expenditure. It next is frittered away in subsidies to local bodies, which have little interest in and no power to develop the Crown lands, and in most cases are influenced by those whose direct present interest it is to stereotype all existing communications for the next twenty years.

The ' Bruce Herald' makes a very reasonable suggestioa with regard to the distribution of Magisterial duties •with-

in the Province. It is obvious that Mr. Carew is unduly saddled with work, .Jlis District Land .work alone is efficient to occupy the-wbole time of many of our offlcmls. Admitting, as we very treely do, His immense powers of work which enable him to live, repeatedly having to hold his Court until all hours of the we fail to see how it is-possible; for -Mm-to fulfil -those numberless duties which are expectedof a Resident"'Magistrate in such a populous district as Tokomairiro. It is well known that the mere sitting in Court is the very lightest of these duties Our contemporary's suggestion, to throw Blacks upon Mr. Robinson, and Nevis upon Mr. Simpson, is quite feasible when Mr. Stratford returns or at once, could a substitute be found until the last named gentleman returns. Mr. Robinson could manage Blacks, if he were provided with clerical assistance in his office. The great mistake made in the allocation of work to our Goldfields Wardens and Magistrates is, that their labor is not economised more. Their labor, which is worth some hundreds a-year, is repeatedly and vexatiously taken up in doing work which is worth a few pounds a-year. Were every Warden, who ia District Land Officer, Resident Magistrate, Licensing Commissioner, Judge of the Assessment Court, &c, &c, all rolled into one, furnished with a smart youth to do the slavish work—which is. such a burden upon their time, and, we venture to say, upon their intellectual faculties—a very considerable economy would be obtained. It is not the districts that kill the officers, but. the technical clerical work they have to undertake. We hope our contemporary will pursue the redistribution of work he very properly advocates.

The enterprise of the coach proprietors on the Tuapeka and Queenstown road has prompted them to run through from Lawrence to Cromwell; n the day, three times a week, leaving Lawrence at 6 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Satuidays. The train leaves Dun-din in the afternoons of Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and is'delivered at Clyde and Cromwell on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Tins being so, we could easily receive two extra mails a week. The Dunstan Monday coach could deliver at Naseby'a inail made-up in Dunedin on the afternoon of Friday, and the Friday's down coach could deliver a Dunedin"mail made up on the afternoon of Wednesday. The advantage of a Wednesday's Dunedin mail being delivered on Friday would be considerable. The afternoon mail of Friday would also be convenient to bring letters or papers posted late on Fridays. - Nearly -every week we have complaints of Dunedin papers posted on Friday not coming through. We draw the attention of the Mayor of Naseby to the matter, confident that upon his representation the Chief Postmaster would instruct** Mount Ida mail'to be made iip on Wednesday. A Dunedin mail made up at Naseby on Tuesday morning would, via Clyde, reach Dunedin Thursday at an early hour, and similarly a Dunedin mail made up at Naseby on Saturday morning would be'delivered in Dunedin e&rly on Tuesday morning.