THE WEEK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 100, 29 April 1871, Page 2

THE WEEK.

The event of the week is. of course, the meeting of the Provincial Council, whiVh commenced its sittings ou Tuesday hist and has since then been engaged in the customary preliminaries. As yet the members have not warmed to the collar and but little more than purely formal business has been done. A Chairman of .Committees has been elected, the experience of twenty sessions having shown that such an officer is absolutely necessary, but beyond this and the re-affirming of certain resolutions which were passed last year to amend the Land Laws, the attention of tbe Council has been chiefly directed to the appointment of Select Committees. Members, whose views on political questions are diametrically opposite, smile benignly upon each other, and all look as though the motto they had adopted for their guidance during the session was peace and goodwill to all men. It is just possible that this apparent calm may be ruffled before the expiration of another week, however I trust that matters may contiuue Ao work as smoothly as they have hitherto done. A bone of contention was thrown into their midst on Thursday night in the shape of the Estimates, but hitherto it has been allowed to remain unmolested; it is, however, possible that when a little more time has been afforded for their consideration the members may have something to say on this subject, aud that their ideas with regard to the various items may not be found to coincide. But it is not my proviuce to enter into political questions, nor to indulge in speculatious with regard to what may occur in our little political world, still I always reserve to myself the right to touch lightly upon such matters, and to have my little say on topics which appear to nic to be of special interest to my readers who, I have reason to believe, form a large proportion of the Nelson public, and therefore I intend to, 'crive expression to an i<3 ea that has frecjuently occurred to me before now and which has been called into existence again by one or two .matters to which reference was made in the Superintendent's speech. What I have to say has nothing to do with the Provincial Council but refers to that which is likely to occur in another place, to use a Parliamentary phrase. „ ' . In the speech, which contains thirteen clauses, no fewer than five of them relate to matters of the highest inu^-tance, upon which the Council is invited to express an opinfpu preparatory to their being brought before the General' Assembly. I will just run over them briefly merely to show that I am not exaggerating in attributing to them so much importance. , They,:are .as jfollows ;,-rnThe amendments hi:, the: . Waste Lands, Acts;. 'which "have now been twice" agreed • to. i unanimously iby tithe- -Council jJ-ltb©'. annexation of the Grey; and Teremakau districts j the railways

from Foxhill, to Nelson, and from the Brunner mine to Cobden, which are but the commencement of tho main line which we hope to! see constructed from ' one extremity of the proviuce to the other ; the loan for gas, and water, works ; aud the allocation to this province of a fair share of the £300,000 proposed to be expended upon supplying the goldfields with water. It is of course quite competent for tho Provincial Council to pass what, resolutions they please on these subjects, but it must be remembered that, beyond strengthening the hands of those to whom is entrusted the task of. passing them through tho Assembly, these resolutions are of no avail whatever, as it rests entirely with the Colonial Parliament to decide whether or not they shall become law. Aud this brings me to the point at which I have, somewhat laboriously perhaps, been driving. I wish to urge upon the representatives of the proviuce the necessity that exists of their acting more in concert than has hitherto been the practice of our Nolson members. Canterbury gets what she wants because bar representatives pull together, Otago ditto, Auckland the sume, while Nelson has nlrnost invariably been a mere nonentity in the House. I may be told that we are not so numerously represented in the Assembly as are the larger provinces, to which I reply, perfectly true, but in a House of sevently-five or six members — I forget the precise number just now — we have seven, and seven determined men, the interests of whose constituents aiM identical, aud who have made up their miods that justice shall be done to those whom they represent, are possessed of considerable power if they only choose to exercise it. Individually, they are weakness itself; collectively, they may obtain such concessions as Nelson is fully entitled to, but which she has never yet received. Will our newlyelected members work together in tbe coming session of the Parliament, or is it to be the old story over again of a house divided against itself ? If the former, we may fully anticipate that our wants will be attended to, if the latter, no special inspiration is needed to enable us to foretell the result. I fear I shall weary my readers if I dwell any longer od politics, of which tbey will have enough and to spare within the next two or three week?, so I will change my theme. Those portions of a newspaper that are devoted to news are not the only ones from which information of an interesting nature is to be derived, and I had occasion last Saturday to revert to the advertising columns for a topic on which to discourse, where I fouud a notification that a cargo of corn and other j farm produce had been imported into the | province, while our own agriculturists complained of the difficulty tbey had in getting rid of that which they had on hand — and here I may mention that the whole of that cargo has been disposed of— and now I see another advertisement which is singular and unaccountable, to say the least of it. Here it is — "Twenty-six shillings per ton for Newcastle coals; thirty shillings per -ton for Grey coals," from which it will be observed tbat this very necessary article can be transported something like 2000 miles, and sold here at a considerably lower rate than that which is to be found in abundance and of equally good quality, within our province. I called the attention of a friend to this yesterday, who, with an ominous shake of the head, replied, " There's something wrong somewhere." I think so too. F.