The Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1874.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 38, 13 February 1874, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1874.

- — - ■ '■ ■ ' - We have hpd a visit from the Premier, and very pleased we were to see him. We all of us respect the position he holds, admire his ability, and have a high appreciation of his talents, his determination and his perseverance, and we delighted to do honor to the individual in whom these qualifications are to be found. We desired to show him hospitality, and so we gave him as good a dinner as we could manage. He was anxious to make some return for that hospitality, and so he, we may presume, gave us as good a speech as he could make. Probably he criticised the dinner after he left the Hall, and found fault with some portions of it; he may have smacked his lips ovejf the trout, and hnd pleasing recollecting of the plum pudding, while on the other hand the ma tton may have been underdone, the fowls tough, and the potatoes none too hot. No doubt all such little grievances, supposing them to have existed, were poured into the ears of his brother Minister and private secretary; it is our business to give .expression to our criticisms of the after dinner proceedings in a more public manner, and therefore we are now about to say a few words about Mr Vogel's speech. There are some people, we verily believe, who will hold up their hands in horror at the bare idea of any fault being found with anything that might have fallen from the Premier's lips — at least so we judge from the very inopportune •" hear, hears" and cheers with which some portions of his speech were greeted— but notwithstanding this, we mean to be sufficiently bold to declare that in our opinion he spoke on some subjects in an ill-considered and thoughtless manner. Lefc us not be • misunderstood. We had no desire whatever that Mr Yogel should have spoken to the public of_Nelson 00 "io

his younger days. he perhaps addressed himself to some vain young girl whose, ears were open to nothing but flattery. We wanted him . to give utterance to his opinions in a frank and open manner. He did so, and a little discourteously as it appeared to us, but probably not intentionally so. We do not agree with his opinions, and shall therefore proceed i to combat • tbem, because, ns we think, imputations that were, to say the least, j UDjußf, were cast upon the people of this j province, nnd it would be cowardly on j the part of the press to allow them to ! pass unnoticod. We gather from the speech before us that in tbe earlier days of the settle- . ment, the people who made their homes in this province, were in Mr VogelV eyes, n pack of imbeciles. Of course he did not make use of such extremely unparliamentary language, but there are various ways of expressing one's meaning, and such we believe to have been Mr Vogel's. " Supposing,", he said, that Canterbury had been Nelson and Neleon Canterbury, what would have been the results to-day ? " and then he went on to tell us that, under such altered circumstances, our at present rich neighbor would have been in a poverty stricken condition, while this province would have been rolling in wealth. In other words, tbat if the earlier settlers of Nelson had been set down in the midst of a rich fertile plain they would have not turned it to account, while if the Canterbury men had come to this comparatively barren part of the colony they Would have set to work and rendered it a rich, prosperous, and thriving province. We differ from him entirely and for this reason. In Canterbury, the first settlers, saw, almost without looking for them, what grand resources were within their reach. They saw extending for countless miles a nobie plain which only required to be ploughed and sown to be made ,to yield splendid-returns, nnd well-grassed hills separated from the town only by a long reach of level land over whicb a dray road could be taken with ease. Nothing was wanted blit roads and communication with the port to render wealthy a country whose riches were to be extracted from the surface — mark the words. The resources of Canterbury were visible at a glance. Their existence did not require to be revealed by drives into the sides of the hills, by expensive excavations, by the turning of rivers and creeks and other costly works. It was palpable at once to the most inexperienced eye. Seeing' thisi, j the Canterbury people did what even such poor creatures, as Mr Vogeh supposes the Nelson men to havebeen, would under similar circumstances bave done. They- -saw the magnificent country that lay at their feet, and, knowing that ail that was required was facilities for bringing' its productions into the market, tbey borrowed money to enable. them to do t sp. And they were right. But what about Nelson ? Its wealth lay not on the surface but under ir, and had yet to be discovered It had not the amount of agricultural land that would justify a large expenditure of borrowed money, and tbe settlers were unaware of tbq existence of the mineral treasures that have since been brought to light. The discovery of these sources of. wealth was of necessity gradual and the work of years. Before Nelson knew wherein lay the foundation of her future prosperity, Canterbury had expended her first railway loan. For Canterbury to incur heavy liabilities for the purpose of opening up the country by roads and bridges, and connecting her chief town with the port waß perfectly legitimate in that a certainty of speedy returns was before her. For Nelson to have done the same would bave been pure speculation. As it haa turned out, the speculation would; in the course ofyears, have proved a thoroughly good and remunerative one, but speculations of this kind with the public money would surely not be approved of even by Mr Yogel . Speaking with knowledge acquired after the event, he tells us that we ought to have done as Canterbury did, but he should bave endeavored to reduce himself to that state of ignorance of the resources of the country in which the Nelson people were fifteen years ago, before he ventured to assert what was the course of action they should then have adopted. " Had the Canterbury policy been carried out in Nelson," he tells us, there would have been-roads and railways and all sorts of luxuries in the province, and no doubt there would, but that is not the question. Rather is it : Supposing the Canterbury people to have been located in Nelson, would they have adopted in the latter province the same policy which seemed to tbem best adapted to the requirements of Canterbury? We think not, while on the other hand we believe that had the ships which brought the first immigrants to Nelson gone to Canterbury instead, that province would still have been in tbe thriving condition in which it now finds itself. This muoh we have to say for the earlier settlers, wbile in justice to those who followed them it must be remembered that it is only within the last few years, and since provincial borrowing was disallowed that the true value of our mineral resources has been discovered. To run a road or> a railway through from Nelson to the West Coast merely for the sake of tapping the agricultural, land which borders on its route would scarcely be prudent or desirable, but now we know that, in addition to this, there are not only alluvial diggings, which are always shifting and uncertain, but that there are miles upon miles of

■ ip—J . reefs, which, wherever they have yet been worked have proved rich in tLe extreme, and knowing this we do not hesitate to borrow money with a view to pushing roads into the interior; not knowing it we declined to burden the province with heavy liabilities. Having sneered at the prudence that was exercised in the past, we trust that Mr Yogel will see his way to encouraging the spirit of enterprise that is shown •by tbe people of Nelson now tbat they are better acquainted with the value of their OBtate. We can forgive his taunts it they ore only preliminaries to that active and practical assistance to which he has admitted we are fully entitled. In his second speech, which was addressed not only to his co-diners but to the colony, " in view of tbe fact that in eighteen months time there would be a general election," the Premier broached the somewhat startling theory that for the future the people should reduce their representatives in Parliament to the position of mere delegates. Members of the Assembly are to have no will, to exercise no judgment of their own. At their election they are to make certain pledges to their constituents, and, no matter how the surrounding circumstances may have changed, they are to adhere to those pledges, A member elected upon the Yogel ticket, notwithstanding that he may see grave faults in the administration of affairs, is to support tbe Ministry on all occasions. ..' He is to put his conscience in his pocket, and button it up securely lest it should influence his actions. We never experienced greater surprise than on hearing such a doctrine preached by such a man as Mr Yogel. He has, or rather he expressed, no obejetion to the return of a class of men of which the vain man who feels hurt if he is not consulted by the Ministry on every little trifling point, and the man who upsets a Government because the word ' whereas ' has been inserted in a bill instead of ' thereafter ' are the types. He sees no reason why they should not hold seats in the Legislature if only they are pledged, and are made to keep their pledge, to support a certain party. Did it occur to Mr Yogel tbat he was straining at a gnat but swallowing 1 a camel with the utmost complacency? ' If he wanted to give the people roally j good practical advice he should have told them that if they wished to be properly governed they should elect men to represent them of real sterling wortb, men who are able to form an opinion of their own and to give good reasons for entertaining it, men who j take an, honest and a sincere interest in the welfare of the country in the go- j vernment of which they are chosen ! tp take a part, men who if they see anything radically wrong in the administration of the public affairs are possessed of both the courage and the ability to expose if, and who will not hesitate to turn out pf office a Ministry so soon as it ceases to possess tbeir confidence, no matter whether it acknowledges Mr Yogel or Mr Stafford as its head. ' Our recipe for- ensuring good government and for retaining full power in the hands of the people would be the exercise of sufficient oare in electing good and reliable representatives, and a stedfast refusal to have anything to say to such vain and little minded men as were alluded to the other night. Mr Yogel says, elect the latter if you like but be sure to insist upon their giving an unfailing and undiscriminating support to some party or another. We were very glad indeed to see Mr Yogel here the other day and exceedingly pleased that tbe people of Nelson availed themselves of the opportunity of showing their respect to a man of such undoubted ability and earnestness of purpose, but we were very much disappointed with both his speeches.