LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 185, 5 August 1881, Page 2

LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

To the Editor of thb " Evening Mah,."

Sir— -The cry for Local Government \3 pretty general on both aides of the House, but unfortunately there ia no party or individual who seems to know what the country really needs. The speeches on the subject are bo indefinite or visionary that they rather resolve themselves into a demand for' money to be spent upon local public works; so, it appears, it was understood by the Government, for, although providing a system of local finance in some respects very liberal, they refuse through their mouthpiece, Major Atkinson, to touch the existing state of things. Thiß ia not to be wondered at when we remember that the County system was the special product of the brains of the Major, and like tbe darling of Sir George Grey — ProTincialiFm— not to be surrendered without a great struggle. From my point of view neither Sir George nor Major Atkinson have much to be proud of in their offspring. Provincialism was but a modified form of Centralism, Take the Province of Nelson withtheaeatof Governmental Nelson j could it be other than Centralism to the West Coast?

The same could be said of Otago end Boothlam?. This was felt at the beginning, hence the split in the Provincial system, the severance of Marlborough from Nelson, Southland from Otago, Hawke's Bay from Wellington, Wotland from Canterbury, and the establishment of the Gladstone Board of Works close to Timaru. But the great weakness of the Provincial system and the greatest cause of its abolition was its revenue, and if Sir George Grey was the propounder of the scheme of ways and means, it is no wonder that in hia old age he repents of the evil be has done in the past and is continujilly talking about the land for the people, that land which he so foolishly thretv away { for to make the sale of land a source of revenue to the provinces was Bheer madness and an invitation to bankruptcy, acd so it proved, for as the land fund became exhausted, in each province they were obliged to have recourse to the General Government for means to carry on, and the e arose a cry to colonialise the land fiai, and a general readiness on the part of the lesser provinces to give up the provincial system, only because they were straitened in their means to carry on the government ; thence the abolition 6f provinces. Ocfi cannot help remarking here in reference to Sir George Grey's late speech that baa been bo widely circulated, what a pily it is he did not think of the endowment scheme before the land was gone, while fie was absolute Governor at Auckland, and while he was the Constitutional Governor of this colony. What a pity it is that he remained in his secluiion at Kawau while Canterbury wa3 selling land at the rite ,of a million pounds a year. lam afraid Sir George's wisdom is come too late. If the Provincial system is a reflection upon the wis dom of Sir George Grey, the County system is none the less a reflection upon the wisdom of Major Atkinson. To abolish the provinces without anything to replace them was bad enongh, but to invent a system to work upon the same lines and over "the same ground and do the same work as the Road Boards was ten thousand times worse, for it involved two sets of officials, and two rating bodiee, I repeat it again, to do the same work. If this was Local Government, it "was local government in double set, local government over much. What the country really needs is a simple, cheap, and efficient form of Local Government, and I see nothing bo simple, so cheap, and so efficient as the Road Boards, and, I may add, so suitable to oqr present limited country population, I will here remark that I think the people of the Waimea and Motueka were premature in their desire to divide the Highway districts before the question of local government^waa settled. Abolish the County Councils, let the General Government look after the bridges on the main trunk lines of road, and §übsi- ; dise the upkeep of the main trunk roads to the extent of at least 50 per cent. They are colonial roads, and as such should! be very largely subsidised by colonial funds, not by borrowed money as Major Atkinson: proposes, bat out of the Consolidated revenue. The district roads then may be left to be maintained out of district rates without; Gove rnment help or interference. Districts outside of Road Board districts tnusfc.bf course, be taken charge of by the Government of the colony. This, I think, with the Municipal Conncilß for cities and towns is all the Local Government we really ueed ia our present infant state of population. This is the view, I am glad to see, the Eoad Boards in the Auckland District are taking, and I hope the Koad Boards throughout New Zealand will discuss the matter. I think it is quite within their prof ince, and it is for them as the leaders directly of their people to take it op. I hope to see a move in this direction in our own district, for of all people farmers working with their own hands their oyra lands are interested in having a simple, cheap, and efficient form of Local Government, but I greatly fear, if one may judge by the speeches in the House that we shall have cumbrous machinery thrust upon us, efficient only in its power to impose burdensome taxes upon us. For the future, when increase of population warrants it, there may be some further attempt to localize Government, Hospitals, Charitable Institutions, Police, Prisons, &c, but until j that time we have a right to dmand that, whatever arrangements the Government may make for local oversight of these institutions, they shall be principally supported from the Consolidated revenue. When the future historian, say in the jear 2000, writes the history of New Zealand from existing records he will write:— "For the first 30 years of the existence of New Zealand as a constitutional colony they had a mania for Govennment. There were with a population at no time exceeding 300,000, nine Provincial Governments with nine little kings called Superintendents, nine Parliaments with Speakers, nine Provincial Secretaries, Provincial Solicitors, and Provincial Treasurer! as Executives, which, just before the abolition of the pro vinces, were developing into party Government with their ins and outs; one General Government with a Governor appointed by the Crown, Parliament with its Speaker, Clerk of Parliament, Sergeant at Arms, fire responsible Ministers, eightyeight Members of the House of Representatives, forty Legislative Councillors, all these paid out of the public purse. Besides these there was a multiplicity of Road Boards, River Boards, Harbour Boards, and Drainage Boards. It does not surprise us with these records before us that during this period about 13 million acres of land of the very best cream ot the public estate were sold to support these many governments. It must have been so, it was impossible for 300,000 people to have maintained auch a multiplicity of Governments out of legitimate revenue. We in the year of Grace 2000 with a population five times that number, looking back at those 30 years of history, can come to no other conclusions than that our ancestors were Government mad, that they governed according to area, and not according to population.—l am, &0.,

Fkeb Lance.