AUCKLAND, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31, 1852.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 622, 31 March 1852, Page 2

AUCKLAND, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31, 1852.

The decision of tli« Common Council on Saturday, amounted to a virtual annulling of the proceedings taken in the Committee of the whole Council to which we recently referred, and merits therefore the commendation with which every attempt to retrace a false step should be encouraged. A series of sessions had been held in private, —as we are fully warranted in saying, when it is remembered that they were held in a different place, and at different times from those at which the Council usually meets, and held without afford- ! ing the public, or its organ and representative j the Press, any opportunity of being present, or any intimation of the where or the when of the deliberations. These sessions were in direct violation of the requirement of the Chaiter that "every meeting of the Council shall be open to the public." A conclusion had been arrived at, by some means or other, in the course or at the close of these sittings, fixing on £60C0 as the sum necessary for roads during the current year. That this conclusion, or the steps by which it was reached, or both, were unsatisfactory to several members appeared with abundant distinctness, from various expressions dropped on Saturday \ and it needed no great penetration to perceive that some very discordant views were entertained in connexion witli the subject, although the mystety in which the previous discussions had been enveloped continued to throw its shadow of obscurity over those details which might have ex plained the sources of disagreement. One thing, however, was very ob\ious, - that as Mr. Ab aham plainly told his worthy brethren, the course pursued had been altogether "irregular ;" and accordingly an amendment was carried (although only by the casting vote of the Mayor) " That the Mayor do call a meeting of the whole Council, and that the Minutes be entered, and the proceedings conducted in clue form." All that has taken place in the private sittings therefoie, is now reduced to " a rehearsal," as it was expiessed on Saturday, and the public will consequently have the benefit of a performance in which the actors may be expected to be perfect in their parts. That is, if the public be apprised at all of the appointed place and time. For, as we have entered on the point of publicity, it may be right to state that, for anything done by the Council to carry out the spirit of the Charter in this matter, all its sittings might have been entirely secret. In no single instance has the public been officially informed of an intended meeting. When we have ourselves notified that one was to be held, it was not in consequence of any request from the Town Clerk or other authorised person, but because we had happened to hear the arrangement mentioned in conversation, and communicated it to our readers as we communicate any passing news that we think likely to interest them. The adjournments of the Council have always been " until further notice," and the " further notice" was given by the Town Clerk, not to the public, but exclusively to its members. We are willing to believe that this arose from inadvertence, not design ; however, such has been uniformly the fact. There certainly was no necessity for its being so, even on the ground of the emptiness of the i corporate, exchequer, for the newspapers would have announced the foithcoming meeting |of Council as items of local intelligence had they been asked to do so; for ourselves at least, we may say that we should have done it cheerfully. Probably little practical inconvenience resulted from the omission, as in a small community like ours those who take an inter* st in such meetings can usually know of them by private enquiry ; and perhaps we should not have adverted to the matter had it not been brought into prominence by the recent more important ♦•irregularity," which, if suffered to pass with the acquiescence of silence, would have formed a piecedent that on future occasions, and by other Municipal Councils, might be cited in support of an intentional, exclusion of the Burgesses for inteiested and even conupt ends, from that opportunity of

personally ohseivihg how their chosen representatives speak and act, to which they have a distinct and constitutional and chattered right. The Petition to Pailiament ptaying that no part of the expenditure connected with the introduction of the Pensioners may be charged upon the Province, was at length adopted, the blanks having been filled up — in the absence of the officially attested figures which had not been obtained from Government — by such an approximation to accuracy as the Committee were able to form from an examination of the Gazettes. To some extent we agree in the propriety of the prayer of the Petition ; but we certainly cannot concur in its sweeping repudiation of all obligation on the part of the Province in this matter. We do not, on the one hand, consider the Pensioner immigrants by any means th<' best class for agricultural purposes that might be imported ; but, on the other, we cannot but regard them as an improvement on the clas* md scritninately sent out under the old system worked by shipbroking emigration agents at Home ; and we do not think any view of the case can be fair or comprehensive which loses sight of the beneh'ts conferred on the community by the expenditure of their pensions.and the permanent location of a force which may be rendeied actually and promptly available for defenc should occasion call for such service at their hands. It strikes us that an equitable division of the cost incurred on their account might be made between the Imperial Tieasury and the Colonial Fund, by charging on the Land Fund, say, the bonafide outlay necessary for their passages from England, and liquidating from Imperial resourses the cost of their location — a cost which cannot on any principe of justice that we can immediately perceive, be levied on the funds of the colony. But we sln.ll probably expand these hints somewhat more when we publish the Petition as now completed, which we are compelled to postpone until our next number. Apropos to Corporate affairs, the Southern Cross of Fiiday has published a Petition to the Queen against the Charter of Incorporation, which, although it has been concocted here, was known at Wellington some three I months since, when the Independent called attention to it in the eulogistic teims which we noticed in the New Zealander of January 24. Now, that it has come to light, we find little beyond a re-production of some of the objections which were urged at the first proclamation of the Charter, and which we then examined so fully that it would be merely repeating our articles over again to comment upon them now in detail. We confess to being a little disappointed by its lack of originality both in matter or manner, especially when we consider that the trial (such as it is) which the Charter has had since November last, might have been expected to furnish some experimental illustrations of the theoretical allegations so freely launched against its principle. Altogether this is a harm 'ess Petition ; a very harmless Petition indeed. The signatures aie confessedly few ; but then we are told by the Southern Cross that they are those of "leading men." The Independent went a little farther than our local contemporary, alleging that " all the leading men in the Borough signed it." We, should like to know who the signers were, just that we may be instructed who are so exclusively our leading men, and may reverence them accordingly. . Very likely there are some highly respectable names to the document, but it may be a question whether they monopolize the whole respectability and weight of the Borough, as our Wellington contemporary (speaking, we presume, on Auckland information) has implied. In our simplicity we should have thought that the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Councillors have a right to be considered " leading men" in the Borough. Have they signed it? The " leading men," we rather apprehend, are gentlemen whom the Burgesses did not select — in some instances, perhaps, never once thought of — as their representatives on the Municipal Elections. But the Petition can scarcely be regarded even by those who have gotten it up as likely to exercise an ! influence on Her Majesty's Councils, and we have no desire to interfere with the innocent gratifications of the patriotic few who may have derived some amusement from nursing it during the months in which it has been attaining its present shape and dimensions.

The Band of the 58th Regiment, by permission of His Excellency Lieutenant-Colonel Wynyard, C.8., will perforln the following 1 selection of music, in the Grounds of the Old Government House, to-morrow (Thursday), between the hours of 3 and 5 p.m.

PROGRAMME. Overture. .0p. . ." The Fair Maid of Perth." Waddell. Melange . . " The Musical Telegraph." Kuhner. Cavatina..Op.." La Gazza Ladia." Rossini. Fantasia.. Op.. "The Marble Maiden.".... Adam. Galop . . " Der Araber." Labitzky. Song . . " The Yellow Hair'd Laddie." Waltz.." The Nightingale." Jullien. Qjadrille.. 1 ' The Hibernian." Jullien.