THE POLICY OF THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 18, 27 May 1871, Page 1

THE POLICY OF THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT.

■ty r E jately. attempted to show the absurdity of those who think that the new Executive can not “ do any good until they have turned out the present Ministry,” and that our newly-elected Superintendent must pass an interval of official torpor until the meeting of the Assembly/'where alone,” as our evening contemporary a few days ago solemnly assured the people of, Wellington “ lie can carry out the ends he has in view for the regeneration of the province.” If any of the read ers of that j ournal ! Had begun to bevyail (be dreary official hybernation of so able a Superintendent,Tor'sp long a time,' they must,'have .discovered from more recent articles, that their;cbmmiserration was entirely uncalled for. That the Hon. Mr Fitzherbert can do inuch for Wellington in the Assembly we do not doubt ; but,,the Superintendent of Wellington can do far more. JWe had the gratification of putting before our readers the principles of two most'important bills now being drafted the Assembly—but the ProvinciahCduni cil of Wellington. Yes: this despised •Provincial Council will have the power to pass the two most important measures that can affect the future of the province. And Provincialism, that Veffete and corrupt system” whose “ speedy abolh ' tion” our contemporary has so perseveringly advocated, will yet, we venture to believe, have done great things for Welingtori long before the Assembly sits. We hope the day is not far distant when the province will be able to point with pride to roads and schools equal to those for which Otago and Canterbury are justly famed. This hope we cherish , from observing the course the Provincial Executive are so wisely following / viz., adopting the very same political machinery that in these provinces has 1 proved so successful. It must be a subject of great rejoicing throughout the country districts That the “ regeneration of che province” is not put off to a more con* venient season, and is not to be made dependent on the deliberations of an Assembly in which their wants and wishes so little are likely to be studied. It is peculiarly .gratifying to us to see the course we long ago pointed out closely followed. The settlers in the province have had a bitter experience of the unfitness of the Assembly to legislate on the subject of roads. > The complaints, litigations, un certainties, and wranglings of the last year must have taught them that Mr Fitzherbert was very correct in-asserting that such a body is utterly unfit for “parish business.” Of the large class of our settlers (the small farmer') there are few in the lower, and none at all in the upper house. In the Provincial Council, on the other hand, this class is most fully represented. In the work of dividing the province into suitable road districts, and in determining the rate, mode, and amount of assessment, and in arranging the details of a new system of administration, it would be a manifest absurdity to suppose that a Legislature, unsympathetic in one branch, and actually hostile in another, to small farmers, would take as much care to protect their interests as one largely composed of small farmers themselves. This parish business, as the Superintendent justly said, is actually of more concernment to us than matters seemingly more important. “ It is,” as he happily styled it, our “ very bread and butter.” It is, therefore, wisely, and according to the spirit of representative institutions, left in our own hands. Bitterly does Otago now rue the day when Mr Donald Reid presented the petition of 78 settlers in the Clutha to the General Assembly asking them to interfere in the administration of the waste lands of the Crown. That was a blow to the province from the effects of which she is only now beginning to recover. She

has awaked at last from the hideous nightmare of the Reid administration, but affected with a fearful lassitude. The new Executive are, we see, to meet the Council with the surplus Mr -Vogel left in the Treasury when ousted by Mr Reid, not only all gone, but £50,000 or £60,000 on the wrong side of the ledger. The Reid Government, to the folly of resisting the Hundreds Act passed by the Assembly, added the still greater folly of resisting the Public Works Act of last session ; and the General Government are actually opening up the lands, and construeting the railway to the Clutha in spite of them. Now that wiser counsels prevail, we expect' soon to hear of both matters being relegated to the Secretary of Land and Works (Mr C. E. Haughtotf, M.H.R.) ;. and as In all the other provinces, Wellington not excepted, the Colonial and the Provincial Governments working amicably together in carrying out the colonising policy agreed to last session. The course adopted by the new Executive implies faith iu our resources ; and it is very cheering to see that its adoption has already “ done good.” Our evening contemporary that lately used to bewail in the most doleful terms our “bankruptcy, ruin, and disaster,” now asserts “ without fear of confutation” (even by the “ Canterbury Press”) that the landed estate of the province is, in point of value, second to that of no province in New Zealand,” and roundly asserts, what we have long tried in vain to convince him of, that “ it will be impossible for us to abrogate our provincial institutions without forfeiting the pbsition in the colony which we ought to hold, and sacrificing a large portion of our property.” We may expect, .therefore, : that our “ utter ruin ” will riot henceforth through its columns be so blazoned to the world, and the fact 1 that the mere enunciation of this policy has brought about the conversion of the “ Evening Post,” shows that we were correct in stating that it had already done some good. That this conversion, though sudden, is sincere, we cannot doubt. The very words first used by Mr Stafford to the mysterious Reform League of Wellington, and often since by our contemporary, when more_than usually in- earnest, have been employed to set it forth. Perhaps it is thereby intended to explain to Mr Stafford, with the greatest possible precision, that the “ Post” no longer holds with him in thinking that the immediate abolition of provincial institutions “ will raise the political capita] of the colony to its proper position,” seeing that it now “ advises the people of Wellington,” (and the Reform League, we suppose, more especially) that the policy of seeking the regeneration of the province, not through the abolition, but through the legislation, of the Provincial Council, is “ a policy which holds out a hope of raising the political capital of the colony to its proper position.” We cordially agree with our contemporary in his support of the Provincial Executive, in his newly-found - faith in the resources of the province, and in his balance sheet of our provincial assets and liabilities. We remember the time, and that not many months ago, when a similar statement and balance sheet brought out rand read by Mr Pearce in the Odd Fellows’ Hall, met with a very different acceptance from our contemporary, and we hope we are correct in inferring ‘that the general policy advocated by that gentleman on that occasion, and which Mr Bunny would have also supported (had he been allowed to speak), now meets with his approbation and support. If so, we may hope for more cheerful and hopeful views of the colony and more favorable estimates of its splendid resources. If “ the bankrupt province of Wellington” turns out so well in this new arithmetic, what value may we not put .upon the ©states of such provinces as Otago, Canterbury, and Auckland! How

sound must Jbe the condition of the colony, and how rational must appear the policy of the Government and the financial proposals of Mr Vogel, which only aim at doing for the colony what the “ Post ” now advocates for a part of it—-the province of Wellington !

Resuming the consideration of .the two great measures to be brought before the Provincial Council at its approaching session, we desire to call attentioa to three principles common to both. These are, first, that for the purposes of the acts the Provincial Council will divide the whole province into districts ; will fix a minimum and a maximum rate of assessment, and in the event of the inhabitants of any district refusing or neglecting to appoint a board, the Superintendent is empowered to appoint commissioners, with full power to levy and expend the rates, and generally to act as if they had been duly elected as a local committee by the ratepa} 7 ers in the usual way. Under the operation of the first principle (which alone we can consider on the present occasion) an immense amount of property will be brought under assessment which has hitherto passed Scot free. Those who have been living in the neighborhood of the main roads, and required no district roads, will find themselves situated in one or other of the new districts, and of course liable to the assessment agreed on by the district board. At first sight, it seems bard to make any one pay for what he does not himself require, but a little reflection will show that the principle is neither new nor arbitrary. The inhabitants of the Middle Island, for instance, pay for a Native Department, with its numerous staff of agents, magistrates, interpreters, &c, although they receif. no direct benefit from this expenditure. It is true that, being a part of a united colony, they derive indirectly the benefits of this expenditure, and so in the same way, the persons rated for district roads and schools will derive in many cases,only an indirect benefit from their construction and maintenance. Under this principle, many absentees who derive incomes from properties in New Zealand will be called upon, for the first time, to contribute their quota to the taxation of a country whose gradual development and progress is year by year increasing the value of their property. Not living here, and consuming no duty-paying articles, they do not contribute, in many cases, anything at all to the general expenses of government. Drawing their income frorq land situated in no district, and therefore free from all local assessments, and spending their incomes in England or elsewhere out of the colony, they are the drones of the social hive—eating the honey and contributing nothing in return. Political economists Mr M'Culloch to wit—have laid it down that if an Englishman of fortune, drawing his income from England, instead of spending it on English commodities at home, spends it on French commodities in France, on French productions only —France would be no richer for it, and England no poorer. Mr Richmond lately in Wellington having boasted so much of political economy being an exact science, with principles like those of geometry—eternal and immutable—-it may be well to inquire how Mr M'Cull,och arrives at this conclusion. His argument then is this: Were the Englishman to live at home and use none but foreign articles in his establishment, he would give the same encouragement to British industry that he would do were he to use none but British articles. Therefore he must obviously do the same should he go abroad. The fallacy lies in the major premiss, viz., that the use of foreign articles at home gives the same encouragement to British industry as the use of British articles. It is beside our present purpose to demonstrate directly, that this is a great error ; but it may be proved indirectly that it must be wrong, involving,

as"we have seen, this absurd conclusion, that absenteeism is no pecuniary loss to any country. We might push the reductio ad absurdum easily much further. If the absenteeism of landowners and owners of property is no pecuniary loss—then suppose (if it were possible) that all our farmers, manufacturers, shopkeepers, &c., were also to absent themselves, what would prevent New Zealand becoming one vast solitude ? Trusting as we do for our revenue to indirect taxation, we require a population to consume what, if of foreign production adds largely to our revenue, and if of colonial, employs in its production New Zealand capital and labor. It is but fair, then, that for this twofold reason we should encourage population, and take care that no property should be improved by the construction of roads, bridges, and schools, which enhance its intrinsic value, and render it a more marketable commodity, at the sole expense of those who, living in the country, contribute (over and above its owners), by the consumption of duty-paying articles, to the general revenue. The operation of this ♦ principle will obviously do a great deal also to check land speculation. No one will care to buy, for purely speculative purposes, large tracts of country, when they see it is subject to annual taxation for yoads and schools. In a province where a great deal of the landed estate has been alienated %tt an'“ insufficient price,” this taxation should properly he regarded as a paymbrit by instalments for several years of the ; pufcliase money, which would have been paid in one lump sum, had the principles of Gibbon Wakefield, as in the provinces of Canterbury and Otago, been strictly adhered to. To buy land in Wellington at, ten shillings greatly superior to land in Canterbury at forty shillings, and-Tb expect, without any further outlay, to have roads and schools on is most unreasonable. A Canterbury settler, in paying forty shillings, pays not for the mere land, but for the land, plus roads, plus schools, plus the necessary expenses of surveys and government, to which purposes, by the Wakefield theory, the land revenue should only be appropriated. We have no sympathy with the wild and reckless scheme of Mr Stafford, hut while respecting the rights landowners enjoy, as created by law, we insist that they pay their fair share of local burdens. It must not be forgotten that so.much property hitherto unassessed now being laid under contribution a smaller rate will go further than under the old Acts. If then, as we have seen, the application of this principle makes absentees contribute to local taxation, who have hitherto escaped ; if it deters speculation in land, and favors bona fide settlement, if it encourages colonising operations by compelling every settler, nolens volens, to contribute his fair share of the necessary expense : we call upo’n the settlers in all parts of the province to give the measures, of which this is the initial principle, a favorable consideration the first place ; and if they see (as we trust to be able to show) no other Aiding principles allowed to interferes with them—then to give them their hearty and undivided support. Measures of this nature they need never hope to pass through the Upper House, as at present constituted ; and if they are only true to themselves, and to the interests of those to come after them, they will urge upon their members in the Provincial Council to support the Superintendent and Executive in this bold and statesmanlike policy, which, if successfully carried out, will inaugurate a new and brighter era for the province of Wellington. ~ As the great landed interest threw out the Otago Road Boards Act last, session, really because it imposed a road assessment on the run-holders, with a fervent “Thank God for the Upper House,” so we venture to predict that the passing of these two measures will lead the great body of our settlers to

exclaim, “Thank God that we still have a Provincial Council.” If there is a spark of the old colonising spirit left among us-nay, If the Instinct selfpreservation' is felt at ah by our settlers they will urge upon their members in the various districts of the province to support what we believe to be the only policy calculated to raise us from'our present depression. ;