New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1871. THE WEEK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 18, 27 May 1871, Page 11

New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1871. THE WEEK.

The site of the new bridge over the Hutt river is a question of great importance, and is naturally occasioning much discussion. It possesses more than ordinary interest, as its proper decision concerns not the inhabitants of the Hutt merely, but those of the Wairarapa and Wellington also. It appears to be pretty generally admitted by those able to give an opinion, and who are not interested in the question, that no worse site than the old one, in an engineering point of view, could be chosen ; and yet it is doubtful whether a site far removed from it would so well meet the wishes and convenience of a large majority of the settlers in the district. If the new bridge is to be built on the line of the proposed railway, either that must run on the eastern side of the river until it reaches a point at no great distance from the site of the old bridge, or a bridge for common traffic, irrespective of the railway bridge, and which will connect the Hutt village with the railway must be erected. And why should it not ? A trifling toll, where there is so much traffic, would quickly pay the cost of its erection. If the proposed railway cross the Hutt river above the gorges, as recommended by Mr Roehfort, it is quite evident that a bridge over the river near the old site will be required, and which it would well pay a private company to build if granted a monopoly for only a few years of the local traffic.

Though education is a matter which concerns the colony as a whole, and one therefore which the General Assembly should provide for, still local machinery, may prove the most

efficient for carrying it into effect. The evils of centralization, and the necessity for such institutions of local self-government as will confer on the people the power and habit of self-rule, are at this moment painfully exhibited by what is taking place in Erance. In 1848 the Republic was actually telegraphed to the departments, and the Paris insurgents of the present day in setting up a Giovernment not only for the capital, but for the whole country, are but endeavoring to do what the leaders of the revolutions of ’3O, ’4B, and *52, by the aid of a centralized machinery, and in the absence of institutional freedom, succeeded in accomplishing. Centralization has many advantages, but it is opposed to the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race, and peculiarly illadapted for a country like New Zealand. In this matter of education, though it is one of general concern, the Central Legislature had better by positive laws compel, or by wise arrangements stimulate local action, than attempt to supersede or suppress it. We are glad to learn, therefore, that our new Provincial Government intend to take the matter up, while we are no less pleased to see indications that the next session of the Council, like the last session of the Assembly, will be distinguished by practical measures calculated to promote the best interests of the people. We are particularly pleased to find that the new Government has abandoned its original proposal to levy an educational rate of £1 per house throughout the province, and that instead, agreeably with the views we have expressed, with those of the Hon. Mr Waterhouse, and with what we may call the equities of the case, it has resolved to raise the necessary funds in part by a capitation tax, in part by an annual rate on the actual value of real estate, and is part by the utilization of the educational reserves. When we say that we are particularly pleased with this proposal of the Government it but faintly expresses our feelings on the subject, for we are persuaded that if the Government only carried this one measure it would confer a lasting benefit on the province, and earn for itself an undying reputation; Uuder our constitution the obligation is imposed on every man to be interested in the well-being, mental and physical, of every other ; and, it has been truly observed, to be taxed for education is not a grievance, where to make public opinion enlightened is a personal security. The system of free schools, supported entirely by taxation, has been generally adopted in the United States. In the State of New York the grant to education amounts to £2,200,000, or at the rate of 11s per head of the population ; which, it should be borne in mind, is not sunk and wasted, bat merely transferred from one individual to another, while the general instruction of youth is secured by the process. We have spoken warmly in favor of the educational proposals of the present Provincial Government, and we should like, in every possible way, to strengthen its hands, in order that those proposals may be carried into effect. Wc are not sufficiently acquainted with the character of the machinery they intend to propose for the maintenance of roads to enable us to speak so positively and so highly of the merits of the District Highways Bill, which is to be introduced at the opening of the approaching session of the Council. We are prepared, however, to sink all minor differences of opinion, and even to abandon our most cherished views, if, by doing so, we can aid the Government to carry a really good Road Bill through the Council. We trust that the wards or sub-divisions will have power to make their own bye-roads in the same way as at present; so that the main districts need only concern themselves with those roads in the maintenance of which the inhabitants generally are interested. These main districts themselves ought to be of less magnitude than the present electoral divisions of the province. We are glad to find that a minimum rate is to be insisted upon, though for many reasons we should have been pleased to have seen it take the form of an acreage rate in the more sparsely populated districts; and this, we believe is the opinion of his Honor the Superintendent. The assessment and the appeal are not to be made by and to the same parties, which is a great improvement on the existing system. The Government deserves credit for taking the matter in hand. Telegrams coming from London agento, by Atlantic cables, through New York newspaper offices, along American wires, frequently reach San Francisco in a very questionable shape, and in a terribly mutilated and disjointed condition ; still, when viewed as a whole, they are perfection itself compared with the sensational items of news madly selected from these telegrams for transmission from San Francisco to New Zealand. Those brought to Auckland by the Wonga Wonga were a heap of repetitions jumbled together, without regarding time or places, one item flatly contradicting another, and when viewed as a whole making in more senses than one “ confusion worse confounded,” Far be it from us to sit as censors

over our daily contemporaries; but we must, with that humility which becomes a journal that only appears once a week, venture to suggest that they would have been more rationally occupied in endeavoring to winnow the wheat from the chaff than in writing leaders on occurrences which could not in the shape they are exported have ever happened. The one truth that we find manifested in this news, to quote Carlyle, and using the term aristocracy in the sense he employs it is, “ that false aristocracies are insupportable; that no-aris-tocracies, liberty-and-equalities are impossible; that ti ue aristocracies are indispensable and not easily attained.”