SUPERINTENDENT’S SPEECH.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 20, 10 June 1871, Page 14

SUPERINTENDENT’S SPEECH.

The opening speech of his Honor the Superintendent is eminently practical bearing on the present and future, and containing no recriminations on the past. It is also frank and outspoken, concealing nothing, glossing over nothing. The responsibilities of the province are fairly stated, and the means available to meet them are clearly and fully set forth. The future of the province is to depend noton mere theories of government, but on the resumption of the work of colonisation. In seeking to resume this work the prQvince is felicitously stated to be “ aiding the policy of the colony at large.” In the carrying out of this work, the principle for which we have been so long contending is laid down almost in ipsissimis verbis, viz.—“ The people of the province through their elected, officers are better able to manage their own local business than others are for them,” and the best proof of its correctness is the list of bils referred to in the speech. It is manifest to every unprejudiced mind, that these bills would meet with very little careful consideration in the Colonial Legislature, and the wishes of the settlers of the province with regard to them would be but little regarded. Yet on the fate of these bills, the future of this part of the colony may depend, more than on any measures to be brought before the Assembly. We reprint their titles in proof of what we are advancing :—Sale of of Reclaimed Land, Education, Educational Reserves, District Highways, Toll Bars, Tramways, Railways Reserves, Land on Deferred Payments, and for Special Settlements. It is abundantly evident that this is the most important session of the Provincial Council that has ever been held, and that the most important issues are to be placed before it. There are some passages in the address from which we dissent ; but in view of the great policy of self-help, progress, and direct taxation which it initiates, we are willing to sink differences in matters non-essential, and express our satisfaction generally with this most lucid, able, and comprehensive speech.

We cannot help congratulating the province of Wellington on having elected a Superintendent who, in his short tenure of office, has already given such conspicuous proofs of devotion to the duties of the office, of keen insight into our state and prospects, and of constructive ability and courage, in propounding a policy of progress in a great and trying period of depression. We hope that working harmoniously together, as the Provincial Executive are now doing, their policy will receive a full and fair consideration, and that the Council, differing as they justly may, in matters of detail, will accord them in the main that confidence and support which their energetic and progressive policy is in our opinion entitled to receive.