CLOSING OF THE COUNCIL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 24, 8 July 1871, Page 3

CLOSING OF THE COUNCIL.

The speech of his Honor the Superintendent in closing the Council is very short, but very suggestive. Of the Acts to which he has assented, in the name and on behalf of the Governor, unquestionably the most important are those referring to District Highways, Education, and Tramway construction But the acts passed, as he justly observed, are not to be taken as the only gauge of the extent and importance of the work of the session. The important resolu tions passed by the Council, accompanied with certain draft bills which, as Superintendent, he has been requested to take charge of in the Assembly, dis tinguish the present above all former sessions.. In adopting these resolutions, the province cordially adopts the policy of the present Government, and does all in its power to take advantage of all the benefits which, it believes, will result from it. "What the province asks is modest and reasonable, and there can be little doubt of its being granted. As we pointed out before, the representatives of the province can go with a good grace to Parliament, seeing they can show that the people are now willing to tax themselves. In connection with the mode of rating, it is true there is still considerable difference of opinion, but as to the necessity and propriety of direct taxation for roads and schools there was no difference of opinion. If the bills founded on these resolutions are carried in the Assembly, unquestionably the very parties that now cry out about the valuation tax will receive the most immediate benefit —a benefit, be it noted, that will be shared by each in the very same proportion in which he pays this tax, as it will raise the value of all the property, urban, suburban and rural, on which he is rated. The small farmer who is now practically shut out from markets, will have a market for his produce almost at his own door, and the fact of a market being thus open to him, will encourage him to grow crops at present unremunerative, and thus, its productive power being largely increased, his farm (a " small farm" no longer) will have an increase of value far beyond the rugged, remote, and inaccessible large farm, whose productive power has already reached its maximum, and whose only increase in value will arise from the facility of taking its wool and stock (its only produce) more quickly to market. Were our small farmers but wise, they would not, by indignation meetings about the mode of rating, give any color to the pretext likely to be resorted to by members of the Assembly from other provinces, viz., that the people of the province generally are averse to all selftaxation. The Assembly will easily be induced to help those who help themselves ; but every meeting, such as that our Wairarapa correspondent reported the other day, will weaken the hands of the Superintendent and the other members of Assembly. We are aware that in advocating a certain course on the low ground of self-interest, we again expose ourselves to the sneers of certain of our contemporaries, who affect an elevation of sentiment amounting to a moral sublimity. We can only say that whenever the representatives of other provinces, from Otago to Auckland, rise to the high political platform of seeking only what is best for the colony, though it should be the worst for their particular provinces, we shall recommend them to follow their example, but not till then. As it happens, however, all that the province asks is directly for the interest of the colony {i.e., the other provinces) to grant; for, if our representatives are but in a position to show, that the inhabitants of Wei lington are willing by direct taxation to construct roads and tramways through valuable bush lands as feeders for the railways, and by opening up the lands on deferred payments, and encouraging immigration by grants from the provincial treasury, to ensure goods and passenger traffic for them, the objections made to our railways as being made through "a desert" are no longer tenable. We hesitate not to say that, whether as regards cheapness of construction, from the best of timber being available near the railway lines, and from the plenti-

ful supply obtainable of Maori and other cheap labor, or as regards the capacity of the country, they will open up, for absorbing a large population, and the consequent certainty of their paying, the Wellington railways will be inferior to none in the Middle Island ; while if we regard them (as we must justly do) as important measures of defence, their claim to immediate construction is far before that of any other railways in the colony. The policy of the present Government is to divert the natives from fruitless wars and the settlers from useless political controversies, and so to engage both races in the long-interrupted work of colonisation, that, in its pursuit, the questions that have too long engrossed their attention and received a fictitious importance, will either speedily solve themselves, or gradually melt away into nothingness, like the mist on the mountains before the rising sun. The Superintendent doubtless had the whole scope of this policy in view, when he expressed his " gratification that the measures with regard to district roads, main roads, tramways, and railways constitute the complement of the policy of the present Colonial Government." His Honor's remarks about taxation so entirely coincide with what for several months back we have been endeavoring to enforce and illustrate in our leading columns, and are so tersely put, that we reprint them in full: —" Having had the courage to adopt the policy of a general land tax, you have doubtless already discounted, at its true value, the usual outcry against all taxation. I speak upon reflection when I say that I regard as a popular fallacy the belief that the prosperity of a country is always in an inverse ratio to the extent of its taxation- I. believe, on the contrary, that the rule is that the progress and prosperity of anew country is in direct ratio to the extent of its taxation ; provided always that the produce of taxation is expended on works of useful development."