New Zealand Spectator AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, July 2, 1851.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 617, 2 July 1851, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, July 2, 1851.

The two charges which the Faction have been in the habit of urging against Sir George Grey’s government, are a profuse extravagance, and an opposition to the wishes of the settlers by preventing the introduction of representative institutions, —a desire on his part to withhold from them the management of their local affairs. These charges were repeated by Mr. Fox with unwearied pertinacity, and with the utmost recklessness of assertion, and at last if he failed to make any impression on others, one would almost suppose he himself, from his continual iterations, might feel disposed to put some little faith in a story he had repeated so often. And it is worthy of notice that this charge of extravagance was made by the agent of a Company in the receipt of a larger salary than any officer of the Government in this Province, and who literally had nothing to do, while the expenses of the Company of which he was the agent, who were doing worse than nothing,—obstructing the progress the colony, and leaving as a legacy a complication of difficulties, which, hydra like, rear their menacing crests, of conflicting claims to be adjusted, and disputed questions to be settled, by the measures now before the Council, which it would have been to the infinite advantage of this Province if they had been disposed of three years since,—while, we repeat, the expenses of the Company, in salaries, during the last three years of their existence on an average according to their last statement amounted to £11,575 yearly. We are in some sort compelled from our subject incidentally to mention the ex-Agent of the late Company, and are almost sorry to have occasion to bring back for a moment the recollection of one who seems so completely to have passed out of mind; but passing over this reference, our readers will see how completely such assertions and misrepresentations are refuted by His Excellency’s despatches published in our last and present number. We there find Sir George, in adverting to the instructions he had received for the formation of other Provinces, carefully directing the attention of the Home Government to the increased expense with which such arrangements would be attended according to the present Royal Instructions, and suggesting such alterations in them as were calculated to prevent the necessity of creating expensive Government establishments in any new Provinces, and as would have the effect of reducing the expense of those already m existence. Again, so far from delaying the introduction of Representative Institutions, it is conclusively proved from these despatches that two years ago his Excellency made the strongest representations on this subject to the Home Government, the effects of which, but for the accidental delay in their transmission, which of course he could not foresee, might by this time have been evidenced in some

positive enactment of the Im perial ture, while he has paved thew gradual introduction of these IhstitV’* the establishment of Hundreds with to their inhabitants over the fn ff Wefs i from sales of land, in the Provincial Councils with large po W e the revenue, and in the prop ose(1 °’ et of municipalities. Instead of allow^' 011 power to be conferred by stitutions to be centralized in one'e throwing into the hands of a few per undue amount of influence, he has this power and distributed it where most wanted, by giving to each to each district if the inhabitants choo avail themselves of his offer, the regulating and managing their local a ff-° f providing at the same time the which, in most instances, they will be reli ev J from the pressure of local taxation engaged in the work of internal i mpts ' ment.