LYTTELTON.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 677, 28 January 1852, Page 4

LYTTELTON.

f'From the Lyttelton Times, January 24, 1852.) The Local Government of New Zealand passed a law a few months ago relating to the complicated difficulties which had grown up around the land question in the colony. A system was settled—it may have been a bad one—it may have been passed by an ill-con-structed and ill-informed Government—but it was a system. It was put in force. It was the law of the land. A multitude of contracts wree made under it. Scrip was issued, bought, and sold. Pasturage runs were taken up, and capital invested on the faith of the Government. All at once a ship arrives, bringing the news that while the Local Government was passing one law, the Home Government was passing another law ; and as the Imperial Government always overrules the Local Government, all that has been done in the colony for the last six months is rudely swept away financial arrangements are disorganized—contracts are broken—all faith in the government of the country is utterly annihilated. Ue forbear to discuss which of the laws is the best, the home or the local manufacture. In our minds, everything fal s into insignificance, compared with the glaring example thus offered of the radical defects of our whole Colonial Government. What has occurred upon the land question has occurred upon other questions, and will occur again and again. Nor has any policy yet propounded by Government at home in the smallest degree recognized the evil or promised its abatement. Fhe evij is this. A want of a clear definition of the respective jurisdictions of the Home and the Local Government. It L idle to give us representative institutions, It is plain nonsense to complain about the form of the Local Government, so long as that Government is practically a cypher—so long as its laws may be disallowed by the Colonial Office, or suspended and overriden by acts of the Imperial Parliament. We have ever held that the first, and immeasurably the most important feature of the Government is this, that it should be local. A good Government is of vast importance, but a good Government is useless if it be not omnipotent within its own jurisdiction. we mean explicitly is, that in the constitution about to be conferred on New Z(aland, there ought to be a special recital of

the subjects upon which the Imperial Parliament may legislate for the colony, and a declaration that upon all other subjects Parliament should have no authority whatsoever, — that upon all other such subjects, the Local Government constituted should have unrestricted and irresponsible authority to legislate. If this be not obtained, there can never be an end to the confliction of the home and local legislatures.