NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. WENDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 1854

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 885, 25 January 1854, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. WENDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 1854

The other day, Mr. Fitzherbert in Council appeared to claim great credit for the Government for the stringent nature of the laws that had been passed, -w hich he referred to with peculiar satisfaction, as their " greatest glory," and as " a proof of the popular nature of the Constitution." The hon. member has such a peculiar way of arguing, that it is difficult to meet him on ordinary grounds. He assumes that whatever his party may do must be popular. His idea of freedom seems to be the power which a clique may have to impose the most arbitiary restrictions on the rest of the community ; his notion of protection to property the confiscation of that of one part of the community for the benefitof the other. We suspect these laws will be found to be at once 4t the glory and the shame" of the Goyemment of which he is the mouthpiece.^ He may glory for a time in such crude, arbitrary, bungling legislation, as has "been practised by himself and the Solicitor of the Province ; but as soon as the public begin clearly to understand the nature of the laws that have been passed by the Council, as soon as they are able to get some information as to their powers and operation, still more when it is attempted to bring them into force and exact their penalties (such of them, that is, that may escape disallowance, for some of them are so confused, unintelligible, and repugnant to British law that no Governor can permit them to be acted on) such an outcry will be raised from all paits of the province that assuredly what the Provincial Secretary now boasts of with so much complacency, he will wish for the sake of His party, and his own tenure, of pffice he had never proposed as a "guage and measure of freedom." As yet, of the laws brought before the Council the settlers know of them only by name, in

some instances they hardly know so much, and when they get a little more information respecting these laws, assuredly they will not improve upon a further acquaintance. The Fencing Act is regarded with feelings of indignation tnd alarm, and is generally looked upon as an Algerine Act ; many of the clauses of the Road Bill will be viewed in the same light, and we very much question if the electors — to shew how free they are— will choose to dance in fetters forged for them by those who have always been talking so loudly about freedom: We have reprinted in our present number the draft of a Scab Act which has been introduced into the Council, and which is another specimen of the partial and stringent legislation that has been carried out. This Act is almost identical with the Canterbury Scab Act, except that some of its provisions are even more stringent, and breathe forth fine and imprisonment in every clause. The electors will no doubt watch with interest the progress of this new guage and measure of their freedom through the Council.