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New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4426, 27 May 1875, Page 2

Oor readers are aware that the Lyttelton Times is the champion of Provincialism ; but even that paper thinks that it is possible to have too much of it. In an article of the 18th instant, we find the following remarks on the policy of the Wilson-Peacook Execu- • tive;—“ One of the most noticeable features in the present Ministry’s proposals is that the field of their economy is the higher interests of the province. Branch railways must be kept up at any cost for the convenience of a few proprietors ; their goods must be carried at the cost of the province ; railway management may be as extravagant as it can ; larve sums must be voted for schemes that either are impracticable or ought to be taken up by private enterprise. Primary and higher education, charitable aid, the library, the museum ; in fact, all the interests of the province which cannot appeal to the pocket must pay for these. There is something dastardly in this ; it would bo hard to find outside of barbarous countries a similar instance of organised attack upon the interests of civilisation amongst a people. The only precedent the Government has from modern history, is that of the Terrorists in the French lie volution of 1793 ; but they had a sort of a reason. They considered that education laws, and, in fact, all civilisation, had done them grievous harm. To come nearer home, even impoverished Auckland, in her bankruptcy and blank outlook, determines that her educational interests shall not suffer. But the Ministry, in their exceeding simplicity and guilelessness, evidently think that. this economising off the higher interests of the province, this cheese-paring off the children’s intellectual and moral prospects, will be rather a blessing than a curse to the province. One use which it will certainly subserve will be to keep a living record of the Ministerial change of 1875. The present generation of laborers’ children will point back in after years to 1875 as the year when the drudgery of their life began, the year when their parents smuggled them off to work ; just as in ancient France the records of boundaries in a district were kept by systematically whipping the children upon them, so that the land registrar was the schoolmaster, and the land register was unmentionable- The Ministry is taking a simple and ingenious method of bequeathing their fame to posterity. We Would not grudge them the method, if it were really fame and not infamy they were bequeathing.” If the New Zealand Times had branded Provincialism with a hot iron, as the Lyttelton Times has done, there would have been a loud outcry ; wo should have been told, in all likelihood, that we were slandering and misrepresenting the worthy efforts of worthy men, who were struggling bravely against adverse fate, in the service of the people ; but the present condemnation comes from the Champion of Provincialism, and is written of the model province of New Zealand. If these things are done in the green tree, what may not happen in the dry ?

We publish a letter in another column from Captain Gregory, of the ship Hindostan, explaining certain occurrences which took place on his arrival at this port. On reading it, we think the public will agree with us in regretting that any necessity should have arisen fertile publication of such a letter ; but now that the matter has been prominently brought forward, it is the duty of the Government to make a searching inquiry into the facts of the case. We offer, no opinion at present on the merits of the complaint, beyond saying that we have perfectly independent evidence corroborative of the truth of Captain Gregory’s narrative, inasmuch as Pilot Holmes called upon us on Tuesday night, and assured us that the statement in that evening’s Post, referring to himself, Was without foundation. The Government is hound to protect shipmasters from vexatious and impertinent interference on the part of its servants ; nor should it tolerate the infliction of a pecuniary fine on charterers, by the unnecessary detention of immigrants on ship-board, not to speak of the great hardship .to the people themselves. This, however, appears- to have been done in the case of' the Hindostan. It is seldom an immigrant ship arrives with a clean bill of health, and every one satisfied on board, and when an exception of the land occurs, the master and officers should be encouraged by the authorities, instead of being treated in the aggravating way of which Captain Gregory complains. - r

Ocncoxxtemporary, the Lyttelton Times, with the best intention possible, has been, most injudiciously, making a martyr. The martyr is. one Maophorson, a member of that numerous class that, having never done a stroke of honest labor in their lives, become self-elected working men’s representatives. This Macpherson having for a time in Canterbury devoted his .talents to the manufacture of “ dry hash” at . arestaurant, suddenly blossomed into the mouthpiece of the unemployed, and, as such, addressed a few meetings, headed a deputation to the Superintendent, and then died out of public notice. He next turned up ip Dunedin, where he called assemblies in a cellar, whom he informed that the couhtry was going to be ruined next week, and that safety could alone be found in making him Premier, and securing an equal distribution of property every Saturday night. Tailing the accomplishment of these results, he announced his intention of going to England to prevent emigration from there to New Zealand by showing intending emigrants the starvation that awaited them. Being derided and contxadicted by some genuine working men, he left Dunedin, and lately turned up at where he had a, brief moment of sucoessv At one meeting he was believed iix, and taken in hand by the editor of some petty qxrovincial paper. At the next he was found out, and hooted down, his friend the editor being fiercest in wrath against him. It was to refute the wild and outrageous calumnies of this Macpherson that the Lyttelton Times devoted a column of matter. It would have better kept that space for better matter. Anything but a contemptuous notice of such men as Macpherson gives a certain weight to their otherwise worthless assertions.