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New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4443, 16 June 1875, Page 2

There is a good deal of tall writing in the Auckland newspapers about the General Government, and what should be done to it for scrupulously obeying the law in respect of payments to the Provincial Treasury. Certainly the case of Auckland is a hard one, when necessary works upon the goldfields are stopped for want of money to pay wages of day laborers. It might have been better if the Government had consented to make moderate advances to keep things going until the Assembly met, and thus avoided the scandal of the stoppage of works in one of the most important provinces of the colony. The publication of this fact must have an injurious effect upon the general credit of the colony. People at a distance have no very clear notion of our intricate system of public accounts, whereby a community which is perfectly solvent, as Auckland unquestionably is, may, in its political character as a province, be insolvent, which, without doubt, is its present position. New Zealand suffers as a whole through the depression of any of its provinces ; hence the pressing necessity for abolishing provincial government, and establishing a simpler and more economic form of administration. But rumors of provincial insolvency are likewise injurious to individuals who have invested their money in what we may designate for the sake of technical accuracy, a '' bank- '' rupt province." Property is lowered in value, private enterprise is checked, and capital scared away from investment. These results, we may be told, are inseparable from the provincial system; but opposed to that system as we are on other grounds, we cannot admit the truth of this charge. It is the inevitable result of our fiscal system, which has been carefully shaped since 1867 to that end. The

provinces must be absorbed gradually underithat system, when the land fund is exhausted ; but so much mischief may be done during the process of absorption, that it were much better to do the work at once. It is impossible to tolerate, the public scandal of the Auckland Provincial Government, with its unpaid Executive and unpaid servants, for any length of time. Whether that province has been wisely managed is another matter, but it is scarcely pertinent to the present inquiry. Although Auckland did not sell land for ready money, as the South has done —notably Canterbury—it gave land to bona fide settlers, who paid their own passages to the colony from the United Kingdom and British North "America, and in that way got full value for every acre alienated. The greater number of the forty-acre settlers remain in Auckland, although some of them are to be found among the more enterprising settlers in other provinces. Moreover, very many of the assisted immigrants, introduced by Auckland with its halfmillion loan, are scattered over the colony, which has been a large gainer by Auckland's unproductive expenditure. We are aware that scores of families, not to speak of individuals, are enriching by their industry other provinces, who were brought out at the cost of Auckland. These facts should not be lost sight of, therefore, in an extreme case of this kind, when it has become the fashion to declaim against the Forty-acre free grant system of Auckland. It was by no means "a " free grant system," as those who settled on their lands very well know ; but it has had the effect, by giving the settlers a personal interest in the soil, of tying thousands to the province who would have left it in disgust long ago, through provincial misgovernment, and the losses, and turmoil, and uncertainties of the native difficulty.

But while all this is true it is no excuse for preserving the provincial system, which lias exhausted itself in Auckland, and is rapidly exhausting itself all over the colony. It is, however, a reason for the Government temporarily tiding over the financial, difficulties of the province, and thus helping to sustain the credit of every part of New Zealand. The General Government made no scruple recently of assisting the Provincial Government of Wellington with an advance of some £15,000 to buy in a portion of the public estate, for the purpose of preventing speculative land purchases by private individuals. We do not know that any law authorised the Government to make this advance, which was a right and proper thing to do under the circumstances; but the transaction is in marked contrast to its dealings with the Northern province. All things considered, it might'have been more prudent if the General Government had relaxed a little towards Auckland, and saved the Colony from the consequences of the blatant outcry of its Press.