New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4529, 25 September 1875, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25.

The principle on which Mr. Ballanoe acted in his proposed amendment to the Abolition Bill was a perfectly correct one. The relations of Government to hospitals and charitable institutions should he improved in the future, as it has been decidedly objectionable in the past. With the disappearance of provincial authority should also disappear the sole control by Government of hospitals, benevolent asylums, and the like. Assistance to those by Government should not cease, but that assistance should appear in the form of a subsidy. The inhabitants of the towns and districts in which hospitals and benevolent asylums are required, should be invited to subscribe for their erection and maintenance, and to combine for their management. The connection of Government “with them should be limited to a subsidy in proportion to the subscriptions actually paid; of course, only on the observance of certain general conditions for ensuring fit and efficient management. It may, perhaps, be conceded that Major Atkinson was right when he said that for the present, so far as concerns the institutions under notice,. the old system must be maintained, and that as the next year is to see merely a general carrying on of provincial administration until its substitute is matured, it would ho difficult to provide at once for a completely now order of things in one matter of detail.

But it must bo quite plain that Major Atkinson’s position is only tonablo on the ground of temporary expediency, and that with the total disappearance of provincial administration there must come such a general treatment of hospitals and the like as that indicated above. '' e have conceded so far to tho Goyovntubuy* yet we are by no moans certain that it would have been impossible to oflfoGt the immediate and desirable change proponed by Mr. Ballanob. As, however, con* cession is the order of tho day just tnnv, no exception need bo made to the rule In the present caso. Tho uiombor for Ivanoitikei may rest assured, howovor, that it. will not bo long before Ins proposals become general practice.