New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) MONDAY, AUGUST 14.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4803, 14 August 1876, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY. ) MONDAY, AUGUST 14.

♦ The demoralising effects of provincialism, as now exhibited both in and out of Parliament, furnish a spectacle not worthy of the contemplation either of gods or men. Within the walls we have the pitiful parochial spirit and the narrow selfish views of the representatives of Otago and of Auckland; outside we have the childish and wayward pattishness and petulance of the people of Auckland. Surely all this should be subject of serious reflection for those who may not already on other grounds have reached decided conclusions as to the disintegrating power, the denationalising • tendency of provincialism. 'What in the name of public decency and of sound sense do the Auckland people mean by counselling the withdrawal of their representatives in mass from Parliament 1 And what. do they mean by promising to them their support in such "further measures as maybe deemed advisable?" The former utterance is childishly foolish, the latter is something much worse, and both bear on the face of them proof positive that provincialism is. politically demoralising. If these once pampered and* fair-weather birds the Aucklanders were wise,, they would not talk about such utterly silly protests against measures which they are powerless to. arrest, as the : withdrawal of their members from Parliament. They ought to know that this foolish trick of withdrawal from their posts by a parliamentary minority has always had only one effect, that is to say, mischief to those who have employed it. Thus the seoession in 1798 of Mr. Fox and his friends from Parliament as a. protest against Mr. Pitt availed nothing whatever. It merely made that Minister more absolute and his opponents more insignificant than before. If the people of Auckland, too, were wise, they wouldiiot talk of ulterior measures after this foolish style of protesting. By thus talking they show how far a form of government entirely new to British experience and,to the spirit : of British institutions has already sufficed to destroy in the people living under it that law-abiding spirit which is coeval with tho birth and parallel

with the inarch of British history. We and that, too, in no unfriendly spirit, recommend the people of Auckland to read, mark, learn.andinwardly digest the fine, broad, and statesmanlike nationalspirit which pervades hkean aroma the Bpeech of Mr. Stevens. If they will really and honestly read that speech m the same kindly public spirit m which it was spoken, we venture to believe that they will profit by the study m more respects than one. They will perhaps get some way in unlearning the miserable spirit of parochial jealousy with which they are now cursed, and they will perhaps begin to perceive that the prosperity of one portion or place of an organic whole like a nation necessarily implies correlative adversity and injury to every other or any other portion of that whole. They may begin to have a conviction, at first vague and dim, but gradually advancing in clearness and emphasis, of that social, political, and commercial interdependence of interests, feelings, and aspirations which the French call '! solidarity," and which is an essential feature of all national life. They may then know, for example, that if the Aucklanders grew fat of old by the export of potatoes and Treasury bills, that fatness did not of necessity imply corresponding leanness of Wellington or Canterbury. Possibly they might begin to think, as some people do already, that the fatness that comes of such exceptional and pauperising sort of fare as Treasury bills, army contracts, and war loans, is not the most wholesome or durablo sort of fat, but that the enduring muscular part of human character is formed by the manly grappling with the surrounding difficulties and the resolute putting of the shoulder to the wheel. Verily, the people of Auckland have much to unlearn, and much, very much, to learn. They have been subjected to a twofold set of demoralising influences, and the task of unlearning will be proportionately bitter and difficult. They, for long, had tho advantage, or rather the disadvantage, of a large Government and war expenditure among them, and they came to depend too much upon it. And in addition to this they have been, and are now, under the baleful, cramping, and blighting influence of provincialism. In order to pass out of this unhealthy atmosphere, political and social, the people of Auckland will have to seek the remedy within themselves. Let them assure themselves that while they certainly will meet with sympathy and all material help consistent with public justice from the rest of the colony, it is mainly in their own self-denial and selfreliance they must seek salvation from the depressing situation in which they now find themselves. " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, these three alone lead life to sovereign power." Until they come to see that all this cannot be accomplished by unmanly whining and by childish petulance, we have little hope for them under any circumstances. Let us repeat that the sight which is just now presented by the contemptible chaos of territorial sections into which the House is broken up, and by the two extremities of the colony, is a most humiliating one. It is a sight well calculated to cover with shame any lover of his country, who can but look upon it with the same sad eyes with which he would look upon the body of a parent torn in piecemeal by a set of wolves. It is a sight, too, iwell calculated to be a warning for the future (if anything can warn such people) to those who will not see, and do not try to see, any remote -or indirect political consideration or consequence which is not immediately under their noses, like a set of.'pigs. Unfortunately, it is not to be denied that there are some people — "politicians" they call themselves —who will see no political object, acknowledge no political motive, but the garbage lying straight within their grasp. Aeistotle called man "a political animal," that is, a being endowed with faculties, sympathies, and aspirations, capable of perceiving the indirect, the remote, the immaterial, the ennobling—but what are these people 1 Old Homee, with an insight nothing short of prophetic, sang of the ''Agora Kudianeira," the "man-ennobling" assembly ground of the people; but what can ennoble people like these, capable of being moved only by such motives as these 1 What can ennoble fools, or slaves, or cowards ? Alas, not all the blood of all tho Howards.

Let us trust that when the rallying places for this paltry, greedy, and demoralising sort of spirit shall have been swept clean by the wholesome winds of agitation now careering over them, a better day shall dawn upon them, a brighter sun look in to warm their cold unsympathising blood and to enlighten their somewhat wilful blindness. Let us, we say, live in hope.