THE STANDARD. WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1873.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 56, 28 May 1873, Page 2

THE STANDARD.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1873.

“We shall sell to no man justice or right: We shall deny to no man .justice ot right: We shall defer to no man justice or right.”

If the movers in the agitation now afoot for 1 he enlargement of the boundaries of the present Road Board District, find their object frustrated at the meeting to-day, they will have no one to blame but themselves. We do not say that any opposition, organized or other, is likely to be brought to bear on the question of improving the existing unsatisfactory state of affairs. We allude more to the state of unpreparedness of the public mind just now for the inception of fundamental changes, and its total unfitness to entertain questions of comprehensive reform, involving, as they would do, a total revulsion, of which it is not difficult to see the result. It seems to be forgotten by those who are new to the struggles of political warfare, that it requires something more than the bare announcement of a contemplated movement — hostile in its tendency, in the estimation of many —to. make it succeed. It is a principle, no less of sound political economy than of a correct judgment in conducting public affairs generally, that all schemes propounded for the public weal should engage the attention and receive the sanction of those who are intended to be benefitted by them. The light of day is as necessary to the development of a healthy organization in the political atmosphere, as it is to the sturdy growth of all things, animate and inanimate, in the kingdoms of nature. The maxim has always been held good by economists, that the greater the reform aimed at, the more persistently and steadily should the public attention be led up to it. No great revolutions are successful that do not proceed upon a plan which has its base line so drawn as to enable a general to bring all his forces to •bear on any given point, according to the changes which circumstance and time always create. Hence it is our opinion that the settlers of the Bay are not-prepared to answer the question to ibe .prqpounded this afternoon. It is not-one, -on the other hand, has received any attention beyond that which is accorded at one’s own fireside; nor has it been advocated in any way to show in what particular we should be benefitted by the proposed change. Our correspondent’s letter in to-day’s issue, points to other questions which .are the natural outcome of such a pro-

posal, and must be collaterally considered, although their effective operation will not be felt until the annual election of the Board in July next. There are also other considerations of high import tacked on to the substantive one of enlargement. If the Road Board has traded so unprofitably with few talents, is it, or any other, lively to do better with more talents ? The district is too large already. No men can be found to administer the irksome duties of a thankless office at a greater sacrifice of time aiid personal convenience than the present Board do. Nor is it right that they should. We freely admit that we have no confidence in the Board as at present constituted; but we can testify to the fact that they have devoted as much time to the use of the public as is reasonable to expect from any set of men without pay. To carry, then, the proposition of enlarging their sphere of duty, begets a necessity to make them salaried officers at once. Nor must we stay. here. The two salaried officers of the Board are miserably underpaid already, and an augmentation of work must result in an increment of pay to them. For the reasons above stated and from the many questions which command our limited space, we have been compelled to defer the consideration of the larger one of separation altogether from the province, and the erection of the district into a county. And we cannot do so to-day ; but we throw this out as a suggestion worthy of a passing thought, that, if, on consideration, it should be found we are not ripe for self-government on the county system, by all means let us try to partition the country into such convenient sized districts as may be at once more easily and more economically worked than the already too large one has been.