Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1882.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1219, 7 December 1882, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1882.

• With the enormous amount of litigation j deriving its origin from Poverty Bay it ceri tainly seems to us monstrously unfair that ! we should lie denied the benefit of a Supreme ■ Court session in Gisborne. It would be diffij cult, if not impossible, for us to assess the ' amount of money which has left this district 1 during the past half-dozen years only to find • its outlet in Napier and Wellington as the I outcome of district litigation. Lust session I Mr. Allan McDonald, M.H.R., made a ' vigorous move in the right direction but i owing to untoward circumstances ami to the : inexplicable reluctance of Mr. Justice Gillies to recommend the matter to the • notice of the Government we were as usual, I left, like Lord Ullin, lamenting. The time i has now surely arrived when we ought to make a very determined stand regarding this matter. Business of every sort is interrupted and interfered with and the course of justice frequently turned aside simply because we cannot obtain a session of the Supreme Court here. What is to be done to remedy this evil? Is it better to submit quietly to the present order of things and pack up our traps and go to Napier or Wellington, as the case may be, according as justice demands or our unhappy fates call us, or by howling and growling and making ourselves a crying nuisance in the ears of the 1 powers that be, to endeavor to obtain such rights as we feel that we are justly entitled to"? We prefer the howling and growling. Sitting still will never do us any good. ■ Dignified remonstrance will simply be pooh- , poohed, and after all manner of things have been tried and failed we come to the unpleasant but no means unnatural conclusion that there is nothing for it but to make nuisances of ourselves, and what we cannot obtain by complaisant politesse, endeavor to obtain by curt obstruction. Ministers surely must have lost all tally of our needs here, or perhaps, and it is far from unlikely, they have never felt sufficient interest in us to enable them to remember what those wants are Mr Bryce is busy with Wahanui, Tawhiao, and the West Coast railways. Mr. Whitaker • is refreshing himself with a little light study (Blackstone or Coke most likely). i Major Atkinson is soothing the troubled minds of his Taranaki constituency. Mr. Johnston is busy with his schemes for the future. Mr. Rolleston is God knows where, and there is not a single soul of the lot who cares twopence whether Poverty Bay sinks or swims. Commend us to the tender mercies of such a Ministry for the future. All the so-called “extravagance” | of the Grey Ministry, were it doubled or I trebled, could never do this district as much harm as the apathetic attitude assumed towards it by the present Ministry. They have done much for the Middle Island, and the West Coast railway, but nothing they have done has hitherto come within a cooey of Poverty Bay. They have done wonders ; in enhancing the value of property belonging to a favored few in the South by spend1 Ing money on railways and public works in their vicinity, but they won’t give us the ; money for a breakwater. What was obtained from them last session by the efforts of our member and one or two of his colleagues, notably Mr. Wm. Swanson, who struck to him manfully, was given in a grudging spirit which showed that there existed no real recognition of our merits or our needs: it was extracted drop by drop, and every drop was accompanied by agrwon of agony. How different when Southern expenditure was required? How cheerful the seekers: how gracious and beneficent the donors. What I only £1,300,0(H)? My Dear Sir : Are you sure that will suffice j to meet your wishes ? Pray, pray take what you want. The Otago Central and other little pet schemes of southern members left ; Gisborne’s requirements and urgent needs far away in the back ground. The cost of erecting a Supreme Court building would be • easily saved to Gisborne, even if it were only in the expenses borne by Government presently for passages of prisoners, constables, and witnesses on criminal cases to the ses- ■ sions of the Supreme Court at Napier and ; Wellington. Let us hope that such agitation will be made regarding this matter before the next session of Parliament that for very ■ shame sake the Government will be induced ! to grant us a boon that cannot be considered a great one, but which, nevertheless, must be acknowledged on all sides to bean es- ’ sential, if not indispensable requisite. We ■ fail to see aught but false economy on the ■ part of the Government in their non-compli-ance with our requests in this matter. They are touching too heavily on our purses for justice which should be given to us for little or nothing, and that at a time when money is scarcer than we have ever known it to be. Many a poor man has been defrauded of his rights because he was unable to meet the expenses of carting himself and his witnesses to Napier and back, whereas had there been a Supreme Court here he could have been heard at an almost trifling cost. The Government have never dealt liberally with us, but the evident contempt with which our application for a regular session of the Supreme Court has been treated, convinces us that so long as Major Atkinson can shew a surplus, and Mr. Bryce can keep the Natives quiet, and Poverty Bay contribute to the revenue as much in one year as she gets from the country in ten, so long will she have to whistle for her wants.