South Canterbury Times. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2686, 28 October 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1881.

“ 1 keel rather queer this morning ; give me a whiskey. Will you have one yourself?” How often this formula, or one to a similar effect, has been heard in New Zealand ! Cut what a reason to give for taking whiskey in the morning—“ I feel rather queer,” and when, probably, it was the taking of too much whiskey the day before that brought about the queerness. Anyhow, the patient goes for whiskey ? and will get it ; but for all ho kaow^

perhaps for all he cares, he would have been ever so much better without it. He does not stop to enquire what is wrong with him, and what is the proper remedy for that wrong; that would be too much trouble. It is so easy to say in a general way, “ I feel rather out of sorts; give me soma whiskey.” The taking of this medicine is said to be a pleasant exercise, and is largely indulged in, apparently for the mere sake of theexercise. The folly of such self quackery (considered as medical practice only) is very obvious, and yet when an ex*actly similar quackery is applied to complaints of the body politic the folly will not be seen and recognised. Some slight uneasiness is felt —no one locates it or traces it to any defined cause or to any particular spot—but a general feeling that the body is a little ‘‘out of sorts,” justifies a dose of general legislation of some kind, and accordingly the public house at Wellington is called upon to furnish a medicine that may by chance be a useful one, or it may not, and if the point is not settled by accurate diagnosis of the disorder to be treated for, and the nature of the remedy to be applied thoroughly investigated, the legislative course is equally quackery with the bar-seeker’s. The analagy between the latter’s “ Will you have one yourself?” and Parliamentary log-rolling is very plain. The whiskey the colony asks for now, feeling “ a little queer,” is local government. There was a good deal of talk in the House last session about it; most of the candidates now in the field, and generally most of those who pretend to any political knowledge have something to say about it. Is there any more sense in the now fashionable cry for local government than in the man at the bar’s demand for whiskey ? There is a sense of discomfort from the present state of things, but it is a very vague one, nothing like the pinch of a shoe, for no one has yet stated definitely the nature or locality of any ailment. In the meantime, however, as we feel out of sorts, and the true source of the evil has not yet been discovered, and therefore cannot be professionally prescribed for, let us try quackery, let us have some political whiskey, some more legislation. It does not signify that it was the local government we got before that helped to create our uneasiness ; “ take a hair of the dog that hit you,” the exercise is pleasant, and if it harms afterwards the same prescription can be followed again.

What do the advocates of extended loeal government want ? Some say the hospitals, gaols, police, and .lunatic asylums should be placed under local control ; but they do not say in what way or ways these institutions would be more efficiently or economically managed if they were so placed. The only grounds upon which any change should be made in the administration of any institution are that increased economy or increased efficiency, or both, will be secured by such change, and the manner of the change and the results anticipated from it should be distinctly and exactly stated before any further step is taken. The prevalence of the cry for extended local government may be taken to indicate that something is wrong somewhere ; but the exact nature of the disorder should be discovered and the true remedy applied. To act upon the “ must do something ” principle merely is nothing less than ignorant quackery and will probably do ten times more harm than good. It is to be hoped that no more experiments in legislation will be made until the elements to be dealt with have been separately and fully studied, so that the results can be foreseen with some approach to accuracy. New Zealand has had enough of that sort of thing in the past. Let us know exactly what we want and why we want it, what we mean by local government, and what sort of good it is going to do us if we get it, and then if we want it it will be very little trouble to get it.