The Southland Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1866.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 246, 25 April 1866, Page 2

The Southland Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1866.

Is" a few weeks the Parliament of New Zealand will be in session, and the representatives of the people be forced, however reluctant they may be, to face ugly subjects and decide knotty points. New Zealand legislation has for years been drifting into a whirlpool of complicated difficulties, arising from warped views and local desirings, of the hydra-headed evils of Provincialism. The time has come when a change is a necessity ; the nine petty states . which have hitherto been working with only one objeet — that may be summed up in the ', simple word self — that have ignored statesmanlike legislation, and sacrificed political principle to obtain the Governmental crumbs - to appease their appetites '— should be swept away. Hitherto the Government has been a very faint reflex of that of Great Britain, With very few exceptions, the General Assembly has been composed of men, - destitute of that cosmopolitan mould of mind, ; that comprehensive grasp of intellect, arid those scholastic attainments essential to wise and beneficial legislators, and impartial administrators of the law. They have for the most part been selected, not for their capability to legislate, but because they possessed a devoted attachment to the particular province with which they were more immediatey identified ; they have been sent to Parliament, not to legislatefor the colony, but by any means, fair or foul, to obtain an advantage for the localities they represented over all others. - It is no matter, therefore, for wonder that amid this war of Provinces, that the colony should "have to the unenviable position of being immersed in debt, with but little credit, and but 'few to sympathise with it in its misfortune. The time has come when this dangerous system must be brought to an end. '. V :.. - ! It has been acknowledged that the laws applicable to the mixed races of colonists < in the North are totally inapplicable to those of the South, and loud has beenJdie agitation for Separation ; but it has been a fragmentary agitation : no two Provinces agree as to the basis of the Separation} each view the movement only to be encouraged so far as they are to receive ] a larger benefit from it than their neigh- . bors. No country has ever yet been well 1 governed except by party? a£d every |j

jountry whose affairs have been controlled jy a system of copartners, as in New Zealand, has been fearfully mismanaged. Historians of all countries date England's ;reat progress to equal balance of rtirties. 'New Zealand must now -unite Jo" b^&itftafea' ;* J *tHfe i 'mne contending faciions can no longer conduct the Government of the colony, and the battle which bias now to be fought will be between the Separationists, the Consolidatorists, and the Provincialists. To judge from the speeches lelivered by hon. members during the recent electioneering . campaign, these parties will be very evenly matched. That instinctive spirit of compromise w^hich for ages has rendered Britain remarkable for electing one conservative to one liberal has been reproduced in this colony. There is scarcely a Province that has elected a major number of members of one mind upon the Separation question. This is a matter of serious moment, especially to those Provinces who are deeply in debt. The fact can no longer be disguised, that Provincial loans cannot be negotiated in the Home or Australian market, and Gfeneral Grovernment bonds are looked upon with grave suspicion- This is but the natural effect of "double Gfovemment. On the one hand, the Provinces hold forth their landed possessions as ample security for all they require, yet on the other they cannot borrow without the aid of the G-eneral Govern : ment. The British capitalist argues, " with this system of divided responsibility, but little value can he attached to the security offered. Under this mode of G-overn-ment, we find that the people of New Zealand are the heaviest taxed of any of the colonists ; that the General Government's liabilities are multiplying with a rapidity which promises to swallow up all the estates of the various Provinces of the colony, and the time must come, if the present system is continued, when the inferior Grovernments will have to yield up their land funds to meet Gfeneral Grovernment liabilities, or adopt a repudiation of indebtedness policy." Thus it is that New Zealand has lost its credit in the Home country — that the Provincial debentures are refused, and the General Gfovemment loan's difficult of negotiation. It must be patent to every one that a change, radical and sweeping, cannot be delayed. Separation or Consolidation is inevitable. The Provincial system, as at present existing, is doomed ! it has encircled the colony with a network of complications of so paralyzing a character, that change is imperative. Upon a recent occasion, the Hon. Mi- G-ladstone, in condemning a system which, at no remote period, existed in Great Britain, gave expression to a sentence which is admirably adapted to represent the Provincial system of New Zealand. It was to the effect that, "he could nok describe it more truly or more concisely in any other words than by saying that it appears to be an elaborate contrivance by means of which, under the mask and notion of doing good, a nation devises a most ingenious instrument for roDDIUg, plundering, and impoverishing itself."