REFORM OF THE CONSTITUTION.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 247, 27 April 1866, Page 3

REFORM OF THE CONSTITUTION.

(From the Daily Times, 20th April.) We have already shown there is nothing in the proposal to extend Municipal Institutions inconsistent with the maintenance of Provincial Governments. The whole country may be divided into districts, on which the privilege of constructing their own public works may be conferred, and Provincial Governments may not only survive the introduction of the system but materially aid it. A small commencement in the coveted 'direction has been made by the Country Town Municipalities Ordinance, passed last session of the Provincial Council, and the eagerness . with which, all over the country, advantage has been taken of its provisions, is at once a guarantee of the ripeness of the people for Municipal Institutions, and a proof that these may grow up side by side with the Provincial system. If our readers will return to the same article to which we have already referred, they will find that besides that the extension of Municipal Government does not necessitate the abolition of the Provincial system, it is hopeless to expect for a long time to give practical effect to any reform of which that abolition is an essential portion. But there was also the reservation that whilst it was vain to hope, as it was inexpedient to wish for the immediate or even early doom of the Provincial system, it was impossible to be blind to the fact that there was only a limited mission in store for Provincial Governments, and that mission worked out, they would resolve themselves into a more concentrated form of authority. JS"o one can doubt that, sooner or later, the Provinces must come together, and their union is a convertible term for their destruction ; because the moment the whole of the Provinces unite, that moment the Provincial will begin to assume the shape of the General Government, and very soon will altogether yield to it. Allowing that the union of the Provinces will mean the abolishment of Provincial institutions, we come to a clear vieAV of hoAv the latter will in time be effected. The Central Legislature is but an aggregation of the Provincial atoms, and it would be as vain to hope that Provincial institutions will be destroyed by those who in reality represents them, as in Victoria the Assembly has found it to expect of the Upper House to sign the death warrant of its own power. The path to , the abolishment of Provincial Governments is not one of destruction but of creation. The Provinces will only be swept away ■when from beneath the hands of their rulers a substitute emerges to maturity. As the Provinces grow into one another, the new life will spring up. There are two ways in which the Provinces may be brought to a union ; they may unite in distress, or they may unite in prosperity. The first was the policy of the Weld Government. It is not departing from our subject to say that at the bottom of the hostility to the Weld Government was the conviction that they sought to consolidate their power upon the ruins of the Provinces. That Mr Weld and Major Eichardson, the representative proteges of Canterbury and Otago should adopt this course, may seem strange to those who do not recognise how, under the influence of a possession of power, men's views change. And, besides, these two gentlemen were but mere puppets in the hands of their astute colleagues, Mr Sewell and Mr Fitzherbert. That these had commenced a well-defined plan of disposing of the Provinces by driving them into helplessness, there can be no question. It was clearly sketched out in the budget speech by Mr Eitzherbert; it was still more clearly repeated in a speech made sometime later by Mr Sewell, in which he advocated the cutting np of the Provinces, because it would make them powerless, and upon their ruin a strong Central Government would grow up. Mr Seweli was far too shrewd not to well master the paradox that the union of the Provinces, or, as we have seen in other words their destraction, was to be brought about by their being more minutely divided. To put it familiarly, Mr Sewell thought the Government could swallow the Provinces more easily in pieces than as a whole. But his thoughts and those of his colleague ran in the same groove. The doom of the Provinces was to be brought about by undermining their financial and political power. Through the withdrawal of their pecuniary resources, they were to be compelled to become the pensioners of the Colony. Through their being cut up into pieces, their political vitality was to be exhausted by local jealousies. Bound hand and foot in ruin and degradation, they would lie at the mercy of the General Government, to be united in one Province or kept asunder at its pleasure. The new school that is growing up has for its principle thai^he Provinces should be brought together; i.e., ultimately destroyed, by aid being given them to work out their mission. When the iron horse runs through their length and breadth : when the interests of their commerce and of their industrial pursuits are so mingled, # that men will not be able to say which is their Province, and will regard only as vexatious that their being whirled across an imperceptible boundary should bring them under the operation of clifTerent laws, then Provincialism will yield to an inevitable necessity ; and from powerful Provinces a powerful Colony or Colonies will grow up. We say Colony or Colonies, because,. although Separation is a thing just as much impossible at present as the abolishment of Provincial Governments, it i 3 a possible contingency of the future. Under the "new system proposed, the union of the Islands will mat- j ter little. The work of colonisation will be performed by the Provinces. But, if when the time comes in either Island for doing away with the Province.s through iheir uniting into one, the other Island is not ripe for. the tame, Separation .will be the natural alternative. Meanwhile, in bringing the Provinces together, and in mapping them" out into a shape.calculated fftlty t« develop tUeii? \issfulj«ißi? r she ad*

vocates of all "those reforms which have found a common designation in the term Separation may meet ot common groundWhen the lower-class boys of the schools are taught, that in the Middle Island, the Province of Otago includes Southland and Timaru ; that Canterbury includes Marlborough ; that Nelson includes "Westland ; and that the f Northern Island is divided between Auckland and Wellington ; then the more advanced scholars may be told of the dawn of a united and powerful New Zealand.