THE LATE SESSION OF THE COUNCIL.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 255, 9 May 1866, Page 2

THE LATE SESSION OF THE COUNCIL.

(to the editob of the southland times.) Sic, — Having been detained by business during the last few weeks in- town, and listened to the various opinions which have been advanced with regard to the Government and the railway management, my old political instincts were revived, and by attendance at the Council and wading through -the club-room records of the past session, feel myself competent to make a few impartial remarks upon the doings of the Government, and the comments made by your contemporary the Neivs, which have appeared in the Monday and Tuesday's issue of that paper. Your insertion of this communication in your paper will I conceive be only doing justice to gentlemen who are giving their time and energies to the work of extracting the Province from its difficulties. Your contemporary, the News, is surely beside himself. N What a change has come over what was once a respectable, wellconducted journal. "With a frantic howl he flourishes his cudgel right and left ; but so unskilfully that he hurts no one but himself. In the leading article — if so it may be called — in Monday's issue, which, pretends to be a review of the session of the council, I can find nothing but vapid declamation and unjustifiable accusations. With the effrontery of a DAifTO3f he seriously sums up the whole of the proceedings in the following stump-orator, meaningless style. He says : — "And now we will give as. deliberate an opinion as possible ffi&der the circumstances as to what has been accomplished. It is that incompetence, jobbery, — we dare not say fraud — has run riot, and that the most ignoble tricks have been resorted to by those in power to retain supremacy and prevent a full investigation into the cancerous mass called the " affairs of the Province." Unseemly dodges, and the assumption of need for dire haste, have in combination, achieved a success in burking inquiry and stifling investigation into the mysteries of a corrupt past Government. We say nothing of the present one for the simple reason that none exists." Truly this "deliberate" judgment is j worthy of a brief notice. It charges i the Grovemment, past «and present, with " incompetency aud jobbery," with a resort to " ignoble trick " and " unseemly dodges." He does not even confine his strictures, bat madly belabors the whole of the Council indiscriminately. . The Government" and the representatives of the people, he writes down as criminals illegally at large, and bespatters all with mire withoutdeigningto give asinglereason for his " ignoble .tricks," in covering with, reproach all around him. Those members of the Provincial Council, who had been misled by the delusive writings of discon- | tented minds, and fired with an ambition to thoroughly investigate all matters in question, must feel highly flattered with the following complimentary sentence : — " For at least three sessions past the same subterfuge has been resorted to, and the Province has been robbed under cover of the necessity for rushing through with the " business of the session," in other, words, the legislation of deeds that ought to have come under the category of crimes." The article to which I have above alluded, is one of those gassy bubbles that when once pricked instantaneously colapse— a frothy nothing, to which argument cannot be applied. The article in Tuesday's issue, however, has statements which ought to be refuted — statements which, to use an expression your contemporary himself has adopted, " bristles with falsehood." lam no apologist of any Government ; but as an impartial lookeron cannot allow either the Council or the Executive to be wantonly misrepresented, calmninated and abused without evidence of their alleged error. In the first?place,he says : — " Practically, all the Government — save the mark !— wished for was to get the estimates passed for another six months —to obtain permission to privately lease the ..railways — to legalize a grant of public money to Mr R. M. Marchant for his meritorious services as Southland Railway Engineer, to pass an urgently required Police Ordinance and subside into undisturbed possession of office,. for eight months." It musfr be, patent to all who have watched the proceedings of the Council during the last session that this assertion is as void of correctness as- it is possible to write. The Government had no desire by any underhand work to " privately lease the railways ;" and the positive refutation of the charge is to be found in the fact that, upon Mr T. M. Clerke moving that therailways be leased by tender, the Government made no opposition, ~but immediately adopted it. In the next place, "to legalize a grant of public money to Mr E. M. Marchant for his meritorious services as Southland Eaiiway Engineer." This again is contrary to fact. The Government simply asked for a sum to pay a lawful debt-/ however much they may have regretted the necessity for asking for the amount, they had no alternative but to do it. The matter in dispute had been scut to arbitration long before they took office, and the award made a rule " of court ; therefore, unless they had adopted I a determined course of repudiation — a course which would have involved themselves in disgrace and the Province in endless litigation and expense— no other

policy could have beenj pursued. Again, "we forget, there was another object to struggle for. To smother the Commission of Inquiry into the management of the railways and other matters connected with theaffairs of the Province." I am, Sir, somewhat taken aback at the barefacedness of this assertion. It was clearly stated in' the Council what had been done, and no honest writer would charge the Government with neglect in the matter. As soon as ever the Government came into ofice s an Ordinance for the appointment, of a Commission of Inquiry was passed, and the same transmitted to Wellington for the Governor's assent ; the management of the railways were taken out of the hands of Mr Marchant, and all done that could have been expected. It was. not the Government that decided that the Commission was no longer re- | quired, but the Council itself. Therefore, to charge 1 the Executive -with a desire "to smother the Commission of Inquiry " was i unmanly and unfair. | It would be_too tedious a task to go I over sentence by sentence the heap of I unjustifiable assertions your contemporary makes in the subsequent portion of the article, but there is one one equisite piece of inconsistency which deserves to be exposed. After for _ months abusing the late Railway Engineer in unmeasured I language, he. says to the public: — "Let us declare it once for all that culpable as I he may "have been, Mr Marchant was purity itself beside some other public servants. Whatever his shortcomings, there were others more deserving of puni ishment, and we err greatly if the public [ accept him as a scapegoat." Who are the public servants who are infinitely more to be censured than the man who it i has been the aim and end of the News to ! brand as being bad as bad could be. If they | are known why have they not been named? i Such vile insinuations and charges are disgraceful to the writer and degrading to the good sense of the community. The remarks detrimental to Mr Cuthbertson are unworthy of notice. All who know that gentleman will give him credit for taking office, feeling that duty called him to do so at great personal inconvenience and loss, to do a particular work, that work accomplished he felt he was no longer a necessity. I Bhall say no more upon this subject, as his character stands too high .to be tarnished by the scurrility by which he has been attacked. Asking pardon for the length |to which I have gone. I remain &c. h An" Obsebveb. Invercargill, Bth May, 1866.