The Southland Times. TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1873.

Southland Times, Issue 1764, 8 July 1873, Page 2

The Southland Times. TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1873.

Db Websteb's motion in the Provincial Council for preventing members of the G-eneral Assembly from holding appointments in the Provincial Executive, met with exactly the fate which might have been expected, being lost by thirteen votes to twenty-five. No other result could have been anticipated 'from "the. Provincial Council of Otago, as at present constituted. The public have as yet pronounced no opinion on this question. The ideas involved are not yet familiar even to those electors — too few, alas ! in New Zealand as yet — who bestow upon public affairs that amount of thought which is the reasonable duty of every citizen of a free State. Yet we venture to assert that the more the subject is considered, the more it will be found to be pregnant with important issues. The 1 ground on which Mr Basstian, in recently addressing his constituents at Ghimmie's Bush, placed the necessity of making this change, was the simple and obvious 1 one that those members of Provincial Executives wbtf also hold seats -itt-jbHei Assembly are, by* that eircumistance, : deprived of a large portion of the time required for the effective performanpe of their Provincial duties ; that these; duties are therefore in practice neglected,; and that the interests of the community! suffer accordingly. There is a great dealj in this straightforward view of the ques-; tion with which we sympathise,; and it was probably this aspect of the matter which influenced most, if not all, of the votes recorded for Dr Webster's motion. Honorable members, also, could scarcely have forgotten that had this salutary regulation been in force for the last twelvemonths, the circumstances which led to. the late crisis could not have oc-i curred, and the Province would have beert spared the ; waste ■of time and money, which it has just had to endure, i et ; th/eice, is another consideration which we! regard as having an even more important bearing on the fitness of paid members of the Provincial Executives to sit in the

General .Assembly —a consideration fur more important oven than the occupation of their time in duties other than thoso they have specially undertaken to perform, and for which they receive their salaries. For years one opinion, and one , only, has been expressed by the intelligent ; electors of the Colony as to the utter unfitness of the Provincial system of Government for the present political con- , dition of the community. Whatever may , have been its merits in days gone by, we , are not now concerned to enquire ; the fact remains that for years past it has been denounced by politicians of" all shades and classes as an unmitigated nuisance, which ought to be abated as speedily as possible. We do not now go into the reasons, well-founded as we believe them to be, which have contributed to the formation of this phase of I public opinion. The fact can be verified with the utmost ease that the, Provincial j system of Government is n<j»w Regarded i with unmitigated weariries^ancLclisgust ;.j j by most thinking men. Scarcely a soli- « : tary voice is to be heard lifted up in its defence. These remarks naturally sug- j gest the question, "Why, then, does this , evil continue to exist, in : a country ' governed by .popular representative ( institutions ? An Act- of the ' General i Assembly would be .sufficieht to Abolish Provincial institutions, and substitute some simpler and more ■ effective ' machinery —if indeed such .^does. not already exist — for the supply of local' wants." To this we reply that it is a well-known fact that institutions which have long ceased to perform the functions for which they were at first established, and which have even become injurious instead, of beneficial, continue to exist much longer than they should do, simply because it would cost an etfort to get rid of them, and that effort nobody is prepared to make. In the special case in question, however, this is not all. The measure for the abolition of the Provinces must originate in the Assembly, and he would certainly be a somewhat adventurous politician who would stake the existence of his Government on the carrying of such a measure in a House where from a fourth to a third of the members are directly interested, as being in the receipt of salaries irom the very institutions it was proposed to abolish. It would be still more strange, considering the evenly-balanced state of parties which has prevailed in New Zealand for years, if such a bold adventure were crowned with success.' The presence of a 1 large number of paid Provincial officials in the Assembly— is- -the real source of the tenacious vitality shown by those useless and effete institutions known as Provincial Governments. The sooner the community thoroughly understands this, the sooner we may expect to see a change made in the right direction. The discussion of the question is all that is required to impress on the public mind the evil of this hlot on our representative institutions. When this ultimate and most important bearing of Dr Webstee's proposal is fairly appreciated by the community at large, it will no longer be possible, even for those legislators whoee interests may be affected by the change, to resist successfully this much-needed reform.