PRE-SESSIONAL ADDRESS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 456, 22 March 1890, Page 5

PRE-SESSIONAL ADDRESS.

New Plymouth, March 19. Mr Samuel, M.H.R., addressed his constituents last night. There was a large audience. He announced he did not intend standing for re-election. He said the Railway Commissioners were making the railways pay at the expense of the progress of settlement. He gave the Dunedin people credit for the Exhibition, which had done a great deal of good, as it had attracted people from outside, who came to see the fertility of the colony and its great resources. Though opposed to excessive borrowing, he thought it absolutely necessary in a new country. It was disgraceful to see the unfinished works about the colony rotting for want of money to complete them so as to make them reproductive. He instanced the partly-made line at Greymouth, and the Otago Central line, which at present is useless. He said we must borrow now to be able to pay debts by the product of improvements. We cannot make the colony progress or prosper without borrowing. He referred to the wasted time of the last session over the WardChristie and Fisher-Atkinson correspondence, and said nothing ever happened more degrading to the representative institution than the opposition of city members to the Representation Bill. He considered the private schools should be subsidised, and would like to see some of the oldjj fashioned private Grammar Schools re-es-tablished. The Justice Department was very inefficient in the lower Courts of the West Coast of the South Island, and he considered the time had come for the amalgamation of the Native Lands Court with the Supreme Court. The present Parliament might be prolonged, he thought, till early next year, and after the census was taken let the dissolution take place, when the colony would be pro’ perly represented. He objected to two sessions in one year. Mr Samuel received a unanimous vote of confidence at the end of the meeting.