NEW PROVINCES BILL.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 101, 8 October 1858, Page 3

NEW PROVINCES BILL.

(From the Canterbury Standard.) In the summary of events given by us last week, we directed especial attention to two acts of legislation, whicli, beyond all others, are of interest to the public of* New. Zealand—to wit, the Waste Lands Act, and the New Provinces Act. Without going now minutely into the consideration of those measures, for the reason already given, we may observe simply, that by-the first,* the privilege for which the people of this province so long contended, —namely, the control of the waste lands, of the provinces, is now abolished. We are no longer at liberty to act for ourselves in this cardinal point of self-government. For the future, the question.of price—mode of payment—size of blocks—pasturage regulations—are subjects for legislation by the General Assembly, and not by the Provincial Councils as hitherto. ,We hardly know, how to make the announcement, so startling is' it;" But so it is. This great feature of New Zealand policy^ for which Fitzgerald, Sewell, Wakefield, Featherston^Fox— men in short of all Provinces and all politics contended, and secured for us—has been set aside by Mr. Stafford, v Mr. Richmond, Mr. Whitaker, and we suppose we ought not to omit the Hon. Mr. Tancred, with as much non-chalance, and apparently with little more shew of opposition, than might have attended the enactment or the repeal of an impoimding'Ordinance. It was stated by Ministers that there, would" be no interference with existing regulations, andespecially the members of Canterbury were assured, that they need be under no apprehension whatever of any meddling with theirs. Notwithstanding _this assurance of non-interference, itwill be perceived that a new office is created—an obvious superfluity if nothing is going to be done. - For ourselves, we confess it appears to us,as ; the insertion of the sharp edge of the wedge, to be driven home to the splitting up of existing arrangements when the convenient lime may be supposed to have arrived. Already the expediency of uniformity throughout the whole colony is being urged. There must be rough interference somewhere, we take it, before that can' be accomplished. - One word only on the present occasion on "tlie second measure to which we have referred—the New Provinces Act. Standing by itself, this measure does not appear to be a very mischievous one v in principle, though we think it was very properly opposed. Its offence lies in the manner in which it was brought forward, and in its being made, the- cheval de bataille of ultra-centralism; and further, in its being specially intended for the dismemberment of Wellington, when not a member from Wellington, except the Speaker, was present, and could not be present, because of the error made by the General Government itself in its ' issue of Writs to the Province.

There is no mistake an the assertioa that this bilVraises, and was intended to raise, in the most direct way, the question of centralism and provincialism—that is to say, Provincial Government in its present form of development, which it is now the avowed policy of the present Government to endeavour to restrict and' bring into, contempt. We must postpone to another occasion the consideration ofthe Act from this point of view.; We cannot, however, but observe here that a measure involving such extensive organic changes ought not to have been brought forward without -much previous notice. The colony as it appears to us has been tricked., No one expected such-a proposition. Having been successful, its promoters may exult over their success as a very clever coup d' etat, but we mnch mistake if it is not condemned by-the provinces generally. So far as Wellington is concerned, it is idle to deny that an unfair and cowardly.advantage-has^eeu taken of it. Some sneering appears .to; have been indulged in during the debate, because "some member talked of <W<ested.Proviiicial.i'ights." In its narrow legal acceptation, perhaps;"uie term did not .apply. But every corporate body has prescriptive if not vested rights, which are to be respected, and generally are respected for their long standing or the dignity of the source from whence they have been derived. The rights of the provinces were obtained from an Act of the Imperial Parliament "perfected by Sir George Grey, and it is not becoming that they should be overturned at a week's notice, and without any previous intimation of what was intended to be donie.- The meanest corporation in England would have been considered entitled to be heard at the bar of the House of Commons, had its rights and privileges been in jeopardy; and assuredly the second province of New Zealand was entitled to no less consideration, before it was to undergo dismemberment.

It affords us great pleasure to'notice that the whole of the representatives of Canterbury in both Houses were unanimous in their opposition to this Bill and the VVaste Lands Bill, with one exception—that exception being the gentleman who has received \ the appointment of Secretary of Crown Lands.

At the Adelaide show of implements, the" novelty which seems to have attracted most favorable attention from the farmer was a double plough. This was more generally approved of than the quadruple plough, experiments with which we have noticed at different times during the past year. Of more importance,, however, in the eyes of good judges, were the implements.adapted for deep ploughing and stfbsoiling.

HE SHADOW SLEEPING IN THE SUN. I rambled one fine summer afternoon. beyond the. suburbs of a large town to a churchyard in its vicinity, remarkable for the beauty.of its "situation, and the air of calm seclusion and tranquility that brooded over it. Within and without, the streaming sunbeams were filling the earth and heavens with gladness. They played upon the village spire, and gleamed upon the silvered sinuosities of the river that wended through the valley, and bathed the swelling mounds around in quiet lustre. The landscape possessed all the attractions of variety. The ground was broken with eminences which were clothed with trees, upon whose thick masses of verdure there was the perpetual play of changing hues. There was shade as well as light: but the very shadows themselves seemed to be but modifications of the common glory—the general splendour softened and subdued. I confess, that to me the scene and hour did not harmonise with the pervading spirit of our graveyard literature. A beautiful suggestion of 'Wilson might arise, or a soft whisper from the muse of Gray; but there was none of the gloom and sombrousness of Blair or Young. Beauty was the enchantress who had pillowed the head and folded the arms of darker associations in ambrosial slumbers. The pleasure that was produced was not emotional, but was almost wholly intellectual. It was not the heart that, vtas impressed and excited, but the imagination. The golden air of that summer afternoon would have been better peopled with the nodding plumes of the knights of romance than with the sables of the hearse. Archbishop Turpin and Geoffrey of Monmouth seemed more congenial companions than Zimmerman and Harvey —the ancient ballad than the modern elegy. Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France, and Arthur and his Knights' of the Round Table, lived again. The witchery of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' might possibly be realised. Songs of Sir Launcelot and Sir Guy, of Roland and the Cid, seemed perfectly in harmony with the joyousness of those vvoodnotes that filled the air with carollings. I turned round, and saw upon the soft, mossy grass of the churchyard, a shadow sleeping in the sun. A widow was bending over the grave of her husband. Immediately 'a change passed o'er the spirit of my dream.' The intellectual became blended with'the emotional, and proportionably modified by it. The moral element was superadded to the sesthetical; beauty and sorrow went hand in hand— external beauty and human sorrow. The prospect was no longer all bright. Rembrandt had taken tlie pencil from1 the hand of Claude, and was already dashing in deep shadows upon the sunshine; not that a single cloud obscured for a moment the clear radiance of the sky, for the shifting splendours of the landscape kept up their unresting and evanescent play; and the heavenward-tending warblings, and the lullaby rustle of the leaves went on; and the glow of mellow light streamed-upon the groves; but there was now a shadow sleeping in the sun, and not a shadow only.

The illusions of the fancy began to give way to the realities of the heart. The clamour of romance began to disappear. If the enchanted palace still remained, the key was lost. Slowly, pinnacle and spire, and guarded barbican, and tossing pluriies, and clustering spears, and troubadours, and all the airy fancies and imaginings of the past, receded into the dim distant, and made way for the actualities and monitions of the present; All the external loveliness of the scene istill remained; but a rim of human suffering ran round the extremities ofthe picture,'and faced its glided frame with ebony ; for a stronger spell than that of Merlin was now upon the heart. Without and around, there was jubilance, and light, and .life, and brilliance; and there, in the bustling town, were the bustle of contending interests, the play of antagonistic purposes, and all the rush and clamour of eager multitudes; and here, within, were silence, and, the dreamless sleep of the dead, and the motionless shadow, and the widowed heart, and the darkened life; and the sunken eye of sorrow wept what tears were yet undrained upon the dust covering the remains of him with whom all joy and hope were buried. Without, were mirth and music, and the radiance and prodigality of summer brilliancy: and within, were human sighs ancl tears, and gloom, deep as the crape-enfolded raiments of the figure that bended at' the grave of the departed.

The churchyard was no longer a mere congeries of complimentary epitaphs, for there was now a living romance within its four enclosures. Time had told part of the tale of life to the motionless form before me. It had passages of beauty and of brightness in it, doubtless; hopes*had been kindled, fears had been aroused, but latterly, at least, the thread of the narrative had been winding down deep into the abyss. The tale, begun in sport, had become earnest in the middle, and now had wound itself up to a climax in a wail of pathos. Comedy commonly laughs itself out in youth, and leaves behind a residue of .sighs for coming tragedy.

As Hooked on the widow's weeds, I thought of the days to her long past —the days of childhood and unheeding infancy— the days of unfolding promise and of happy presage. L thought of her as a child, in whose eye the light and gladness of unspotted innocency beamed brightly forth in '..whose soul were, as yet undeveloped, those lofty and inexhaustible aspirations that are destined ultimately to sweep the circumference of eternity, and clasp in their tendril sinuosities the rounded ball of the dread for ever; to whom all the myriad sights, and sounds, and influences of nature were palpable and embodied mysteries; .the young, child, as she then was, playing among the flowers upon the sunny bank, and gazing in delighted wonderment upon the troops of splendid clouds that studded and flecked''the . summer heaven, and

seemed to fold transcendant secrets in their sun-illumined bosoms as they tracked their silent and gorgeous pathway through the infinite fields of blue, from whose azure; deeps the stars at night came out in clustering constellations and far regal axies; the young child, playing amid all the light and; life of nature, to whom everything appeared arrayed in, the captivating and dewy freshness of novelty—and the- weeping-widow, habited in the vestments of mourning, and bending beneath her weight of woes. Could they be the same ? Then I thought of her in the season of youth—that period of bounding hearts—that happy herald, and bright prophet of the future. I thought of the tale of love that had been told and listened to, of the tender consultations and the soft whisperings, and 'the moonlight walks, and all " the golden dreams of bliss that swarm ' within the phantasmic horizon of youth. And then there was the bridafparty, and the happy bride. The great change had come—the period when all these fond anticipations were to. have their realization and accomplishment had now arrived—and now what was the result? The golden ladder that was to have led the adventurer up to Paradise had been partially scaled, and it was found that, notwithstanding all its seeming glory, it rested on a grave. The sunny doors of the future had been swung wide open; but the visitant found that she had not entered a palace of enchantment, as she -fondly hoped, but a mere Golgotha—-" a place of skulls." The rose of life had been plucked; and slowly, leaf by leaf, it had wasted away, leaving nothing in the hand but the withered stem and the prickly thorns. Perpetual obscurations had been projected upon the temple of the future; until, at last, a settled gloom hung over its dreary portals. I observed that, although the figure was motionfess yet the hands were clasped, and the eyes were uplifted towards heaven. Ah ! I had noticed but one arc of the circle; there were others yet behind. There might be no power to bring out of the earthly future any beams to beautify t^te tears of the past; but there was a region of brightness beyond the dark ring that had escaped my observation. One segment of the circle of life' 1 seemed resting on earth; but there was another that spanned the skies, and penetrated far into-eternity. There, was hope still left! It had not become extinct; but had only ascended into a purer region, where full accomplishment would attend its steps like destiny. Hitherto, I had seen but the cloud and vapour of the -rainbow, and not the far-streaming glory that touched it into splendour. I went away saddened and solemnised; and often, in seasons of unwonted hilarity, amid the scenes of festivity and rejoicing, and in hours of undue depression and sadness, I have found the lesson taught by that " Shadow Sleeping in the Sun" to be .nojt' unsalutary.