PARTISAN PRESS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 16, 16 December 1871, Page 3

PARTISAN PRESS.

The systematic suppression of everything said in debate in the Provincial Council, by the Auckland newspapers, which has a tendency to reflect advisedly on the policy of the General Government, has become a standing disgrace to local journalism. The reports of the proceedings of the Provincial Council which appear daily in our Auckland contemporaries, are a mere caricature; and we have been informed that so far was this system carried last session, for the purpose of bringing the Provincial Council into contempt, that it was at one time seriously contemplated to exclude reporters from the body of the House altogether. Now, we have an instance of a deliberate suppression of a most important debate on the general policy of the Government, and how it affects the interests of the province, and a leading Auckland newspaper taking credit to itself for they having sue-' ccssfully prevented the appeal by the Council to the constituencies of the province having any affect. It proceeds further, and misrepresents at once the tone and purport of the resolution and debate. When onr readers bear these facts in mind, they must appreciate at their true value, the annexed tirade, which appeared in the “ Southern Cross ” of Friday, as its leading article. What measure of justice can this community expect from the governing class of Auckland, who hold it in subjection to them, when they can so far prostitute the public Press as to compel it to suppress statements and pervert facts, to enable them to compass their design of enriching themselves at the cost of the public, by filtering a large amount of the Ten Million loan through their own seive. The following is the article referred to:—

The Council of the province of Auckland have done a great work—they have protested. It does not appear very clearly what is to be done with the protest jiow that it has been completed, but that docs not signify materially. The members of the Council have done their duty to the country and to themselves, and they are thankful. They can afford now to rest on the memory of a good deed ; and even though, to use the graphic illustration furnished in debate, the Council should now be hanged, they have rendered the reason why sentence of death should not be pronounced. The Council will die with the accents of the protest on their lips, and feeling that posterity will do it justice. It may, indeed, be very unsympathetic and irreverent to speak lightly of this solemn discussion, but there will be few outside that Provincial Council Chamber who will not think that the Council has assumed one of the most ridiculous attitudes that it waspossibleto have presented. More than this—wc believe that such an exhibition of purposeless folly must go far to remove any lingering attachment of provincialism, and induce the feeling that when so manifest symptons of senile imbecility are apparent the days of Provincialism must be in the order of nature very near a close. It would to some extent have relieved the character of this protest if any indication had been given by its authors as to the individuals or parties who were intended to be influenced by it. From the tenor of the debate we arc inclined to think that the protest was intended mainly for the general public, who are expected to become sympathetic with the Council in being virtuously indignant because the Council is not to have the fingering of the public money. The public at large are supposed to be represented in the House of Representatives, as they are in the Provincial Council, and it does not appear very clear why the public should Jook on the one set of representatives as

the spoiliators, and the other set as the spoiled. We fear that if such was the object of this action in the Council it will fail in effect. If the protest was intended to influence directly the minds of the General Government and the Colonial Legislature it is likely to be equally barren of result. So far as controlling such bodies in their action is concerned, the protest might as well have been hurled against the Queen of England or the President of the United States. But if it is valued for the moral effect it will have on the Goveanment, it is probable that the effect, if there is any such, will be in a direction directly contrary to that intended. For if the colonising policy is the policy of the Government and of the General Assembly, then by this insane protest the result will be irresistible that institutions which thus set themselves up in antagonism to colonial interests must be made to stand aside as wholly incorrigible. If the Auckland Provincial Council desired a longer lease of life for Provincial institutions, it would have been more prudent to have shown how readily adapted they may become for facilitating the progress of colonisation instead of exhibiting a spirit of sullen doggedness and a disposition to resist modifications that have become absolutely necessary to the success of tho colonial policy. Quos Du penlere dementant, is an old adage, but equally true in principle in modern times : and it is impossible to avoid seeing in the late almost unanimous resolution of the Provincial Council the shadow of approaching doom.