Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER & ADVERTISER. THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1872. "MEASURES, NOT MEN."

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 226, 30 May 1872, Page 4

Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER & ADVERTISER. THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1872. "MEASURES, NOT MEN."

The return published in another column of the revenue of the province and the expenditure on the goldfields during the last three years, shows more clearly than words can express, the shameful manner the goldfields have been treated by the provincial authorities. The residents of the goldfields — probably because they are the largest contributors to the provincial revenues — seem to be considered by those who, up to the present time, have swayed the destinies of the province, as outcasts, and treated accordingly. We find, that in three years the total amount expended on salaries, subsidies, public works, fee., on the goldfields is £105,469 17s. Id. By a rough computation, the aggregate amount produced by direct taxation from the goldfields during the same period, in the shape of gold duty, miners' rights, water. licenses, &c, is about £110,000 to £115,000. It will be thus seen that the sum expended on the goldfields i& actually less btf £5,000 or £10,000 than the amount received from direct taxes levied upon them. Not a single penny of the large amount they pay indirectly has been disbursed for their benefit. Was ever injustice so monstrous as this X Through the length and breadth of the goldtields complaints of impassable roads and tracks, and un bridged rivers are rife, and in many localities traffic is annually suspended for months. When funds were asked for the purpose of remedying these ciying evils, the stereotyped reply was that there was no money available. Bi t why was there no money available ? What has become of the £770,000 — the difference between the sum spent on the goldfields, and the total amount of the provincial revenue. The goldfields in common .justice were entitled to a share, and a very considerable share too, of that sum. That such gross injustice should be tolerated in a reproach to the province, and shows that our rulers are not possessed of honesty. Yet in the face of all this they prate of their decentralising policy, the advantages of retaining the control of provincial revenues in the hands of the provincial authorities, and the disasters that will inevitably result from the General Government concentrating the administration of the affairs of the colony in its own hands. There will be one result of the abolition of provincialism, which its supporters will probably consider disastrous, but which right-thinking men will consider the reverse, and that is, that those districts that have been" for years past enriched at the expense of the goldfields. will

find the benefits they have hitherto unjustly received stopped. This is the reason why played-out provincialism finds so many supporters — ■ why it is attempted to set up the General Government as a " bogie " which will devour the provincial revenues. A glance at - the estimates for this .year shows that the claims of the goldfields are as much ignored by the Provincial Government as in times past. Many of the amounts proposed to be expended are votes lapsed from last year, and their total sum, if they are spent, which, judging from past experience, is very problematical, comes nowhere near that to which the goldtields are in common fairness entitled. But it is no use asking the provincial authorities to recognise our rights. They have become so habituated to regard the revenues of the goldfields in the light that a highwayman looks upon the purses of his victims, that they are incapable of meting out justice to them. Under any rule we cannot possibly be worse treated than ,at present. Any change is preferable to remaining in oar present condition. It is therefore to be hoped that the extinction of provincialism is near at hand. The General Government may treat us better, and in their taking over the management of the provincial revenues lies the only hope of the goldfields receiving that justice in the future which .has been denied tothem in the past.