PROVINCIAL INDEPENDENCE.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 20, 18 May 1867, Page 3

PROVINCIAL INDEPENDENCE.

“Provincial Legislatures must either abrogate their functions, or assert their position by exercising the powers appertaining to them under the Constitution.” Thus says the Superintendent of Otago in his speech when opening the Provincial Council of that Province. There is no question about it. We have no sympathy with those who think that the present costly system should continue. Either the Provincial Governments will have to be destroyed, or they will have to be maintained out of a portion of the revenue which now finds its way into the Colonial chest. The General Government must hand over a larger portion of the revenue it now derives from the Customs and Stamp Duties, and with it a number of departments it now has in its pay and control, or take into its pay and under its control a number of departments which now belong to the Provincial Governments. We do not sympathize with those who would uphold two costly systems. If the Provincial system is to be retained it is necessary that increased powers as well as increased revenues should be conferred upon it, at the cost of the General Government. The powers and action of the General Government must he restricted to the few matters which are of federal concern, or Provincial Governments must give way to municipal institutions. We shall have more to say on this subject, before the meeting of Parliament, and in the meantime will give our readers the views of the Government of Otago relative to it. The Superintendent in the speech from which our opening sentence is quoted says :

For my part, unless I am assured that the people of this Province deliberately desire it, I shall be no party to the abrogation of these functions. The Provincial system has a groat work to perfoim, and it would be suicidal on the part of the people to relinquish it. It is said that the system has been extravagant and expensive. If so, it has been our own fault, and the remedy is in our own hands. It is perfectly clear that, if this Province is to progress, and make the most of its resources, it must be by means of the provincial Legislature. We are tar more competent to do for ourselves what the General Government is seeking to do for us than it can possibly be. We can do so much more efficiently and much more economically. The spirit and intention of the Constitution Act evidently is, that the General Government should be federal in its action, and the circumstances of the Colony pointed to this as the advisable form of government, otherwise what necessity was there for creating distinct machinery for Provincial legislation ? The General Government, however, has overstepped the line ; and its action has been, for the last nine years, gradually to undermine the Provinces, to involve them in an enormous debt, and in a permanent colonial expenditure from which they derive impractical benefit. It needs no great power of reflection to perceive that, had the General Government confined itself to purely federal functions, the large amount of Customs and Stamp .Duties now levied in this Province, would either have been expended within and for the benefit of the Province, or, which is more likely, would not have been levied at all. As it is, it seems to me to be absolutely essential to the best interests

of the Colony, as well as for this Province, that a system which has produced such results should be modified or curbed.

He says that the only practical mode for effecting this is for the two islands to separate. Upon this point we are dead against him. We look upon the establishment of Provincial Independence as the only effective antidote to the bane he recommends as a remedy. What he has abcve said, and what he subsequently says go to prove that he is of the same opinion, and that separation is only mentioned to meet the views of that “Victorian element,” in the population of Otago who raised the cry before knowing that under the Constitution Act they could secure a remedy for the disease which affected the body politic of Otago without resorting to such an extreme measure as amputation.