THE WANGANUI CHRONICLE AND RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. "Vérité sans peur.” Wanganui, January 5, 1860.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 4, Issue 172, 5 January 1860, Page 3

THE WANGANUI CHRONICLE AND RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. "Vérité sans peur.” Wanganui, January 5, 1860.

We have received newspapers by the northern and southern mails; but, after a careful perusal, find nothing in them requiring especial notice.

SEPARATION.

We have made it our business to ascertain, as far as bur opportunities extend, the state of public opinion in reference to the establishment of Wanganui and Rangitikei as a new Province, distinct from Wellington. And can report, as the result of our inquiries, that the Separation is deemed inevitable, if not, in the opinion of many, desirable. We have not disguised our apprehension that social evils may result from the change—that there is hazard of internal dissensions, arising from political differences, hitherto scarcely noticeable in our almost unanimous community. We be-

lieve this is a penalty which must be paid for the privilege of managing our own public affairs.

Lately, we alluded to what we have always deemed a very important objection to the creation of new provinces—the additional power it might give to a Central Government, like the present, eager to undermine Provincialism ; in other words, to nullify the privileges vested by the Constitution Act in the Superintendent and Representatives of each Province. Nothing has recently occurred to diminish the force of this objection ; but surely there is reason to believe that a General Government might be established free from these Centralising and unconstitutional designs, and prepared to carry out the principles on which it was assumed Responsible Government would be established in New Zealand. Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago might unite in defence of Provincialism with Wellington, and with our new Province, that is to be. The Provinces have the game in their own hands, and will assuredly win it, if played with common honesty, earnestness, and discretion. But putting all this aside —suppose it to be irrelevant to the matter in hand.—Separation from Wellington must take place. To this conclusion, as we have hinted before, we have arrived with much reluctance. But we cannot ourselves, we do not presume to advise our fellow-settlers to submit an hour longer than is necessary to the vulgar domineering of the Wellington “Rump.” True it is, that from some of their worst efforts at injury Wanganui has been saved by the courage and self-devotion of the Superintendent; but Dr. Featherston cannot be expected to sacrifice his time and his energies and his fortune for ever, in a contest with such men as—faugh! the names of most of them stink in our nostrils.

We must be prepared for such a contingency as the Superintendent’s retirement, and the best mode of preparation is Separation. Let us then be ready and steady. It may be necessary to submit to a somewhat higher contribution for the support of a separate Government than is now levied. Be it so. This we consider as one of the several points on which a committee should be appointed to procure information and report thereon; and, in the meanwhile, there can be no objection to a decided expression of opinion as to the desirability of Separation, if such is the wish of a majority in the district. The meeting to-day will do much to settle that point.

The long Session of 1859 has proved a miserable failure. It will be remembered, if not contemptuously forgotten, for the elevation of persons, some of them very respectable as shopkeepers and men of business (others not respectable at all), into a Council supposed to represent and legislate for a large portion of New Zealand. For the performance of this duty they were ludicrously incapable ; and so, after sundry attempts at passing bills and revising estimates, they have prorogued themselves for three months, with the comfortable reflection that they have legislated a little on public houses, cried “shame, shame,” on Wanganui schools, and treated the Superintendent after this fashion. One of their “great guns,” a gentleman who quotes Homer and Horace, not in the original, and is the same, we believe, who swears by Vizziseemus, “hinted at the probability that ere three months had elapsed he should be gratified by seeing his Honor arraigned as a State Criminal!” Even the “Rump” could not stand this, but roared with laughter. During the last few nights of the Session, the Rowdies did make a precious mess of it, to be sure. They refused to vote Mr. Holdsworth’s salary, even for three months—and this under peculiarly distressing circumstances. The most respectable members of the party tried to curb the malice of their leaders. Mr. Hunter, Mr. Bowler, and Mr. Toomath, represented the iniquity of knocking off a man’s salary without bearing him in his own defence, and without notice; but in a wretched Committee of eleven the salary was knocked off by a majority of one—the vote being six to five.

They went to work in a similar manner with the salaries of the Superintendent and his Executive, refusing to allow them a shilling. They then adjourned for three months, not even giving the Superintendent time to consider their measures and suggest amendments. But the best of the joke is, that all their bills are inoperative, not having received the Superintendent's assent, and the salaries go on as before.

The Rump tactics were to force his Honor to prorogue the Council, and then raise an outcry about the loss of excellent measures, because the Superintendent would not allow the Opposition the credit of them, and was resolved to continue his defiance of the Council. But Government knew better. The dissolution of the “ Rump ” was daily becoming more certain. His Honor left them to their own devices, and the result has been as ignominious a defeat as ever a foiled faction endured.

Correspondence.

To the Editor of the Wanganui Chronicle.

Sir,—lt is surely time some effort were made to put a stop to the indiscriminate slaughter carried on by the natives against the smaller birds. I hear, for instance, of the cart loads of tuis and pigeons carried to Putiki in a semi-putrid state to gratify the insatiable maws collected at one feast—and these taken, in far the greater part, not on lands belonging to the natives but to the white man. Now, setting altogether aside the characteristics of the tui—its elegant form, its curious plumage, the vivacity and cheerfulness of inhabits and manners, whether domesticated or

wild—l cannot but hold to the opinion of the eminent naturalist Waterton, that whenever the balance of nature is destroyed by any cause which seriously diminishes any one class of creatures, the evils which it is the object of their existence to check will increase in a proportionate degree. Thus in Egypt, the superstitious destruction of the butcher bird (if I remember rightly the name); led to such a plague of locusts, upon which it feeds, that though large sums were given and every effort made to increase its numbers, it was years before the evil caused by its destruction could be overcome. Nor is there an agriculturist in England, probably, who is not aware that when any cause diminishes the number of rooks, it is invariably, followed by the increase of the grub and the wireworm; the same is equally true of the swallow, and of all insectkilling birds. Now, as cultivation spreads, it will assuredly be followed by an increase of those classes of insects which feed more especially upon the crops cultivated ; and there fore, so far ought we to be from encouraging the destruction of the tui in this indiscriminate way, that we ought not only to make an effort for their preservation, but also to introduce the lark, the blackbird, the thrush, the swallow, &c. &c. Setting aside the old familiar associations connected with, these birds —the green lanes, the sunny banks, the woodland scenes, the placid waters of Merrie England—it cannot be doubted that the surest way to check the increase of our natural enemies, the mosquito and the blow fly, is by the introduction of our pleasant and even willing allies, the birds of the air. One other argument, and I have done. I have heard of men arriving in the colony with only a few shillings in their pockets; now it requires not a very large cage to contain five or ten couple of small birds, taken young; the lot would require little more trouble in looking after than a single pair would, and once landed I believe they would meet with a ready sale even at some pounds per head, a lift that many a one requires on landing. I am, &c. X.