THE WESTLAND GOVERNMENT NOMINEE.

West Coast Times, Issue 664, 9 November 1867, Page 3

THE WESTLAND GOVERNMENT NOMINEE.

* (rilOir THE HOKITIKA IiEADEB, NOV. 8.) We have this week to make a rather startling announcement, which we believe will prore anything but an agreeable surprise to our readers. Mr Sale, the late Commissioner, and present Goldfields Under Secretary, is to be the nominated head and Chairman of the County Council of Westlaud. Such at least is the report which has been in current circulation in town during the last few days ; aud it gathers strength every hour. In fact, although the appointment has not yet been actually made, and indeed cannot be legally made until the proclamation of the Westland Act, we feel warranted in saying that the nomination of Mr Sale is the present intention of the Government. To what extent the Executive have committed themselves to that gentleman by the promise of this preferment, we are not in a position to say. But as yet they have not compromised themselves by any public and formal announcement. They have the opportunity of reconsidering their determination. And the people of Westland have also the opportunity of expressing their views on the contemplated renewal of Mr Sale's lease of power, under circumstances rendering his rule far more obnoxious than it has hitherto proved. The appointment of Mr Sale will be the act purely of Mr Hall, who has come to the district with full powers We need not say that it will be a complete undoing of the little good the Westland members in the Provincial Council succeeded in effecting, in securing the appointment of a responsible Secretaryfor the Goldfields. This office was made a political one. The gentleman holding it was required to have a seat in the Provincial Council as the elected representative of a constituency, and his tenure of office was subject to all the vicisitudes incident to the system of administrative " responsibility." Under this arrangement Mr Sale ceased to hold the office of Commissioner, and became Undersecretary, the Goldfield Secretary. ll P ™ »S» S ° ffered to and accepted by Mr Bonar The first responsible Minister for the Goldfields ever appointed, is now to be thrown overboard, as if for the very P a rpose of casti discredit upon the principle for which the members for Westland 8O long and jo valiantly fought; and Mr Sale is to bt elevated to the chief place of honor

and the chief place of influence and power !

No appointment could possibly be more calculated to make the County of Westlaud experiment a failure, than the attempt thus apparently made to resuscitate the old system under a new phase ; nothing more calculated to inspire distrust altogether in the sincerity of the Government, in their desire to release the district from the pernicious system of administration under which it has so lon^ suffered. We have no wish to say anything personally disrespectful of Mr Commissioner — or rather Mr Under-Secretary — Sale. We believe him to be a man well fitted for the public service, in virtue of many qualities he possesses: But undoubtedly under all the circumstances of the case, he is about the last man the choice of Mr John Hall should have fallen upon, for initiating the new system of government in the County. He is so thoroughly identified with the old regime, against which the district has revolted, that there appears to us to be an utter want of propriety and taste as well of discretion, in his being set up over us as the head and chief of the new administration.

We have disclaimed any purpose of referring personally to Mr Sale in any disrespectful terms. But the public know enough of him to understand that, whilst a gentleman of unimp each able honor, he is about the most unlikely person that could have been selected by .Mr Hall to work harmoniously with n Couucil of Advice and Control. And unless in practically carrying out the Act, the Council of Advice is, to all intents aud purposes, a Council of Control, the value of that body will be nothing. "Mr Sale has never yet been influenced in his official conduct by any representations made to him ; he has always displayed the strongest indisposition to allow any one to interfere with his authority, and the strongest determination to exercise his arbitrary powers arbitrarily. He has enjoyed for some years the luxury of power. He has been the autocrat of a population of forty or fifty thousand men ; and naturally enough the love of power has waxed strong within him. Mr Sale has been invariably backed up by his superiors. Mr Moorhouse ostentatiously ' paraded Mr Sale as the only gentleman by whose advice he would act. Mr Hall appears to have imitated Mr Moorhouse's great blunder of throwing him- j self completely into Mr Sale's hands, j Mr Sale will be the Lord Paramount of Westland, if this appointment is persisted in; and the Westland County Act will not be worth the paper on which it is printed. A Council of Advice, with Mr Sale as the irresponsible nominee chairman! Mr Sale, the head of all the departments — the local representative of the Colonial Government ; with no seat held by right of election and dismissal ; with no responsibility except to the authorities whose special protege he is, and by whom he has hitherto been, and now seems likely to be, always backed ! Is this the change we have been fighting for ? Is this the salvation that Mr Hall has wrought for us, and for which we have been lavishing our thanks to him ? Ie this the wisdom of Mr Hall, in thus ensuring the certain uusueeess of an experiment to the working of which the eyes of all New Zealand will be turned ? It is hard to believe that such is destined to be the climax of the Separation movement, and that after the generous confidence we have placed in the Colonial Government,, they will thus betray us, and make us a laugbing-stock and a bye-word to our neighbors, who have already been witty enough at what they have called our " credulity," and who are cynically watching the political play here. It will be the fault of the people, however, if this inglorious termination of Westland's war of independence is tamely submitted to.

We learn from the " "Wellington Independent" that the Colonial Museum has received, through Mr 0. R. Carter, -who has recently returned from England, several interesting donations from George Robert Stephenson, Esq., the eminent engineer. The most valuable of these contributions "is a well-executed model of tho Britannia tubular bridge over the Menai Straits, in North Wales, which was designed by the late Robert Stephen?on. The model is on the scalo of twenty feet to the inch. The bridge has a totel length of 1833 feet, the central spans being 640 feet, the side spans being 230 feet, and the height of the centre tower 221 feet. It contains 11,468 tons of ironwork and 1,500,000 cubic feefc of masonry, and was erected at a cost of L 602,000. The other donations consist of pictures possessing some historical value in connection with engineering science. They are — (1.) A framed engraving representing a conference of celebrated engineei-s at the Britannia tubular bridge ; (2) an engraved portrait of the late Mr George Robert Stephenson, the self-taught man who became one of the greatest railway engineers in the world ; (3) a portiait of his sou, the late Mr Eobert Stephenson, designer . of the Britannia tubular bridge, of the bridge of the St. Lawrence, and of other great works; (4) a photograph (coloured in oil) of Mr Geoi'ge Eobert Stephenson, a cousin of the former, and the present representative of the family. Mr G-. R. Stephenson has not only inherited tho bulk of his cousin's fortune, but has maintained the reputation of his predecessors, with whom he was associated in several great undertakings, by becoming iv his turn a celebrated engi- | neer. Mr Stephonson is consulting engineer j to tho province of Canterbury, and he de- I signed the Wanganui bridge. To the above avo added a Parian marble bust of the late { George Stephenson, another of tho late Eobert Stephenson, and a sculptured stone vase, bearing the inscription — "A relic of Old London Bridge ; date 1176." Mr Carter, through whom theso donations were forwarded, has himself presented to the Colonial Museum a valuable book of plates, and two volumes descriptive aud explanatory of the Britannia and Conway tubular bridges, together with a specimen of the Cook's Straits telegraph cable, handsomely mounted in a cabinet case.