Wararapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878] MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1892.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XIII, Issue 4286, 5 December 1892, Page 2

Wararapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878]

MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1892.

Beino the extended title of the Wairarapa Dai&y, with WHICH IT 18 IDENTIOAL

The policy of the present Government has destroyed the land fund of the Colony and the land fund is and has always been to a very great extent the road fund. Local bodies j are starved and local self-Government a shadow of what it once was. Day by day we see the effects of the sacrifice of the land fund and tbe loss of the road fund. A meeting of settlers at Ekotabuna decided on Friday evening to recom* mend the County Oounoil to erect a toll gate south of Pahiatua. A toll gate is a barbarous and moat extra n-. gant method of raising funds for road maintenance and iB only justifiable when all ordinary means fail. That an important lino of communication like the Eketabuna-Pabiatua road must be kept open, goes without saying. There is no hope of aid or sympathy from tho present Government and no one is bold enough to suggest an increase of County rates for such a

purpose. Apparently the propqped toll gate J8 the only solution of tbe difficulty. Then, again, anothor blow is (o be aimed at local bodies. It is said that the Minister of Works intends to force upon them the co-operative labour system, a system which has been a distinct failure under tbe Publio Works Department, Anyone who has watched the slow and unsatisfactory progress of the railway works north of Eketabuna, who has seen the best men who have been engaged in its co-operative gangs, leaving them and declaring that the co-operative system is all moonshine, must regret to see an. attempt madp to compel local bodies to adopt it. Tlierp is, hpwever, the ponsolation that the threat of the Minister to coerce these bodies, will set one and all against (lie Government, and sp tend to shorten the life of a mpstniiSQhiev. :ous Ministry. The idea o! the Govern[ment is to find profitable work for all the idle men in the community, and for all the idle raw it cap attrao

from Sydney, Melbourne and Matt. This policy is. little short of madness. I Time will show the folly of it, but lif the inanity can be kept up for [other year there may be method in the madness. If, when the general election oomr-s round, there are from ten to twenty thousand persons in the direct or indirect pay of the Government and Government candidates are in a position to" assure tins army of voters that high wages will be paid to tbem for the Government stroke if they vote right and that thoy will lose their billets if they voio wrong, there will be discernable some reason for the mad policy of Ministers. It is a desperate attempt to buy up the political control of the Colony and to outvote settlers in every electorate by the aid of sundowners and foreign legions from Australian territory.