The Westport Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 512, 3 June 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 1869.

The Superintendent of Nelson, Mr. Oswald Curtis, caD, at least, claim credit for consistency. His opinions are as the laws of the Medes and Persians. They alter not. He has a power of adhesion to particular views which might he admirable as a personal characteristic if it were not the usual characteristic of a bigot. He has also, by the accidents of life, an opportunity of putting those views into practice in a sphere which, probably, no one would begrudge him if he did not occupy it as an autocrat. In the possession of peculiar opinions, and in the practice of self-assertion, he is faithfully—we may say, abominably—consistent. Diversity of opinion, elicited by public discussion or produced by different experience, is nothing more to him than Hecuba. Ignorant as unconvinced, he will glibly quote some hackneyed sentences of his own—every one of them bristling with fallacies—" as showing what was, and what is still," (and, no doubt, what will ever be) "his opinion." Aud the deliberate votes of an assembled Provincial Council are, as compared with the simple stroke of his autocratic pen, "no-where." As a public man he condemns their opinions; iu his official capacity he utterly defies their actions. He sneers at them in hia speeches; he snubs them in his messages. Yet it is by such a " house divided against itself" that the inhabitants of the Nelson South-west Goldfields aro asked to be governed, and to be content with their government. At the close of a session of several weeks, nearly all that the Council had done in the way of retrenchment is undone by the Superintendent, in the egregiously abused exercise of "his prerogative;" and there is as little doubt that the same fate awaits those votes which, for the sake of courtesy, wo shall say were passed by the Council as concessions to the West Coast. In fact, the whole work of the session which has just concluded might be fitly represented by the simple experiment of pouring water into a sieve.

More ample illustration of the two characteristics which we have ventured to attribute to the Superintendent could not surely be afforded than is afforded both by the fact of his making such a speech as that which he made to the public of Nelson at the end of the session, and by the sentiments which it disclosed. It is certainly an exceptional, if it is not, in Mr. Curtis's case, a new feature for the Superintendent of a Province to publicly discuss, at such a time, the merits or demerits of a Council of which, in the words of Mr. Luckie, he is the outside executive head. But it is especially exceptional to review the conduct of a Council in the tone which i

Mr. Curtis has chosen to adopt. The most that can be said for him is that it is creditable to his consistency, for his speech was only an amplification of sentiments and a style of address which distinguished messages which had previously been sent to the Council, and which distinguished also the formal speech by which the session was closed. It is chiefly, however, with regard to his consistency of opinion as to the management of this part of the Province that we are at present interested. Whether it is Mr. Curtis himself or the Councillors who possess the gift of " grumbling," or whether it is he or they who, in bis elegant phraseology, are " in the habit of getting out on the wrong side of the bed," are questions which may well be left to the papers published in the locality where the bed is proverbially an important institution. What especially interests us on the West Coast is to know that Mr. Curtis, the Superintendent of the Province of which this is a part, and the self-elected champion of opposition to our solicited separation, entertains the same crude and partial views on the management of goldfields which he has ever expressed. Mr. Curtis begins his speech by a "grumble" at the significantly small majority of one by which an expression of approval of his early offered opposition to separation was only passed; and we notice that, like many others of the critics of Dr. Irvine and those who voted with him on that occasion, he fails to see good reason for their votes. Full of the spirit of " opposition," and consistent in holding antiquated and unfounded opinions as to the colonizing character of agoldfields population, he fails to give these gentlemen credit for the spirit in which we believe they voted—a spirit of inquiry and conciliation, instead of dogged ignorance and unreasoning resistance. Ho does not fail, however, to see one thing. " I see," he says, " that although inhabiting one Province the Gold fields members aro not of us. Their representatives sit in our Council, but what do they represent ? Their own districts only ; they have no interest beyond." This is, no doubt, a discomfiting discovery for His Honor, and it is hero only that his consistency breaks down. He " sees" all this, yet he cannot see the propriety of them representing "their own districts "in their own Council, and in their ow r n way. How much more consistent are the Groldfields members aud those whom they represent ! They have discovered precisely the same thing, and echo the very sentiments of His Honor. Regarding the Nelson members with no more jaundiced eyes than those which His Honor directs towards the Groldfields, they ask" What do they represent?" Aud faithful Echo itself answers—" Their own districts ouly; they have no interest beyond." Echo, to bo thoroughly faithful, might also add " And there aro four or five times as many of them." Por this numerical discrepancy is a cireumstance which even the discriminating eye of his Honor fails to " see." He disingenuously charges the Groldfields members with "joining anybody to do anything to serve their owu political ends," but he omits the consideration of the fact that, if they do so, and are not joined by a party in the House respectable at least in numbers, an d representing really the fair opinion of the Council their " political ends " —political, not personal, be it observed —would stand a very slight chance of being carried. Perhaps it is in the fact of their being included in the " hostile majority in the Provincial Council " with whom he confesses he has to contend—those, " uncompromising political opponents" of whom he complains—that His Honor discovers a source, not of political, but of personal annoyance.

It is, however, in the reiteration of the ordinary claptrap about the homeless, destitute, denationalized character of mining communities that Mr Curtis's candour and consistency chiefly assert themselves. So fond is he of that memorable passage which we have so often quoted from Hansard, and have humhly attempted to dissect, while the Separation Committee have altogether gibhetted it, that he reads it once mure at the meeting at Nelson ; and so fond are we of it that we once more print it, as read. It cannot be too often read or printed, as expressing the opinions of the man who sits in the Superintendent's chair in Nelson Province, who demands the maintenance of that Province in its integrity, yet who, by the very character of his opinions and the direction of his actions, cannot but fail in managing it as a harmonious whole. Mr Curtis cannot or will not see that the whole

history of mining countries—of California, Victoria, and of New Zealand itself—is entirely against his theory, and that there is, in the character of the mining interest, every capacity for it being blended with the general interests and industries of a country. Were he to see this, he would his energies to this probably otherwise familiar process of " blending," instead of being, as he is, the cause of division and dissension. But figuratively, as well as literally, he views the subject from a hollow, and over the peaks of a great dividing range. He ignores the existence of Melbourne and all the up-country towns of Victoria ; he ignores Dunedin, Hokitika, G-reymouth, et hoc ; he remembers—perhaps vividly—Mokihinui; and he asserts that the erdinary rights of citizenship are to be denied to the inhabitants of a mining community, because—forsooth! —they " do not live in dwelling-houses"—a sentiment which, by-the-way, was loudly cheered by his Nelson audience. What next ? Probably he will deny also their respectability, because they do not keep gigs.