MR. STEVENS ON PROVINCIALISM.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 765, 19 January 1871, Page 3

MR. STEVENS ON PROVINCIALISM.

In an election address, on the 9th instant, given at Leeston, Mr Stevens expressed himself as follows upon provincialism :

He was an anti-provincialist, because great evil had resulted from tha fact that under those institutions there had been a legislative or administrative body standing between the Parliament of the country and the people. Provincial Governments also looked upon the revenue as their prey; and there was another reason, and that was that the Provincial Governments and Provincial Councils absorbed the political feeling of the country, which ought to be employed in watching the proceedings of the Assembly of the Colony. Provincial institutions were also most expensive on account of the number of officials employed; in fact, so great was the machinery required for carrying on Provincial Governments that it was like employing a Nasmyth hammer to knock in a tin tack. The police of the Colony ought to be placed under the control of the General Government, instead of the various Provincial Governments. He believed if this were done there would be better organisation in the force, and it would be more uniform in its operations, and he said that he believed that had the police been under the control ot the General Government, the West Coast murders might have been prevented. There was another department, viz., the gaols, which he thought would be much better managed by the General Government than by the Provincial, and the harbors of the Colony ought to be in the hands of the General Government. With regard to the subject of education iu this Prov nee, that had been left by the Provincial Council to be managed by a board. He did not consider it necessary, knowing that the days of Provincial Government were numbered to engage in active opposition against them. But he would point out that the present Government the Fox-Vogel Government —came in as strongProvincialists, but seeing the impossibility of carrying out their scheme of colonization under Provincial Governments, they were now doing their best to get rid of them. He did not say that they might not have to elect a Superintendent as an administrative officer, but he was decidedly opposed to Provincial Legislatures, whose acts were defective, and he instanced the Fencing Ordinance, which had to be amended almost every session, in proof of this. He thought, too, that the outlying districts should really undertake the duties of that district, the same as school committees or road boards. He looked upon the county system as being the great end of all the movements of reform in Provincial Government, and he hoped to see the time when nobody would come between the Assembly and the people except the County member.