PROVINCIALISM.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1204, 21 August 1874, Page 4

PROVINCIALISM.

["WESTPOKT EVENING STAIt.J Surposixo the abolition of Provinces in the North Island ensues, and supposing, as a not unreasonable sequence, a similar result in the South, the Goldfields will fare infinitely better under the new regime than the present. The dead weight of provincialism crushes all mining industry. The life blood is sucked from it by vampires begotten of provincialism. The miners' franchise is a delusion, the miners' representation a suare ; the one bringing to the front needy adventurers, mere carpet bag politicians, and the other but proving the depth and degradation into which provincialism has fallen. It is notorious that the individuals returned upon the miners franchise for goldlields constituencies are of all men the least cognisant of the true requirements of the miners. Now and then a practical miner of intelligence and good repute consents to TSraerge from the obscurity of goldfields life, and ventures on the troubled waters of politics, doing battle for his fellowworkers, but such instances are rare, and as a rule the blatant tap-room orator, ready in promise but slow in works, the vain protester and dealer in fair words, looks upon the mining vote as specially devised for his advantage, a mere means to an end, yielding lum in greater or less degree both place and pay. The miner, good easy.soul, losing a day now and then in recording his vote, goes back to his round of daily labor and lapses into indifference, except that he growls even while he submits to the thousand ills that provincialism and the mal-administration of provincial rule heaps upon his shoulders. Abolish provincialism, and such evils will vanish. A Minister of Mines would be then a necessary appointment, and in whom would be vested wide discretionary powers iu the. regulation of goldmiuing. The existing multiplicity of rules would be reduced to one general code, and one miner's right would give the possessor authority to dig aud delve throughout the goldfields of New Zealand. The mining industry would revive, themain causes of dissatisfaction would be more easily removed, and the miner would no longer be as a waif aud out-cast, kicked about from pillar to post by irresponsible Provincial authority. The adoption of an intelligible and workable Goldfields Bill in the House might then be accomplished, for it would be some honor to represent a mining constituency, and men of sterling worth and good practical knowledge would woo the compliant votes of the New Zealand miners, instead of leaving them, as now, to the tender mercies of free lances, who fight but for plunder, aud whose war-cry is "Portune to the spoiler! "