TOWN AND COUNTRY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume xxix, Issue 7241, 29 July 1907, Page 2

TOWN AND COUNTRY.

In the course of the Budget, which he delivered in the House of Representatives on the 16th instant, the Colonial Treasurer made some observations on the relations between town and country in New Zealand. "So far from there being any antagonism between town and country, they are inter-de-pendent," said the Treasurer; and, he added, "neither can flourish alone, and the well-being of the one must re-act for good on the other." It had been through a recognition of this, he said, that tlie Liberal Governments of the colony had striven to benefit both town and country. The towns had been fostered by tariff reform and industrial and humanistic legislation of various kinds; the country by liberal measures for the settlement of the land and the financial help of the settlers, and by innumerable services rendered to all kinds of farmers by the Agricultural Department; and in addition to all that, both town and country had shared tlie boon of liberal railway facilities, cheap postal and telegraph rates, and the development of trade routes and foreign markets. Besides the other factsthat justify this equality of treatment, there is that of the practical equality of population. When the Representation Commissioners were engaged; recently, in re-adjusting tho electoral districts of the colony, they ascertained that the total population of the colony amounted to 888,376 (exclusive of Maoris and the inhabitants of the Chatham anad Kormadec Islands). The population in forty-seven cities and boroughs of over 2000 inhabitants, including those on shipboard, amounted to 376,177; and the urban population within, a five-mile limit of the chief post offices of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin cities, exclusive of the population in cities and boroughs of over 2000 inhabitants within that limit, amounted to 47,895; or a total urban population of 424,072, which left a rural population of 464,----304. As it is.to the interest of the towns that- more people should settle in the country, and as considerable numbers of those who now live in the towns are desirous of sharing in that increased settlement, it is obvious that townspeople would act unwisely were they to favour any political policy or proposal which would be likely to retard closer settlement in the country. Indeed, in the practical politics of the colony, almost .--vervthing should bo subordinated to the'attainment of this end.