The Press. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1865. TIMARU SEPARATION.

Press, Volume VII, Issue 687, 11 January 1865, Page 3

The Press. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1865. TIMARU SEPARATION.

Pbom a report which is published in the Timaru Herald of a public meeting which has just taken place at that place, and which we reprint to-day, it is very difficult to ascertain what was done at the meeting and what was not. Mr. Cox first moved a resolution to the effect that the Hoad Boards ought to have 25 per cent of the money received by the sales of land in the district. A very sensible resolution, and one which coincides with opinions which were long ago expressed in this journal: for it is perfectly clear that unless the fair claims of the outlying districts were considered, no province could hold together under the great alteration which the New Provinces Act made in the Constitution. The Timaru Herald does not tell us whether this motion was carried or not. But the meeting was not content with this step, and Mr. T. Hall next proceeded to move a resolution to the effect that a memorial should be at once addressed to the Governor, requesting him to cause the district to be made into a separate province. This we are told was carried, and an amendment which proposes separation as an alternative (we presume) to Mr. Cox's resolution not receiving attention from the Government, was rejected. The whole thing is so badly reported that we have the greatest, difficulty in understanding what was carried and what was not. We gather on the whole that Timaru will be satisfied with nothing short of separation. When the Land Regulations were under

discussion by the Provincial Council of Canterbury, a principle -was asserted, -by Mr. Sewell, that no land should be sold outside the surveyed districts. Had this principle been adopted it would have been j possible for the Government to have limited the colonization of the country, or rather in other words, io have concentrated tho population of the country, within the district over which it was possible, with the means at its disposal, to have opened up the country by roads. The action taken by such a place as Timaru at present, makes it almost a matter of regret that the plan we have referred to was not adopted. It is a remarkable fact that neither Mr. Cox nor any of ths speakers at the Timaru meeting, stated one single fact as to the real expenditure of money within the district. It would have been perfectly easy for any of those gentlemen to have said, " Such and such are the boundaries of the new Province we want to establish. The quantity of land sold in it ha 3 been so much, producing so much money. The quantity of money spent in it has been so much—it can easily be seen we have not had our share." And these facts could easily have been found out, and ought to have been found out before any one could honestly get up and assert that Timafu has not had a full share of the public expenditure. We do not deny that it is so. We do not know. But we say that speakers at a public meeting who pretend to teach the people, ought to tell them first the real facts on which an opinion should be formed. IFor our own part, a full consideration of all the bearings of this New Province question has led us to the conclusion that, no matter what line be taken by such small places as Timaru, their wishes can never be realised. To place in a district like Timaru the large powers of government which are vested by the Constitution Act in " Provinces," is an absurdity so ridiculous that it could not possibly last many months. In the new Provinces already formed since the Constitution Act, such extravagances aye been already committed as thoroughly to sicken the colony of the whole thing. The Supreme Court has been twice or three times called in to decide disputed elections. One Province is already divided into two geographical % parties who hate each other more cordially than ever they both together did the parent province. Another is in the hands of the bailiffs. In fine, there is hardly one which has not made government perfectly ridiculous; and there is not one which had not a far better claim for Separation than Timaru, both as to local necessities and as to a supply of men fitted to carry on the G-overnment. It will not be tolerated, of that we are quite certain, that the very large powers created by the Constitution, shall be vested in what are nothing more than Parish Boards. The result therefore will be, and it will be one which will very speedily follow, the General G-overnment will resume a very large part of the powers of the provinces, and we protest we are unable to see how the provincial party will be able to resist the proposal to do so. For example—is the interior of the country to be opened up by railways or not? Are we to prolong the barbarian age in which men spent a week on horseback riding to and from their homes ? If the country is to be civilised and populated it can only be by opening up the interior by railways, which at once connect the large towns and the whole of the country through which it runs. ISFow there ie no possibility of arriving at this result except by making use of the land fund wherever it may have arisen, either as current revenue, or by hypothecating it as security for loans. But if by cutting up the country into small provinces and making each the depository of the whole of the land fund, the whole of this source of revenue is liable to be expended, as is sure to be the case, in local improvements in -the small districts, there will be no resource left but that the General Government itself shall undertake those great lines of inter-communication which are so necessary; at the same time recovering the control of that land fund out of which they must be made. . We have ever maintained the necessity of upholding the provincial system. But in that argument we have been speaking of provinces which were so not only in theory and law, but geographically and socially. The six original provinces of New Zealand were really separate provinces. They had jno communication with each other: they had been separately formed from separate off-shoots from England. Such places as Timaru are mere outlying parishes of the parent provinces ; they are to all intents and purposes a part of them, except in the vanity of a few spirits who find themselves much bigger men in the outskirts than they used to be at the centre. But we plainly say we are not prepared to maintain a provincial system with all its'expense if the provinces are split up into parishes. We are not prepared to give a place like a third-rate village in

England, with scarce half-a-dozen educated men in the whole country, powers of making laws affecting property, which in England are only possessed by the Imperial Parliament. The whole thing is degenerating into such a burlesque, that we venture to predict that within three years one of two things must occur: either the provinces will be again re-uuited under Lieut. G-overnors, or they will be entirely blotted out, boroughs and counties taking their room. "We are really hardly expressing our wishes on this matter, for we hold that something of the kind must occur. There is a limit to all absurdity, and the people will not long stand seeing the whole of the land fund expended in salaries. "We really know no single reason why Timaru should become a separate province which will not equally apply to Akaroa, or Kaiapoi. Kaiapoi and Rangiora have stronger claims so far as population goes, and Akaroa stronger claims arising out of the idiosyncrasy of its origin. We will not argue that this sub-division ought not to go on. That may, or may not be. All we assert at present is, that the districts so constituted are not in point of fact " Provinces" in the sense in which the word was used in the Constitution Act, and cannot be treated as such. The question after all resolves itself into this—How is it best to govern New Zealand with a view to its civilisation and settlement? We hold that it cannot be peopled and settled by provinces so small that a very large percentage of the public estates must be sunk in annual salaries. The best of all plans was, we believe, that adopted by the Constitution Act. If that is abandoned, then we should be driven to the conclusion that it would be far better that the work of immigration, and the construction of those great internal arteries which are necessary to the civilisation of the country should- be undertaken by the General Government, than that they should be left undone, as they will be, if the whole of the land fund be left in the hands of parishes, under the name of provinces. But we believe the Timaru people are under a fatal mistake as own interests if they suppose that they would be better off by getting possession of their land fund and sinking it in harbor works, which must always be of a most imperfect and unsatisfactory character, than by allowing it to be expended in a railway, They can never with any funds they can command make a harbor into which any but very small craft will come. The railways would not only give them their imported goods quite as cheaply as they can get them by water, but will give them the command of the internal trade of all the country through which the railway will run. Again, in all these discussions at Timaru, the inhabitants steadily ignore the portion of the debt which must be fixed on their province. That debt would be a very large part of £850,000, because the unsold lands are the security which has been offered to the money-lender for that debt. For this reason we confidently believethat were Timaru made into a separate province, although the town might receive a stimulus : the district atlargewonld be peopled more slowly and would advance in every way with more difficulty than if it had remained a part of the province with which it is connected by nature and by history. At the same time we need hardly repeat that we have always advocated the payment to each district of a fair share of its land fund. The claim of 25 per cent, is a very moderate one ; but we should be glad to see an authoritative statement of what has been the expenditure compared with the land fund up to the present time.