The Press. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1875.

Press, Volume XXIV, Issue 3222, 29 December 1875, Page 2

The Press. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1875.

The Daily Times is not quite candid iv saying that, of the two parties which it describes, it has put the position of the first in the most favorable light. It has not done so by any means. On the contrary, it has stated their position unfavorably, by omitting some material particulars. It is not the fact that, according to their programme, all local revenue must be accounted for in the first instance as colonial revenue, and pass through the books at Wellington. The Abolition Act directs that revenue arising under any provincial enactment —such as license fees of all kinds, local taxes &c. —shall be collected by the Municipalities and Boad Boards, without passing into the Colonial Treasury at all. Nor is the land fund t6 be distributed solely " by way of grants of £L for £1 upon " rates raised." The Abolition Act provides that the entire land fund, minus the charges by law imposed on it, shall be local property. The Boad Boards will be subsidised at the rate of pound for pound of their rates, and the whole of whatever balance there may be is to belong to the Shire Councils. These two amendments make the case a great deal more favourable, and guarantee a more complete localisation of revenue, than the Daily Times supposes. Eeturning to the main question, the Daily Times objects to the land revenue being made to pass through the Colonial books, for two reasons. First, because in the event of any financial difficulty the (General Government will be tempted to withhold payment from the local governing bodies; secondly, because the arrangement by which the land fund is handed over to the local bodies will be liable to be upset by a majority of the House of Representatives.

As to the first point, the appeal of the Daily Times to past experience is not supported by the facts. In the event of pressure arising, it says, " the ''natural step for statesmen to take " will be to hold their hand, and not " pay over the land fund grants to the " Shire Councils and Eoad Boards." But why more natural than it has been hitherto for them to refuse to pay the land revenue to the Provincial Governments ? The term " grants" indicates a misconception on the part of the writer. He seems under an impression that the Shire Councils will depend for their share of the land fund on the appropriations of the General Assembly, just as Boad Boards are dependent on the Provincial Councils. But this view is altogether a mistake. The Shire Councils (or whatever the local bodies may be called) will be placed, as regards the land fund, exactly in the position formerly occupied by the provinces. They will hold it by the same tenure, and it will come to them in the same way. The system which the Daily Times dreads as a perilous innovation is the system that has been in force from the very foundation of provincial institutions. ! The provinces never had " possession" of the land revenue, in the sense intended by the Daily Times. They are debarred by the Constitution Act from any legislation affecting the waste lands of the Crown, and the General Assembly has been most careful to permit no relaxation of its own exclusive control over them. The land fund is, and always has been, "accounted " for as, in the first instance, colonial " revenue." It is collected by officers of the General Government, is paid into the Colonial Treasury; and it is only in compliance with an Act of the Assembly that the Colonial Treasurer, instead of including it Among his avail- , ableasßets,handsitovertotheprovinceß.' W*», this arrangement has worked with unfailing regularity. Govern-

ments have often been in financial straits; they have been compelled to resort to increased taxation; in 1871 there was a deficit which even borrowing failed to cover. But there never has been an instance of a province being deprived of its land fund. In their Worst extremity it was never "the natural step for statesmen to " take" to hold their hand and refuse to pay the land revenue into the Provincial Treasuries. And the same law will still exist. The direction of the payment will be altered, but the anthority over the Colonial Treasury will be exactly the same as before. What reason is there for supposing that it will not be as efficacious as it always has been? It is a most gratuitous assumption that a law which has been implicitly obeyed so long as it related to provinces, will suddenly lose all virtue when it is made applicable to Shire Councils.