ADDRESSES TO CONSTITUENTS.

Press, Volume XXX, Issue 4155, 20 November 1878, Page 5 (Supplement)

ADDRESSES TO CONSTITUENTS.

-JTB MOSS AT PAHNEII.

The following is the report, furnished by the Auckland "Star," of the concluding portion of the address recently delivered by Mr Moss to his Parnell constituents. It is singular that the " Herald's " report entirely omits _W «---__>-6- .elding to wk_ M_. ____o*a -"-fO">•»"■ decentralt■*-. n£ lora_ __-eve _-__•_.->__. to t.-_e- " old _ry_»t_-S-__L_-"'* jt___L ____«_* j>3-o»e>«-<_ .» of *__. 00-vera-Hi In nhH.-jji. i

Mr Moss -rent on to say—l shall now aak you just to think of what is going to bo done for the future. It is very dark at present. I will only tell you that the result of my experience a_ to the changes in the constitution of —be country, _s __t___fc ___c _lss —__—l_r _s utterly i_c_,p__l_ of cloiT-g tlie woxlc t_at it liaus to do. n of si is piii Mi in.

__-___nh_-i__o some 200 during __ session, and it is a labour to read them alone, in addition to some 500 reports of all kinds. The Assembly is completely overburdened with work, and it is impossible to do it properly and thoroughly. The Ministers are in much the same position. It ii ymj difficult to get at any of them in ■Wellington. They are always at work, and always being deputationed. If one of those Ministers make an appointment to see you, you go to the office and find yourself perhaps number twenty-three. I received telegrams from my constituents asking mc to do this and that, and was obliged to tell Ministers that it was really a painful thing to meet them. The only chance was to catch them when they were goiog to dinner or to take some little rest, when they ought not to have been disturbed. The consequence of this overwork is that a great deal of the government of the country is falling into the handß of Under-Secretaries, who are now the most important people in the country. If they cannot do yhat you want them to do, they can always prevent your getting what you want. [laughter.] Yon may talk about retrenchment and economy, but I am perfectly convinced that under the new order of things yon can have neither the one nor the other. Tou can hare no retrenchment or economy until you have altered this system of centralisation, which aggrandises the departments. It makes great men of the officials and very small men of tbe rest of the community. These appear to mc to be the first and immediate effects whioh the change in the constitution has brought about. Then again I want to point out to you how much the time of the Assembly is taken up in disoussing small locil Bills, and the great expenditure of time that ought to be devoted to the more important and larger measures of the country. Ju.t imagine eighty-eight members in the Lower House and forty-four members in the Legislative Council occupying their time with such a Bill as the Auckland High School Bill, the Parnell Beserve* Bill, or the Greymouth Bscecourse Bill. (The speaker explained the tedious operations whioh these Bills would have to pass through in order to become law.) All this is done by a House which does not cost less than £250 or £300 a-day, and which has to consider these petty, trifling measures—for trifling they are so far as the colony is oonoerned— and has to devote a great part of its time to them, to the prejudice of other more important work, which it ought to consider. I think you will see the absurdity of tua system. Then, again, we are all of us told that there are no parties in the country—that the party lines have been obliterated altogether i but I can assure you there are, and always will be, two parties in the country. At one time, perhaps, that argument might have applied, when there was a greater equality of condition : when there were none of these enormous sums of money made by individuals. But now the tendency is to bring together a large number of wealthy men, who believe it is their privilege to govern the country, and think they can do it a great deal better than the people themselves. That ie the tendency of a class which has acquired political power, and is more and more anxious to assert itself as it gains power, and against whioh it is the duty of the people to guard. Sir George Grey has taken upon himself the leadership of a party which desires lognard og-inst the growth Of a dominant class in the country. [Cheers] lam glad indeed to hear that cheer, because, depend upon it, the struggle is not over yet; and rest assured that you will need him and he will need you for some time to come. He has laid it down as a starting point that the people of this colony shall rule themselves. [Cheers] Without distinction of class, without distinction of wealth, without distinction of position, that the whole people of the country shall be one people, . and that they shall control the Government of the country. [Cheers.] Unless you have this there can be no equality of taxation. I have shown you already the tendency there is to endow one class o£ the community with privileges at the expense of the rest. Unless the Government of the country be in the hands of the whole people this tendency must increase, and you will find the lands of the country absorbed by a few people, whose properties will be enhanced in value by the expenditure on public works, and as their, wealth increases the great mass of the people must become poorer. Take the example of England. What have become of the millions of acres of common lands that were available at one time for tho use of the whole people ? They have gone into the hands of a few families. That ought of itself to bs. a warning to New Zealand. Having those examples before you, it will be your own fault and your own folly if you bring the same evils upon yourselves in the future. It is no use going to the poll and returning a member to represent you. in the Assembly thinking that is local self-govern-ment, fit is nothing unless yon exercise control over the administration as well as the Government of the country, and that you cannot do nnder the present Bystem, and never will do unless you have a system of true l.eal self-government to replace that which has been destroyed. I have been accused of heing a blind follower of Sir George €rrey, hut though I do not think he has a more devoted follower than myself, I dany that I have followed him blindly.* I follow him because I see clearly what he is aiming at, and because I sympathise with his views. [Oheerß.] He h__ all kinds of supporters, supporters who give him lip-service and take every opportunity of magnifying

every mistake which the Government may make—and all Governments must make mistakes—and who aro ever on the look out to take advantage of those mistakes to secede from him ; but there are others who admit mistakes, in some few minor matters, but endeavor loyally to pull him through, and do not quarrel with him because of thesa small matters, when they know that the great reforms he has in hand will need their support to carry them successfully through. When I went to the Assembly, nothing surprised mc more than to find men calling tbe.-selves Conservative!, whose conduct contradicted ifc. I told them they had destroyed the Constitution, instead of conserving it. Ju>ige them by their acts and the tendency of their legislation and taxation. Depend upon it, there is a growing class in this country, wlii.h considers that the people require muzzling in some way, and that they are sent by Heaven to muzzle them. That class is rapidly increasing and be.oming more powerful, and now is the time to resist its encroachments. That class Sir George Grey has set himself to curb ; but how it is to be done yet remains to be seen. Do not imagine the battle ia over. Nothing has been accomplished. There is nothing but confusion every where. You have yet to extend the franchi. c, to redistribute the seats in the Assembly, to settle permanently one of the most important points—payment of members—upon whioh will depend whether yon shall choose whon- you like to repreeent you, or shall be restricted in your choica to wealthy men, who choose to go there. You have to settle the constitution of the Upper House, which at present is responsible to no one. It does its work remarkably well, but considering the class of men in it, their sympathies must inevitably become more and more estranged from the people.

You have also to decentralise the whole administration of tho country, to create some more definite system of local selfgovernment. You have all these things to do, and I believe in doing them you will have, after all, to go back to som.thing like the old system of looal legislation, under which this colony so long thrived. That is my individual opinion, and that is the opinion of a great miny other members of the Assembly. That is the opinion of many who voted for the abolition of the provinces, and who, if the sime question came before them again, would vote against it. Many are of opinion that we may yet find ourselves with two Governments, one for each island, and a Federal Government at Wellington attending to colonial wants of the colony. __o__efc.___._s will haw-vo to Ho done to elre e__\_ofc to ______ op-nioße. _____ _1_- co-elusion of _._._ care tboie Tfews were cro_»ic_or-ed. <_x_c_ w_ald

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session he -will he in a better position than he was during the session just closed. He will be in a position to demand a dissolution, and therefore if hia measures are rejected he will be able to go to the oouctry ______ see what the •people t__. ______ of hi-* i>olic-y- It -woi-lc- he rathe-** presumptuous in mc to say more, because X am not in tha oanadenc© ot tke (Jovernmeni, but we may judge from what fell from Sir G-eorge Grey on the last evening of the session, that he will tako care that none o. th.Be purposes which he h-d in view from the first shall be lost sight of if he can help it, and T, as your representative, shall be ready to support him to tke utmost o. -my power."