The Dominion. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1911. LOCAL LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1042, 3 February 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1911. LOCAL LIFE.

Mr. Asquith visited Edinburgh late in the old year, and was presented with the freedom of the city. The speech in which he acknowledged that genuine honour—for Edinburgh is discriminative in conferring it—was entirely appropriate to the occasion, and yet full of a much wider interest. After alluding to the picturesque beauty of the Scottish capital and to its historic past, ho spoke of the present "tendency to drain away from the centres of our local life their separateness and individuality.". This 'tendency ho attributed to the "gigantic development in the nineteenth century of tho means of communication." English towns had suffered from tho change, and Edinburgh had nofc altogether escaped it. They would never, he supposed, see again tho "concentration and isolation of social and literary interests" that was to be found in the older Edinburgh. "But, for all that," ho continued, "Edinburgh, it may be said without flattery or exaggeration, retains in large measure a life and savour of her own. No one who knows her at all can even imagine while he is here that ho is anywhere else." And then Mr. Asquith, rising from tho particular to the general, pointed a just and'wholesome moral:

The modern world, with its steamroller methods, its levelling of inequalities, its lopping off of excrescences, its rounding of angles and blunting of edges ! i Hi? f , Hlcl ? iud,ic P'nco and season healthful and even necessary processestends inevitably and increasingly towards uniformity, sameness, monotony. Let us do all we can, both in our children aud m our ahos, to keep fresh aud potent the saving salt of individuality. Carrying Mk, Asquitk's thought a step, further, tho Manchester Guardian, in its comment on tho speech, observed that the reaction had already begun : "Edinburgh has never lost the sense "of its being a capital; Manchester and other great towns of tho North are rapidly acquiring it. There is less and less dependence on London, a greater conception of- the value of city patriotism, a more proper pride, a higher ambition, a more vigorous and original individuality." Tho Guardian, in short, claimed that there was visible "a ' distinct setback to the over-centralisation of the national life which at one time seemed likely." Here in New Zealand wo have the same opposing tendencies at work. Undue centralisation was long prevented, and is oven now chocked by tho geographical barriers which hinder, communication between-the principal settled districts. The provincial system was the political expression of a physical condition, and the abolition.-o£- the. l provinces was the natural accompaniment of the improvement of- communications. The same process, if carried far enough and not checked by any opposing force, would;, make New-Zealand a highly centralised State like Victoria or New South Wales, but the disappearance of provincial government fortunately left us with, vir-. ■tually,, four vigorous and ambitious capitals. Not even the fixing of the seat of the General Government in Wellington has enabled this city to •"drain away the' separateness and 'individuality" of Auckland, Christchurch, or Dunedin. It is well for the national life that each of those centres—to ; say nothing, of - the smaller towns—still preserves "a life and Savour of her own." It is admitted everywhere—except possibly 'at Auckland—that-such a condition ■is. very much-better than one of more 'centralisation: The ad- ■ vantages'-arc , numerous. . Emulation and-competition between the cities are-the parents of a great deal of commercial; ' manufacturing, and municipal activity. Business does not bo readily accumulate in a few hancls, and personal enterprise everywhere is encouraged. The smaller provincial centres are not overshadowed, .and larger areas of country have the advantages of nearncs3 .to cities and ports. But unfortunately our present Government is all on the side of centralisation—not from any desire to aggrandize Wellington, but rather for the purpose of aggrandising itself. By far the greatest danger to local life, with all that it means of vigour, freedom, and enterprise, is the persistent extension of the interfering activities of tho State. The municipalities have been deprived of tho right to invest their, own sinking funds, bribed to give up half the control of thoir fire brigades, and robbed of tho right to manage their own tramways. The same Government which insisted upon anticipating them in an attempt to deal with tho housing of the workers refused to pay rates on the land acmiircd for the purpose, and humiliated ths Parliament that dared to resolve that Government Departments, as owners of urban 'property, should comply with tho local by-laws. But thero is a Nemesis for such deeds. In spite of tho evil growth of the habit of opening the local mouth and shutting the local eyes whenever tho Ministerial spoon is extended, tho spirit of self-reliance is not wholly dead. Wo believe it is reviving. It must have been with the view of placating it that the Government last session promised, a measure for increasing the powers of local bodies, and it certainly was to please itself that it omitted to do anything of tho sort. This Government, or another, will have to give the local bodies something more substantial than promises and more beneficial than doles from the public purse. It will have to give back the freedom that has been taken away. Our cities, like those of the Old Country (if the great newspaper wo have quoted above has rightly read the signs of the times), will rise to "a greater conception of the value of city patriotism, a mo're popular pride, a higher ambition, a more vigorous and original individuality." No Government can long withstand there . tondnndics. _ It must cither yield or bo put aside.