SEPARATION AND REPUDIATION.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIV, Issue 3399, 8 June 1868, Page 3

SEPARATION AND REPUDIATION.

To the Editor of the Daily Southern Cross. g IBj I regret to see the line of policy advocated by the hon. member for the Buy, that of cutting up the province into portions, each portion to make an agreement with, the remaining portions for its share of the d«bt. This will infallibly lend to repudiation. Suppose the amount required to pay the interest on debts, colonial and provincial, to be £2 per head, and the population of the province to be 50,000 ; and a bargain now to be made with the Thames district, and their population to be 10,000, and for th«m to pay £2 per head, being at the same rate as the remainder of the province ; and further suppose that at the end of six months there should be 40,000 people at the Thames, and 10 000 in the remainder of the province. The people at the Thames would then be required to pay 10s. per head, while the people in the remainder of the province would be liable for £8 per head. What could follow but repudiation ? — to say nothing of the absurdity of people in one parish paying one rate of taxation, and those in an adjoining pariah a totally different rate. And to this it must come if positive agreements of the kind proposed are really made; To separate the colonial and provincial debts will not affect the principle in the slightest degree. What seems now wanted is to do away with the Provincial Government as now constituted, and have ' institutions in the nature of local boards without any legislative powers, such institutions to have no revenue but what they can raise by looal taxation and local endowments. One set of men finding revenue to be expended by another set of men. as it the case with revenue levied by the House of Representatives and expended by provincial or local institutions, is wrong in principle, and can only lead to waste and extravagance. Leaving the General Government to have such establishments only as are absolutely necessary for carrying on the government, and which they already have, taxation should be at once reduced to the extent of any funds that are now or might be spared for provincial or local purposes. With provincial and local institutions drawing on the general revenue, economical government will be impossible. The mere simplifying the machinery will effect a saving, while increased efficiency will be obtained with ft less total amount of taxation. — I have, &c, William Goqpfbllow. Ofoa, June 4, 1868.