PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVII, Issue 4456, 6 December 1871, Page 3

PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5. The Speaker' took the chair shortly after three o'clock.

PETITIONS. Mr. Murdoch MoLeod presented a petition from Mr. Peter Uiquhart, of Whangarei Heads, a native of Garloch, Scotland, praying for redress in the matter of a grant of land to the extent of 50 acres, upon which he has been settled for the last 15. years.— The petition was read and received. Mr. Philips presented a petition from Messrs. Hardington, Crowther, Quick, and others, praying that the charges made at the toll-bars be amended.— The petition was read and received.

WORKS IN THE NORTH AND RELIEF IN ODTDISTRICTS. Mr. Dyer asked the Provincial Secretary, without notice, wlipii the returns showing tho expenditure on public works to the North of Auckland during the present year would bp laid on the table ; and second, when the return showing the expenditure for the relief of the sick and destitute in the out-districts of this province would be laid on the ta^lo. The Provincial Seer etai; y said to-morrow they would be laid on the table.

STEAM SUBSIDIES. Mr. Hasilin asked the Provincial {Secretary, without notice, why the return he had asked for several days ago, respecting the steam subsidies, had not already been preseated, and when they would be laid upon the table.

The Provincial Secretary : That also will be laid on the table to-morrow. THE CASE OF JOHN MURRAY. Mr. Heyburk, in the absence of Mr. Gordon, moved, "That tho petition of John Murray be referred to the Petitions and Private Grievance Committee." Mr. M. McLeod seconded the motion, which was agreed to.

MR. UNTHANK'S PETITION. Mr. Mitchell moved, " That the name of Dr. Nicholson be added to the Select Committee on Onthank's Petition," Mr. Mackay seconded the motion, but the motion was afterwards withdrawn, at the expressed desire of Dr. Nicholson.

THE CASE OF HENRY SMITH. Mr. May moved, " lhat the case of Henry Smith (claiming land orders for 100 acres), inquired into and favourably reported on by Petitions Committee of Session 24, be refer re<l to Petitions and Private Grievance Committee." Mr. X.ERR seconded the motion, which was agreed to. '

THE APPROPRIATION BILL. The debate on the second reading of the Appropriation Bill was resumed. Dr. Nicholson, in opening the debate, controverted the statement of the Provincial i>ecrotary respecting the realisation of the estimated revenue. He maintained that the revenue as estimated had not been realised. Iv legard to the goldfields revenue, every item received had been under the estimated amount with the exception of gold duties, and the great increase in. them was an accidental occurrence —it was a thing which could not have been calculated upon. The item provincial revenue (including reimbursements) was put down at £19,000. He failed to see why the reimbursements should be jumbled up in such a way. In former years it was stated separately, and no explanation was made whether they would be merely the adjustment of accounts or cash receipts. The goldfields revenue, at £22,000, he was sure was greatly over-estimated, and had it been put down at £18,000 it would have been nearer the mark. It would take a very gre it number of small mines to make up such a wmdeiful return as was obtained from the Caledonian mine. He complained of the financial statement having been made before the Audit Committee had reported ; it placed the Council at great disadvantage. He next referred to the Kaipava Railway. The sum of £3,000 as a refund from that work wa3 greatly understated. When the Genet ul Government; would take over the Kaipara liailway works he was sure much more than £3,000 would have been spent. And they wero not told how they were to get that amount from the General Government When he was in oflico he found considerable difficulty in goUing money from the General Government, even with written data How the piesent Executive were to get this amount of refund ho was at a loss to know. Tho sum of £6,000 for the plant of the Auckland and Drury Bail way was in quite a different position. A promise was made in that case, but in the case of the Kaipara Railway no .such promise existed. The lands, again, over which th<i Kaipara Railway went would have to be investigated, and he bad heard that claims for compensation had alrerdy been sent in. [The Pkovinctal Skorktary : No.] Dr. Nicholson : If it had not, he holie\ ed in a few days a claim would be sent in, and ho was afiaid that all the deeds and conveyances in that matter were not worth the parchment they were written upon. Again, the £20,000 for the land of tho Auckland aud Drury Railway — theie was nothing to show that the General Government was going to pay that sum So far as he had been informed, all tho basis upon which this sum «as put down was merely a conversation between two members of the House of Representatives. Other items would be considerably affected by the action of this Council. He then went over the items in List estimates, and showed that no less than £38,607 ISs. Sd. had been received from accidental sources, and, if similar accidental sources wero got hold of during the present year, the estimated amount anight be received. He held that, after deducting the amounts that were uueertain, there would only bo a sum of £87,400 available for appropriation. He next referred to the way the promises made by the Executive in taking office had been carried out, and held that their promises had not been fulfilled. He complained of the way tho accounts had been made up. They did not show clearly the amount of salaries and the amonut spent on public woiks. The present Executive took officfc on the ground that they would keep' down salaries, aDd leave money to spend on public works; but liow had they carried that promise out ? In 1870, during the first nine months of that year, there was spent on salaries £11,244 14s. 5d., and during the remaining three months a further sum of £3,717 18s. 5d., making a total of ,£14,962 12s. lOd. during the whole of that year. In 1871, during the first nine months of this year, a sum of £13,035 11s. Id. hid been spent on salaries, ascontmsted with£ll,244 l4s. sd. during the same period of last year. He alao contrasted the public works carried on in 1870 and 1871 in a similar way, detailing the ' separate items, sh wing that the former Executive had done far better with a less vote for such works. During 1871, for a period of 10 months, the present Executive had spent for public works a sum of £15,745; whereas in 1870, for a period of nine months, j a sum of £3J ,263 17s. 7d. was spent on the | same class of works, and yet the Executive that did that was turned out of office because they did not spend enough. It must also be remembered that, out of the sum spent during the present year on public work?, works to the amount of £3 550 had been contracted for before the last Executive left office. The Goldfielb Secretary replied to many of the charges made by Dr. .Nicholson. He felt considerably disappointed at the attack which had been made ; from what he heard outside, he understood that a 1 terrible impeachment would be hurled agi'ino^ the Government of a class compared with which the impeachment of Warren Hastings would be nothing. Ho had never heaidDr. Nicholson express himself so ineffectively. [Dr." ])Tichol£os: Conscience doth make cowards of us all.] The Goldfields Secretary agreed with that remark, and thought that conscience had dottfi its work with him, for never did he he^r his hon. friend speak so ponderously or labour so heavily and with so little effect. He, said, as he was better acquainted with the figures than the Provincial Secretary, he would reply to some of the arguments of Dr. Nicholson. He held that the duty of the Government vras to estimate the oapitation HUowmof ftQcordtog (9 tfet itaterotnti on tbt

General Government blue-books, and, had the * capitation allowance been continued, their estimate of the amount would have been realised to neatly a pound. They had no right to baso their estimate upon the bankruptcy of the General Government,. 1 neither could they foresee any failure in the payment of the amount of capitation allowance. The deficit of £41,000 which Dr. .Nicholson had I referred to waa purely imaginary, and the fact that he had not appealed to printed papers or other documents showed that he himself had his misgivings in respect to the accuracy of the statement. He knew of no adjustment of accounts which could take place to reduce the amount of £4,000 to £2,700. Several parties had calculated the figures and found them correct. The unauthorised expenditure of the General Government would be no bugbear, as it had been in the past. As to the gold duties the hon. gentleman showed his old failing. The estimate he had made of them showed that they had been receiving more than double the amount that had been estimated. The increase of the gold dues was no accident. The hon. gentleman did not believe in the success of the goldfields, and that was why he estimated their returns so low. When a Government of a country took a damaging view of their own resources they pre» vented capital from being invested, and thus their resources were undeveloped. The present Government believed in then?; they estimated an increase, and were they to blame when that increase was much exceeded ? Was that an accidental occurrence ? The day was past when the ups or downs of one or two claims would affect the prosperity of the golclfield. He believed the pieseat estimate of £22,000 would he found at theend of theyear considerably under rather than over the mark. He did not refer to the Caledonian Claim alone, for the district of Coromandel was one of the most promising in the goldfields ; and it should be remem' bered that the Provincial Government held a very large amount of property there. He was quite ce*taiu that the estimates of the Executive would be found to be correct in respect to the Kaipara Railway, , of receiving a sum of £3,000 from the General Government. That sum would be found to be very nearly the amount expended. There was 'one thing which should not he forgotten: Of the £1,200 spent on that work already, over £600 of that amount was spent by* the hon. gentleman's Government " nibbling" at it by flying visits, &c. ; but the amount spent by the present Government represented actual work done. He referred to the relations of the present Executive with the General Government. They found no difficulty in carrying on correspondence with the General Government, because they carried it on in a more refined manner than the previous Exeou. tive. If the present Executive had done ,no other act, the Council ought to be thankful to them for restoring a harmonious feeling and correspondence with the General Government. A hint had been made that fJhe salaries had not been kept down by the present Exeoutive, and he interpreted that to mean that they had favoured their friends and paid salaries to them out of the public revenue. He repudiated any such motive, but Governments which had pieceded them had acted in that way, and dealt in sums which made the Council appalled by their magnitude. Bat he would bury that wretched past, and not refer to it again. The present Estimates wete clear and explicit, and altogether different from the foggy and indistinct st vtement made by the hon. gentleman opposite Every reduction which the the piesent?Executive had agreed to carry out had been carried out, and no increase had been made save three warders at the Gaol. While the hon. gentleman spoke of works, it was most wonderful that he altogether omitted to mention the largest public works which had been undertaken in the province for many years. This was but one instance of the concealment of facts with which the hon. gentleman's speech was characterised. The speaker reviewed the other arguments used by Dr. Nicholson. Mr. Carleton considered it but right and fair that the whole question should be fully gone into. He tiusted, however, that no substantial opposition would be offered to the second reading of the Appropriation Bill. The public business must be carried on whoever were in office. During the present sossion he intended to vote and act upon the mci its of the case, and not speak or [vote for mere paity politics. Mr. M.vokav was surprised that Dr. Nicholson should blame the Provincial Government for the short-coinings of th<j General Government. The hon. member for the Noi thorn Division (Dr. Nicholson) had said the increase of the gold ft eld 3 duty had been due to an accident. He agreed with that, but m a diiferent sense from that understood by him. And that accident was the removal of that hon. gentleman from the Executive benches. (Laughter.) That was the accident which had increased the gold field revenue. He leferred to statements made yeais ago by tliat gentleman that it would have been better had the province never seen the goldfields, and that it would be better for the people to be engaged in flax-dressing. It was a very fortunate accident that that gentleman had been removed from power, and lie could assure the Council that he would have very little confidence in the success of the goldfields if that gentleman waa to be returned to power. The Government of which Dr. Nicholson was at the head proposed to spend a sum of £8,800 for public works on the Thames goldfijlde, including a sum of £J,OOO for the Thames Hospital. What did they find tho piesent Government do ? They at once put on the estimates a sum of £12,000 for like works, and he found by the returns lying on the table that of that amouut a sum of £1 1,600 bad been spent, thus leaving only £400 to be spent during the remainder of the year. But they had done more : they had entered into contracts for works far in excess of the vote of the Council for works in the same district. There waa £3,000 for a wharf at Grtthamsatown, and £1,500 fora water supply at the Thames. Other works made up the expenditure on such works to £13,600| and tnose under contract to the amount df £4,500, or a. grand total of £18,100, or in other words a sum of £10,000 in excess of what Dr. Nicholson had proposed to expend. But not only were the actions of the present,fixecu- ■ tiye deserving the thanks of the goldfields triembers, but they deserved the -support of the country members as well. The present Government had put' a sum of £3,500 on thft estimates for works in the North, and had spent £316 in' ore than ' the vote of the Council. For roads in the South a sum of £2,500 had been spent, thus shaming the action of the Executive that preceded them. , Mr. Cadman referred 'to the , manner in which Dr. Nicholson brought down the E3ti mates last year, and stated that he had heard , sometimes of a "poor-chest" Government, but be (Dr. Nicholson) was the most'*'poormouthed "'Government he' ever saw. 1 Ever since then he had always shown the same desponding and "poor-mouth" style of argument that had been used by him. When 'that gentleman was in office the thought was entertained that Coromandel was a humbug an!d a sham.' It was only at the^leventh, houir, when he could no longer help himself, ' that anything was done for them. It was only when the gold field had become, in spite of' his efforts, a power in the country, that anything "was ' done to make their roads, wharves, or tramways. , i i kr. Ellis said the more he had investigated intp the estimated revenue the more satisfied he became that the estimate vas a fair and reasonable one. -He hold that the gol'dfieliis had not had a sufficient Bum, expended upon them during the past ye ai, and whoever wa<a in office during the ooni ng year ou«ht to tee that^ a .f*ir expenditure took place there. Ho did not approve, h )Wevdr, of the very large amount which was proposed to be appropriated for that diitrict during the ensuing, year,' as the appropiiatfon •vraii in excess of, the estimated revenue, t "Mr. Mitchell made- a sarcastic attack upoztjthq dolorous Bti.te of mind in which Dri* Nicholson came to the Thames goldfield a 'couple of yaars ago. " On "the whole he believed tho Exooutiw h>d done well, ftltbougb. *W win iti)} la thtpvtitwoi

a damping and desponding infloance.- H& was satisfied with ' the Estimate, and believed there would be no falling off an the revenue for the ensuing year. He would support tii© motion. ■• ' ♦*! '. ' Mr. Beveridbi* did not quite agree with his colleagues as to the way th© golflfie,l<{£, were managed since the Council was- -pro* rogued. When Mt. Mitchell retired tfetf Goldfields Secretaryship another goldfiflld member ought to bare been appointed, It was only latelyjthat a. Qoldßelds Secretary had been appointed. About tw« months ago the Goldflelds Secretary (Mr., Hutjtt^had, invifod him to go down to the Thames tor dinner. He did not go, and wtt better than t his comrades. When they went- tb-' thePacific Hotel there was no dinner fo^ them ; at least it was not cooked, and they had ;toi put up with ft bit of mutton and bread, or some cheese and bread. As to the, wharf there was not a single pile on ,thfl. ground, and nothing to indicate that such a work was being undertaken. There was obe item which he objected to being A.chaVge against the goldfields revenue — the £5,00fr for opening up new goldfiolds. The Thames had nothing to do with new goldfields. The 1 auctioneers' licenses might be r used,.by the province, but the fall amount of goldfields revenue he claimed to hare expended ty that ( district. ... ■ Mr. BorcKLAND took issue at onoe with the statement of the goldfields members that the goldfields revenue was not proTincial revenue. It was provincial revenue to all intents and purposes. It was an error that a good many members laboured under. Would it not bo preposterous for the membertl down South, when nearly all the revenue was derived from lcasiug runs, to claim to have all the revenue spent upon, the runß? It was ridiculous, and he hoped to hear no more of it. So long as the members did their duty fairly and 7 honestly, his vote would be always at their, disposal.' The Provincial Secretary replied, and was glad of, and thanked the members . for, the frank and honourable way 1 the debate had been parried on. He referred to a number i of > Dr. Nicholsons statements in detail, exposing them with considerable minuteness, and regretted that Dr. Nicholson had not had better means of information at his disposal when he made the assertions. ' , . . The question was put, and the Approprv, ation Bill was read * second time. ' The Council then went into committee upon the Estimates, Mr. Hamlin in the ohair. The preamble of the bill was postponed. The following item was considered:-—. Works under contract, part of "th; liabilities' of 1871, £9,500. Agreed to. Motion was made to Teport progress. j ''*' The Council resutned; pWtteaswas renorted, and leave given, to sit again next sitting-day. ' • *•■ -• • ' '

PAPEBS LAID ON THIS TABLE. The Phovikoial SKCHE?TARi' y l»id on 1 the table a return, of, the expenditure , for roads and works now in progress to ' the North of , Auckland'; also a return showiug the expenditure of vote of £800 during the nine months for relief in the out«diatrict», arid * return showing all the defined runs and leases in the ' province of Auckland. , •

POSTPONEMENT. The further consideration of the Highways Act Amendment Bill in committee, and the continuation of the debate on the second reading of the Licensing Act Amendment Bill, were, on the motion of the Goldsfields Secretary , postponed until ne,xt sitting, day.

REPEALING THE TAHAKI BRIDGE ACT. Captain Freer moved, "TM a respectful address be presented to his Honor the Superintendent, requesting him to send down to this Council, as early aa possible during the present session, a bill to repeal the Tatnaki Bridge Act of Session 16, No. 9, 1864." • Mr. Swanson seconded the motion, which was agreed to. I

HARBOUR WORKS AT THE THAMES. Mr. Mitchell moved, ' 'That in tlie opinion of this Council it is desirable, in order to the bettor and more effectual development of the Thainea goldfields *nd the country surround- | ing the same, that harbour works should be constructed a<; the part of Thames, That a | respectful address be presented to his Honor the Superintendent, requesting him to recommend the General Government to undertake this work under the scheme of public works sanctioned by the Public Works Act of 1870, and to inform them that this Council approves of tolls being levied for the use of the harbour, to meet the interest and sinking fund on the cost of the construction, and that , this Council -will provide out of tbe ; goldfields revenue any deficiency that may arise in the requisite amount of such interest and sinking fund."" That this Council respectfully requests his Honor to negotiate with the General Government on the above terms, or sucb, other teims as he may think fit, for the immediate commencement of the work ; and further, this Council requests his Honor to co-operate, so far as it is in his power, ia carrying ,out the work." He spoke at some length ju favour of the motion. Mr. Mackay seconded • the motion, and agreed with his colleague as to the necessity "f s ich a work. The gulf, was gradually silting from the sand from the different different batteries at the Thames. ■ •' The Goldfields Secbktary said ' the' mover of this resolution hatl only anticipated the action of the Government in th© motion. The Engineer-in-Chief was to be asked to undertake an examination of this harbour and prtpare a plan of works when he visited Auckland. 'Mr. Ellis believed they were c«ming'toor late with any proposal of this kind. -* Motion put and agreed to. 4

ADJOURNMENT. , , , 'On the motion of the 'SROV^cikii Secre- " tary the Coupcil adjoui*iied ' at half-past 10 o'clock until 3 o'clock next sitting-day-{Wednesday), , . f ,